Starting April 21, 2015, a new Google change could make your website ‘invisible’ by losing precious rank in search on mobile devices.  

Google will begin factoring in how mobile friendly a wesbite or online store is when determining where to rank that site in mobile search.

If your site is not deemed mobile friendly Google reports this latest change will significantly impact search results.

Considering that mobile search will surpass desktop search in  2015 for both organic and paid search traffic, a mobile unfriendly site can effectively render your business invisible to the very customers you want to attract.

How to Determine if Google Sees Your Website as Mobile Friendly

Google is already putting it’s stamp of approval on mobile friendly websites, by adding the “mobile friendly” label below the domain URL when a website is displayed in mobile search.

To see if Google considers your website or online store to be mobile friendly, do a search for your site name from your smartphone or tablet.

You will only see the “mobile friendly” designation if you are searching from a mobile device. 

You can also use Google’s Mobile Friendly Search Tool which will do a free assessment of your website.

4 Steps to Making Your Site Mobile Friendly

If you don’t see the “mobile friendly” label, take action now!

Google’s web-crawler requires a website to meet these four criteria in order to be labeled as mobile friendly:

1. The website avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, Flash for example.

2. The website sizes the content on the page to fit the mobile screen, so that people don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom to read the content.

Getting a good mobile responsive theme for your site like Woo Commerce or Studio Press will take care of this on the backend.

When choosing a new WordPress theme, or an platform to host your ecommerce store, make sure that the theme/platform is mobile responsive!

3. The site uses text that is readable without zooming.

4. Links are placed far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped.

Overlinking on your product pages or blog posts is a very common practice that works against you.

If your current site is not considered mobile friendly, these four steps will get you back on track.

For more in-depth details on how to analyze and optimize your mobile search presence, take a look at this tutorial from Search Engine Land.

Mobile is the Future and Your Biz Needs to Be There

Whether you use your mobile devices for search and shopping or not, your potential customers do!

At this point, if your website or online store doesn’t have a presence on mobile, it doesn’t have a presence at all.

As we approach Q2 2015, getting your site “up to code” and making it mobile friendly, is a priority goal for all businesses.

-Lisa

Questions about making your online store or website mobile friendly? Share your thoughts below…