If you’re not yet aware how important it is to have a mobile friendly site then keep on reading as your website, ranking and business could depend on it! The top reasons why your site needs to be mobile friendly are because 1) Google changed it’s algorithm… again 2) You want to be nice to your users and 3) You need to get mobile ready before your competition leaves you in the dust.
1) Google Changed it’s Algorithm
It’s no big surprise that Google has updated their rules again. (Read all of the updates here) Google will now begin to punish your website if you don’t have a mobile friendly site. Use this test now to see if your site is mobile friendly https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ If it doesn’t pass this test, you could be seeing a drop in rankings. Google will give better priority in it’s search engine to sites that comply with the latest Google updates and having a mobile friendly site will help to ensure that your business can say well at its current ranking or even see a slight improvement.
2) You Want to Be Nice To Your Users
How many times do you have trying to squeeze and stretch the websites on your phone or mobile device just so you can input your email address or click on a link. This is annoying to everyone and you don’t want to annoy your users do you? It’s one thing to have a mobile friendly site that complies with Google, but the other words you need to pay special attention to are mobile responsiveness. Sites that are responsive will be able to adjust EVERYTHING on the site so that it’s user friendly and these little adjustment annoyances do not occur. A lot of the times, adjustment issues happen in the alignments, menus and image galleries. These can all be fixed by web nerds like us!
3) Get Mobile Friendly Before Your Competition!
It’s important to follow Googles new rules before your competition. Once your site gets re-indexed after Google sends its robots to crawl your site, you could be either facing a penalty in rank drop, or you could get bumped ahead of your competition because you complied with the rules first. If your site is mobile friendly and responsive, your visitors will likely stay longer on your website than a website that is not responsive. The length of time that someone stays on your site will help your site get ranked better in the search engines. If you have a crappy mobile design and your visitors back out of your site immediately, this will affect your bounce rate and make Google question how good your site really is.
Just remember: Do what Google likes and everything will be OK! Need help with this? We’d be happy to assist you with any questions you may have.
Just for fun: Check out this handy dandy infographic for more information about mobile user statistics.