If you’ve sat at your computer to view or attended in person any digital marketing seminar, you’ll have been told at some stage that mobile is the future. This shift is palpable, to the extent that Google (other search engines are available!) is now showing mobile friendly websites higher in its mobile listings.
This means that your mobile traffic will tail off due to implementation of the changes announced by Google in June 2013 if you are contravening the rules. The rules are as follows:
- Avoid plugins
- Configure the viewport
- Size content to viewport
- Size tap targets appropriately
- Use legible font sizes
To qualify for the “Mobile Friendly” label and higher listings, the following guiding principles are provided to help.
- Migrate your Website to a Mobile-Friendly Template
This can be done using any CMS you might be using for your site, such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla.
- Monitor the Mobile Usability Report in Google Webmaster Tools
Look for Search Traffic>Mobile Usability on the site’s menu. Using our Guide to Google’s Webmaster Tools (not available yet), you should be able to determine which pages are causing a problem across all of your site.
- Design your site for users, not just the search engine bots
This is where Google is heading in terms of ranking sites, more and more. The changes in Google’s Algorithm are just a reflection of user behaviour.
Summary
If you have a specific page you wish to test, we recommend you check out Feed The Bot’s mobile SEO tester. This tool will show you anywhere you have contravened the rules and allows you to fix it, following easy steps. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Tester is also available, though much less accurate (for now).
From there, we can help. Implementing best practice and having a clear vision of the direction the Search Engines are leaning gives us an advantage and you a boost; in your visibility in search, traffic and ultimately, in your sales.
