Is your website mobile friendly? It’s time to find out if you don’t know because this month, Google is rolling out another major algorithm update that will impact how your website is found in search results. The big change? Google wants your website to be mobile friendly, meaning it responds well on cell phones and tablet devices and if it’s not, your website will most likely see a rollback in traffic.
The reasoning behind this is that Google wants to provide the best, most accessible results to the ever-increasing market searching on their phones for information. According to SearchEngineLand.com, a top blog writing about search, “79 percent of mobile phone owners and 81 percent of tablet owners [have] used those devices for local searches.”
In another astonishing statistic, Nearly 80 percent of local searches on mobile devices turned into purchases, with nearly 90 percent of those purchases being in a physical store. Roughly three-fourths (76 percent) of those purchases happened the same day and most (63 percent) within a few hours.
So clearly, being ready for mobile and tablet devices is critical to any business operating an online web presence. With these types of numbers, it’s easy to see why Google would like businesses to have their websites mobile friendly and why they would penalize sites that don’t. Consumers are more than ready for mobile data consumption and the changes rolling out on April 21 align with those desires.
According to Google themselves, “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”
In addition, apps will start to rank higher in search results as well, especially if a user is already signed into that app. What this means for you as a business owner is that if your site isn’t mobile friendly, it could mean a loss in traffic to your website which could lead to a loss in business, especially if you rely on the Internet a lot to bring you business!!
If you’re not sure if your website is mobile friendly, contact us and we can help you check it out for free.
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