Did You Hear About “Mobilegeddon”?
Folks in Texas celebrated San Jacinto Day on April 21. And in Ohio, child care workers were being honored. But did April 21 mean anything special to you? It should if you have a website!
April 21 is the day that Google started ranking sites with mobile-responsive design higher in its algorithm. The process is designed to give a bump to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results. This is a big deal in terms of SEO!
By now your head is probably spinning with all these techy-terms. Is my site mobile-friendly? What should I do if it’s not? What’s a googlebot? (We’ll get to googlebots a little later.)
Firstly, a mobile friendly site is one that’s been designed so that each user, no matter which device they’re using, gets the best experience. Basically, if your site is mobile-friendly, people on their cell phones and tablets can easily navigate and access content. Does your site do all this? If you don’t know, check out this Mobile-Friendly Test from Google. It’s quick. It gives good feedback. And it’s free.
Google recommends that all websites have a responsive design. This means your site will work on every device. One website. One design. Works on everything. Of course, that also means a redesign for those sites that are not mobile-friendly. An update or redesign can cost money and time.
You might be wondering how Google tracks your pages. That’s where Googlebot comes in. Googlebot is Google’s web crawling bot that’s in charge of finding new and updated pages to be added to the Google index. Therefore with the recent changes, if you’re site is mobile-friendly, Googlebot has a better chance of finding you. And that’s a very good thing.
If you need help figuring out where your website stands, contact ISA’s Marketing and Communications team at [email protected].
