Google has previously published recommendations to help webmasters ensure that their websites are truly mobile-friendly. That said, Google has not clearly stated that mobile-friendly sites would out rank non-mobile friendly sites. Earlier announcements from February 2015 via the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog suggested mobile-friendliness was primarily concerned with usability.
Mobile Responsive Rules
This is a major shift designed to deliver even more relevant search results to users who are increasingly searching the internet from a range of mobile devices. Mobile-friendly or mobile responsive websites are taking priority within search rankings and results.
Mobile Google users can rely on the fact that they will be served up the most relevant, timely, legible, results every time they search from their mobile device.
The new update will take effect April 21, 2015. Google states;
“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”
Get a mobile-responsive website
Critically, if your website is not mobile-friendly by this date, you will effectively be penalised and you will lose ranking positions against similar businesses who have already made the change. Until this point, mobile-friendly websites had been viewed as optional, however with this update comes a strong ranking signal warning to be mobile responsive.
Google users have driven this change with the unprecedented growth in mobile device use. Once this change is implemented, Google search results will again be shuffled all over the world and in all languages with search rank and priority given to sites that most reflect the user search query and have the ‘Mobile-friendly’ tag visible on a mobile device.
Get professional advice before the ‘mobile-friendly’ change occurs
The team at Firstpoint Digital are very keen for this change to occur as we are seeing an exponential increase in website visitors and additional traffic growth coming more from mobile devices whilst a continued decline in traffic is arriving from desktop visitors.
Increase your ROI from local, mobile-responsive search
If your business has not yet invested in a mobile-friendly site or mobile optimisation, be prepared to lose your rankings within search results. Many businesses have a great desktop website, yet are increasingly losing out on local traffic streams, leads and ultimately sales to locally based competitor sites that are already ‘mobile-friendly. Test your current website now with the Google Mobile Friendly Test
From mid-March through to mid-April 2015, we have introduced our ‘Mobile Responsive‘ policy to assist small business owners in the transition. We are focused on delivering mobile-friendly sites to local business website owners before this impending algorithm change takes effect so our clients and their businesses are not negatively impacted.
If you would like to have a confidential chat about how ‘Mobile Responsive’ will work for your business or how to develop a mobile-friendly site or even optimise your existing site for mobile then get in touch.
Contact Firstpoint Digital for a free consultation or call us directly on 0407 87 51 45.