Google to Penalize you if your Website isn’t Mobile Friendly

In November 2014 Google started implementing a “Mobile-friendly” search result tag that is only seen when you search from mobile devices.

mobile-friendly

A page is eligible for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot:

  • Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
  • Uses text that is readable without zooming
  • Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
  • Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped

Mobile is more important now than ever before

Google has said that on April 21, 2015, Google’s mobile ranking factors will not only label your site as mobile-friendly, but will also use that to determine if your site should rank higher in the search results. Google said this algorithmic change will have a “significant impact” in the mobile search results, impacting all languages worldwide.

This news isn’t new but since the impending doom of the algorithm going live on April 21st 2015 (next Tuesday) I wanted to put out a reminder.

What should you do?

Confirm you site is mobile friendly. If it is you don’t need to do anything.
You can check here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

My site isn’t mobile friendly, now what?

If you are running a WordPress based site it will require a theme update or change. For some of you this may be easy. The easy ones will just update their theme and be on their merry way.

The difficult sites will be where the theme was changed/built/customized. You will have 2 choices.

  1. Update theme (this may require costs that you aren’t prepared for)
  2. Try using a mobile plugin as a temporary solution
    1. Jetpack gives site owners the mobile-friendly features of hosted wordpress.com with your self-hosted site.
    2. WPTouch is a solution to create a separate, mobile-friendly version of your site. Your desktop themes will remain the same. For visitors from mobile devices, your site will display with a different theme. Several theme choices are available.
    3. WP Mobile Detector, similarly to WPTouch, provides some themes to present visitors using a mobile device.

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Loren Nason

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