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Is my website mobile friendly? In Google’s own words….

“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.”

What does this mean for your website?

Putting it bluntly is may mean slipping down the search engine rankings and less traffic, enquiries and sales to your website. But let’s not panic just yet.

Why are Google doing this?

Well, first of all Google is designed to provide the most relevant and accurate information for any given search. Given that one fifth of all ecommerce purchases are carried out using a mobile and that over 60% of all Internet searches are carried out using a mobile Google needs to ensure the web pages being displayed give the best user experience possible. From the 21st April Google are effectively doing a spring clean, sorting out the websites that are not mobile friendly and pushing them down the search engine rankings or not even showing them at all.

What do I need to do?

First of all check your site on a mobile phone by typing in your company name. Check to see if ‘Mobile-friendly’ is displayed in grey. If yes then you are probably mobile compliant and Google won’t penalise your website or website rankings.

If you don’t see the ‘Mobile-friendly’ label then go and get yourself an alcoholic beverage and read on. From the 21st April Google will be downgrading any site that is not mobile compliant. This will mean search engines rankings will suffer as a result. What can you do about it if I don’t see the mobile friendly label? There are two ways of achieving the ‘Mobile-friendly’ blessing from Google. Having a ‘responsive’ website or a ‘mobile’ website. We have been designing both for a number of years and here is the different between the two.

Responsive sites are designed to respond and adapt to the device being used. This means that a responsive website can be comfortably viewed on a mobile, tablet, phablet, laptop and desktop without distortion, pinching and scrolling or a degradation in user experience. In a nutshell, it adapts to the screen.

Mobile websites are designed specifically for a mobile or smart phone. They are in effect a different website. When searching for a company online if they have mobile site then the website detects that you are trying to connect using a mobile phone and thus redirects you to the mobile version. For the most part, without you knowing.

Without getting into the details Google prefers responsive design.

So what’s next? If you are unsure, have any questions, queries or wish to upgrade to a responsive website then give us a call on 01752 295875 or email me personally at mark.field@dminformatics.co.uk and I’ll be pleased to help

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