On 21st April Google will roll out an algorithm update that has the potential to affect search engine rankings more than Google Panda ever did.
Google Panda affected thousands of businesses who lost high ranking positions and consigned them to the lower bowels of Google, somewhere like page 17 – or worse – some websites were even blacklisted. Many never recovered their rankings and SEO companies who, in many cases, created the low quality inbound links stopped taking phone calls, some even disappeared overnight.
Now Google are not suggesting that websites will be blacklisted for not being mobile friendly – but they will be penalised. Over the past few weeks Google Webmasters have had notifications arriving warning them of sites not being mobile friendly. They have posted this article explaining their thinking and what they want webmasters to do. It is quite clear that they are highly focused on mobile-friendly content.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html
If your site was built over 2-3 years ago it won’t necessarily be mobile friendly. The parameters for web design and user experience are evolving so rapidly that it probably wasn’t considered. That is no longer the case and business owners ignore these warnings at your peril. We won’t know the full effects of the algorithm update until it is applied to it is being referred to in some quarters as ‘Mobilegeddon’.
Having said all this Google has not been unhelpful. They have flagged up the issue over several years and I suspect the only way to make everyone listen was to take this approach. To help everyone they have provided an online tool to check if your website is mobile friendly. You can visit it here…
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
If you are concerned about making sure your website is mobile friendly, get in touch. You can call us on 01527 517309 or email us via the contact form.