IT’S HERE! Is your site ready?!?
Google’s new mobile-friendly update is planned to begin rolling out today. There has been a lot of talk in the industry on the impact of this update and we have received a number of calls from nervous site owners wondering what will happen to their SEO efforts. To help ease the stress we’ve created a simple guide to mobile web optimization to know whether or not your site is ready!
Before we get into a few things let’s get a better understanding of this update and the impacts it will have on your SEO efforts, let’s discuss what this update will impact. First, this update will only impact searches and ranking on mobile devices. It will not have any factor in the ranking on desktops or tablets. Second, this update is a page-by-page, not a site-wide factor. Google will crawl each page and determine the mobile web optimization of each page. Thirdly, this is a real-time algorithm. So when you make the switch to a mobile-friendly site, Google will pick it pretty fast. I hope that calms you down a little bit, to learn more about the ranking factor see this great article. Now let’s look at a few things you can do to ensure your site is optimized for mobile!
Table of Contents
Step 1: Run a Test
You need to know where you stand in order to make a plan of action. Google has been nice enough to provide us with a tool. The Google Mobile-Friendly Test will crawl your site to see if it meets the requirements set by the search engine to be declared mobile-friendly.
Step 2: Review Results and Plan
After you run the test you will get one of two results. Pass means you are good to go! Now there may be some tweaks you should make to ensure a better mobile experience, you can find these by running a test here. The second result is, well that’s right the dreaded fail… But don’t fret. This tool gives you great insight into what needs to be fixed.
Step 3: Take Action
Now you have the answer to the question, “Is my site mobile friendly” and if not you have a few areas to fix to solve that issue. Because this is a real-time algorithm make the changes soon to avoid seeing any drop in your mobile ranking.
Some of you reading this may have just run a test and see that your site was of mobile web optimization but have no clue where or how to start. A recent study showed that now 60% of searches are done via mobile, so this could have a huge SEO impact on your traffic if neglected. But don’t worry. We are here to help.
