Why your website has to be mobile
There is nothing more frustrating than surfing the internet on your phone or iPad and coming across a website that has bits of text overlapping, pictures not displaying properly and links so small that you can’t read them. Like most people, you would simply leave this site and find somewhere more mobile friendly to receive your information or to make your purchase.
Google has recognised this search engine activity and like any business, Google wants to keep it’s customers happy. To avoid searches ending up at destinations that have not been optimized for mobile devices, Google will be rolling out a new change in it’s search tools allowing ‘Mobile-friendly’ options to be tagged and displayed in the search results made on mobile devices.
This is fantastic news for mobile phone and iPad users, but not so good for business owners who have not updated their website to a mobile friendly format. So how do you know if your website is optimized for mobiles? Easy, have a look at your website on your mobile phone. You’ll find if you have any of the following attributes on your website, it will not receive the Googlebots official ‘mobile-friendly’ label:
- Text is small and screen has to be zoomed in to read
- Pages don’t resize automatically to fit the screen (ie visitors have to horizontally scroll or zoom in)
- Uses software that is not standard on mobile phone devices (eg. Flash)
- Does not automatically space links apart so they are easy to tap on a mobile device
Google prides itself on keeping only relevant and useful content in it’s search options. With most content now viewed on mobile devices as opposed to PC’s, this is another very important reason to ensure your website is mobile-friendly and you are not losing Google rankings, SEO opportunities and most importantly customers! To sum it up, your website simply MUST be mobile friendly or Google wont give it the time of day on a mobile device.
Do you need help getting your website mobile-friendly or improving it’s functionality? Give us a call today.