Google Gets Serious About Mobile Websites
Is your website mobile friendly? Google is now taking a closer look and treating mobile-friendly websites differently than non-mobile-friendly websites, giving them a “mobile-friendly” label.
What do you need to do to get a “mobile-friendly” label for your website?
According to Google, the following four factors play large roles in whether or not they consider your website to be mobile-friendly:
- Avoidance of software that’s not commonly found on mobile devices (e.g., Flash)
- Use of text that’s readable without requiring a user to zoom in
- Re-sizing of content to fit users’ screens, so they don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
- Placement of links far enough apart so the correct one can be easily tapped
Will you rank higher in Google if you have a mobile-friendly website?
This is not a settled issue. It may not be happening yet, but the signals are there that there’s a strong possibility of mobile-friendly websites being ranked better soon.
This is what Google said in late November 2014: “We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.”
When Google experiments, they often go ahead and do it!
Does Google see your website as “mobile-friendly?”
You can find out, right now, whether or not Google considers your company’s website to be mobile-friendly.
Visit Google’s mobile website test page, enter your website address, and click the blue Analyze button. You’ll have your results right away.
Did your website fail the mobile-friendly test?
It might be time to talk to Blue Kite about mobile-friendly website design and development services.