Great mobile websites are vital for business, but they are about to become a matter of life and death. From April 21, Google will punish any company that fails to take smartphones seriously.
Sites with finely tuned mobile SEO will get a huge boost to ranking on search results pages, more visitors and ultimately more customers. Those that aren’t firing on all cylinders will be punished.
It is part of Google’s drive to take user experience (UX) into account when ranking sites and reflects the fact that 80% of adults now own a smartphone.
Damage to sites that fail to make the grade will be so significant that the upgrade has been dubbed MobileGeddon. Experts predict it will be felt everywhere from the Daily Mail to David Beckham’s official site.
So if you have failed to put mobile SEO at the top of your to do list, you are in pretty good company. A simple 5-second health check will show whether you need to take urgent action.
Look at the website listing on Google using a smartphone. If the tag “Mobile-Friendly” doesn’t appear below the web address then urgent action is needed.
To be truly Mobile-Friendly, visitors should not have to use zoom or horizontal scrolling to read any content, avoid using software (like Flash) that is not supported by all mobile devices and keep links far enough apart so that they can be tapped easily.
For more detail on how to survive to MobileGeddon visit Google’s Mobile-Friendly Guide.