By Eden Watt, Vice President, Application Innovation, Able-One Systems and Dmitry Sergeev, Director, SoftHouse Solutions
Effective April 21, 2015, Google is changing their search algorithms to use mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in searches. Google's rationale, as outlined on their blog announcement is that when searching “on mobile devices, users should get the most relevant and timely results, no matter if the information lives on mobile-friendly web pages or apps”.
This move by Google is understandable based on the trend where more users are performing searches on mobile devices; in fact, it’s now estimated that 60% of online traffic comes from smartphones and tablets.
How the Mobile-Friendly Update Affects Your Company
The change to Google’s search results may have an impact on your web site's placement in search results, which in turn may have a potential effect on revenue and branding, which is why some have termed it "Mobilegeddon". The new algorithm could downgrade the ranking of non mobile-friendly websites, meaning that your competitors with mobile-friendly websites will receive stronger priority in Google’s search rankings, giving them a distinct advantage over companies that have not updated their web site’s mobile capabilities.How to Adapt to the Mobile-Friendly Update
To avoid any traffic loss or drop in performance, organizations should update their websites to meet the new Google requirements for “mobile-friendliness” which means your website should support responsive design in order to be mobile-friendly.
Responsive design is a design philosophy where the representation and the layout responds or adapts depending upon the layout of the device. The primary reason to keep your design responsive is to deliver a good user experience to a larger user base, and on an array of devices from smartphones, tablets, netbooks with small screens and, of course, laptops and desktops.
Over the last decade, responsive website design has risen in popularity as the preferred method for mobile deployment.
On the Google Developer website, responsive web design is defined as a setup where the server always sends the same HTML code to all devices and CSS is used to alter the rendering of the page on the device. It means that the website gives the browser instructions on how to size and scale the website depending on the device used.
Able-One’s Solution
Our team has developed a procedure we call “Fast Responsive Design Conversion” that contains 3 major steps:- Website assessment. This step will provide an expert conclusion as to the corrections your site needs.
- Website redesign. This is a facelift of your website according to the new Google requirements.
- Website implementation. Delivery of converted website to your hosting.
The procedure takes one week to one month, depending on the number of pages on your site, the technology the web site is built on, the content management system and the type of access required.
Let’s work together to ensure that Mobilegeddon isn’t a problem for your business. We can ensure you are prepared so you can keep your ranking and make sure Google searchers find your website.
