What’s Google Trying To Tell You Now?

Hmmm… something very strange has been happening recently… and if you are not involved in the SEO world and various forums around, you may have missed it!

I try not to spend too much time at these places either 🙂 but when I received a few emails in the last week from Google Webmaster Tools alerting me to “Fix mobile usability issues” on several of the sites that I have there, the brain slowly starting wondering what was going on!

It’s no secret that Google wants sites to be mobile compatible… they have been talking about it for ages… and to be perfectly honest, at the very least, any new website developed these days should be “responsive” so that it does work on different devices.

But when Google starts sending out emails with words like this:

“Google systems have tested 383 pages from your site and found that 100% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 383 pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.”

You’ve got to ask what the heck is happening???

A little bit of digging soon found out the result… yet another algorithm change which is set to throw the cat amongst the SEO pidgeons!

Google has announced that on April 21 (2015), there will be increased weight given to the mobile-friendliness of sites:

““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.”

What this means is that for searches carried out on mobile devices if your site is NOT “optimised” for mobile, other sites which ARE mobile friendly will appear before yours!

Seriously… Right NOW might be the time to think about increasing the mobile usability of your existing web site!

For example, we have just – right now – developed and installed a hybrid Bootstrap/Wordpress theme right here! If you play with it – by reducing the width of your browser window, you will see how a “responsive” theme is supposed to work 🙂

You can get your own customised version of Bootstrap CSS and decide which features you want/need to include.

Check out what Google thinks about your web pages with their mobile friendly testing tool… While you’re at it, you should also try their Page Speed Insights test for more clues on what might need fixing 🙂

While these only test one “page” of your site… you’ll find a lot of other information too linked on that page about what you might need to get started with this!

Or… you could just give me a call and see what I can do for you 🙂

I’d love to hear from you!

Cheers
Stephen Spry

By Stephen Spry · Filed Under Marketing, Web Design 

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