On April 21st, Google made a huge change to its algorithm that could affect your website traffic and mobile ranking in the coming days… Mobile-Geddon!
Google updates like these can take a few days to roll out but over the coming week websites that do not work well on mobile or tablet screens may suffer a drop in website traffic and their mobile ranking.
If you’re a small business with a website that isn’t mobile optimised now is the time to get it fixed because you could be missing out on a lot of potential customers and returning website traffic.
Check your website with Google’s mobile friendly check tool
Ensure that your website meets the criteria set out by Google by simply running it using Google’s Mobile Friendly Check Tool.
This check will give your site the all clear if it complies with their criteria. If not, it will outline all the things you need to fix to meet the compliance of the algorithm change.
Make sure you get through that list and fix everything to the best of your ability.
Have you considered a responsive website design?
Responsive websites adjust the content and layout of their pages to best suit the screen size they are being viewed on so that it is a good experience.
Google recommends having responsive design as it’s preferred option followed by having a separate mobile and a desktop website.
Have you looked at your analytics recently?
The first instance where you would see the change from the Google Mobile Friendly Update is within your analytics data.
We recommend that you should take a snapshot of current traffic trends coming through to your website from search engines and specifically from mobile/smart devices BEFORE the rollout of the Google update. Even though it’s after April 21st change you can do this retrospectively.
Then a week after the release date, once the Google mobile results normalise, you should take another equivalent snapshot of the traffic and compare each day to its corresponding previous total that you extracted.
This way, you will know if you have been impacted at all by the change in traffic coming from search engines and specifically from mobile/smart devices either going up or down.
Have you Googled yourself recently?
Google your website today using a mobile/smart device and see what the listing/appearance looks like.
Have there been changes? Have any of the other previously ranked listings shifted? Do any of the listings look different?
You should now be well equipped with the information you need to minimise any risks to ranking fluctuations from the impeding change.
If you would like to talk with Lethal Graphics about designing a responsive website for your existing business website, or a completely new website from scratch – get in contact with us and start dominating online today!
Source: sensis.com.au
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