Late in April 2015, Google announced that it will start using the mobile device capability of websites as a criteria for search ranking. In the announcement, Google said that “Now searchers can more easily find high-quality and relevant results where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.”
In the increasingly mobile market, Google included the “mobile friendliness” of a website as a criteria for mobile search results. This is an obvious evolution of Google’s search engine algorithm as mobile devices continue to dominate the Internet over desktop computers.
This is an important announcement for website owners because website viewers are increasingly using their mobile devices to look up information on the Internet. With Google’s algorithm change, the loss of website traffic could be significant especially if many of the viewers for a particular website prefer to use mobile devices. Website owners should seriously consider updating website designs using mobile friendly templates.
Aside from a design that fits on a mobile device, the design should also adapt to the screen size of the mobile device. On top of that, the use of unnecessary content should be avoided because mobile users expect websites to load quickly and not consume their mobile data allocations. This means websites should void having heavy graphics, video or audio files that play automatically and excessively long text content.
Fortunately for website owners, converting to a mobile friendly design is straightforward if they work with an experienced website management company. There are many mobile friendly templates that are very customizable yet highly adaptive to multiple screen sizes. Any company should ensure their websites have the proper content and design in order to take advantage of the Internet in marketing its products and services.
To test if your website is already mobile friendly, use <a href=’https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/’>Google’s Mobile Friendly Test tool</a>.
