Forget Tax Season. Google “Mobilegeddon” is coming April 21st

Mobile-Friendly-Google-Impact

Forget Tax Season. Google “Mobilegeddon” is coming April 21st

April 16, 2015 10:25 pm By InMobile-Friendly vs. Responsive Web Design

While the importance of having a responsive or “mobile-friendly” website has been known for quite some time,  there’s another big updated coming for the Google Algorithm that may catch many web developers and SEO professional by surprise.  The announced update primarily has to do with how Google crawls your website and decides whether or not to index your mobile website.  Until now, websites optimized for mobile devices have by default seen somewhat higher rankings. The impact has been big enough for many companies to take notice. We recently updated our blog to be responsive.  Currently DigitalHipsterInc.com is “mobile-friendly,” and we’re working on a new fully-responsive web design to replace it very soon.  We’ve just been busy with converting many of our clients to responsive websites.

Google’s Webmaster Trends team announced that the new mobile-friendly algorithm change will have more of an impact on search rankings than either Panda or Penguin which were the two biggest impacts to date.  See the article in Entrepreneur Magazine .

What Does The Google “Mobile-Friendly” Update Mean for Your Business?

For starters, according to Comscore “60% of all Internet searches are now done on a mobile device.”  The general consensus in the SEO world is that the impact of the new mobile-friendly algorithm update will dramatically favor those with either a separate mobile website or responsive website because duh it’s just a better experience for the user. When you do a search in Google and a website is “mobile-friendly,” you will see “Mobile-friendly” below the website regardless of whether the site is responsive or or an m.website (separate mobile site).  See our example on the left.  Aside from potentially ranking higher in searches, the customers who do come to your website on their smartphone or tablet will be more likely to stay if they don’t have to zoom in and out to read the information on your site.

The decision that you as a business owner must make to take advantage of the coming Google algorithm update is whether to build a new responsive website now or to add a separate mobile website.

This decision largely depends on the complexity and cost of adding a separate mobile site vs. building a new website.  If your website is only a few pages and it’s not an e-commerce website, than it usually makes more sense to add a mobile website.  However, if your website is chock full of custom functionality like membership logins, shopping cart functionality, or still looks like its from 1999, then it’s probably better off starting fresh with a new responsive website.

If you currently have a separate mobile website and you are currently using it to take advantage of separate mobile-only pages that are not on your desktop website (for SEO or mobile-only promotions) you will now need to consider whether or not you want to add mobile url information to your website’s Sitemap.  Google provides more information on that here.

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About Matt Ross

Matt Ross is the President and Founder of DigitalHipster Inc. est. 2009.  Matt and his Wife Wendy have two adult sons. He's a Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Alumni, a member of The Society of Martin Scholars at The University of Akron, and an active member in a few book clubs. When he's not deep in code and cranking music, or trying to keep up with the latest Google Algorithm, Matt is gardening, mountain biking, off-roading in his Jeep, writing for fun or being a guinea pig for his wife's yoga instruction. He lives and works in Highland Square Akron, Ohio. For the 15 years prior to launching DigitalHipster Inc.  Matt worked as a Senior Advertising Account Executive and Integrated Sales Director for major television stations and newspapers in the Akron, Cleveland, Phoenix and Las Vegas markets. He has successfully planned, sold and executed millions of dollars in innovative multi-platform advertising campaigns consisting of television commercials, web video, content integration, multi-carrier mobile WAP sites, print ads, and radio. Matt says, "During my years working in broadcast and print media, I learned how to gather real-time advertising response rates and develop cost-effect creative that works for my clients.  By working for over a decade on the sales side with millions of dollars of advertising revenue, I learned how to spot bargains for my clients and see what worked and what didn't. We're not just a team of graphic designers, or artists that take chances with your ad budget. We have real advertising experience across all the major advertising channels."