Ranking Higher on Google With Your Mobile Website

Starting 21 April 2015, Google Search will be expanding its use of mobile friendliness as a ranking signal, see the link to the relevant Google site

So what will the impact be on your business?

In short, if your website is not mobile-friendly, meaning your site is not responsive to different screen sizes, properly configured and able to be viewed on multiple device types, Google will rank your site lower than it would normally, and almost certainly rank your competitors that are mobile friendly higher than your site.

The reasoning for this update is simple. As the world moves to mobile and more and more of our lives occur in a handheld device, it is critical that websites are able to keep up. By rewarding those sites which are mobile friendly, Google is continuing to shape the digital landscape.

This really is important to your business as for the first time in 2014 mobile device searches were higher than searches made from desktop computers. Today over 65% of all searches done on the internet are done on mobile devices.
Checking If Your Site Is Mobile Friendly?

Before you sound the alarm bells and start to worry unnecessarily, you need to determine whether your site is at risk. To determine whether your website is currently being deemed “mobile friendly” by Google, there are two tests you can run.

1. Check your site’s search engine ranking positions (SERP) appearance from a mobile device. You can see in the example below on the search for “Restaurants in Aylesbury” two of the three results show up as Mobile Friendly where as www.simplythaiaylesbury.co.uk does not.  This will cause them a problem in the future and probably means they are not ranking as well as they could in mobile rankings today.  In addition conversion from their site from a mobile device will be very low as the site is not optimised for a mobile experience.

The second option to double check is to run your site through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Simply enter your URL into the grader. You can also check the Mobile Usability Report within your Google Webmaster Tools account for additional details on mobile compatibility issues across your site. This can be found here

Fixing these problems will protect your position in the search engine rankings and will potentially improve your position as Google dials up the effect of this algorithm.

Having a mobile optimized site that makes it easier for your customers to contact you will increase the number of leads or bookings you will get

As an example below I have displayed this site how it currently looks before mobile optimisation and also after we have done the mobilisation to the site.

The before is on the left and the after is on the right, as you can see on the before in order to view the site you would have to try and shrink it, it would become unreadable or you would have to scroll around the screen which is impracticable .

The after picture on the right clearly displays the site. On the live site you can just swipe down for more but more importantly you could hit the call button and ring and make a reservation. Or click on the map button and get directions direct to the restaurant.

With the non optimised site the user is likely to hit the back button and go right back to your competitors listing.  With the optimised version they are more likely to call you.  Other design options are available but this just gives you a small sample of what you could do.

By acting NOW you will protect your web investment and you could see a very big rise in bookings and enquire.

Usually performing this optimisation is a relatively simple job and can be completed with a couple of days.

To find out more please contact us now.