Back in February, Google announced their intention to improve the “friendliness” of their mobile search results and explained that they were working on adapting their algorithms to make this possible. In the Google Webmaster blog post they explained,

‘As more people use mobile devices to access the internet, our algorithms have to adapt to these usage patterns /.../ Starting April 21st, we will be expanding our use of mobile friendliness as a ranking signal /.../ Users will find it easier to get relevant high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.’

Since these words were shared, website owners and online marketing companies across the globe have been waiting with baited breath to see how greatly this would impact mobile search results. And they have most likely spent the past couple of months trying to forecast and accommodate Google’s algorithm update.

So, yesterday the update started being rolled out and we expect website owner’s to notice a difference in their rankings in the next week or so. We imagine many of our clients will have a few concerns, for example, Google’s ethos has always been to return the most accurate results to a users query, so how can they decipher between mobile friendliness and relevant content? What if my website has better content than another’s but isn’t mobile friendly yet? And if you’ve missed the forewarning of the update altogether, you might be asking, what do Google mean when they refer to mobile-friendly websites? Don’t panic, we will help calm your nerves and make sure that you come out of this update unscathed.

Yesterday, Google explained that mobile-friendly sites would be ones,

‘Where the text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.’

They also included that this update only affects search ranking on mobile devices but it does affect search results in all languages, and it’s applied to individual pages, not entire websites.

Every person making use of the search engine will be eager to see the effect of the new algorithm. And it’ll be interesting to learn how Google will calculate whether it’s “friendlier” to rank a site page higher where the content is detailed and highly relevant to the users query, but wouldn’t be classed as entirely mobile friendly, or a site page where the content is less rich but provides a better user experience. Over the coming weeks we’ll be able to monitor how this update affects our 4000 strong client base and we will make sure to report on it and educate you further.

Google have said that they will still use a variety of signals to rank mobile search results and that the intent of the search query is still very strong. We already know that there are a multitude of factors that determine a website’s rank and there has been no suggestion that this one would gain more prominence over any of the others. So if you haven’t yet managed to make your site fit within their latest guidelines but have done so otherwise, this shouldn’t impact your mobile page rank dramatically. That saying, it is not an update to be ignored.

Google have provided a number of guides, YouTube clips and tools so that you can check whether your site is classed as mobile friendly and if it isn’t, you can discover how to make it so. Below is a link to their mobile friendly test:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?utm_source=wmc-blog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=mobile-friendly

There are also a few factors to consider when trying to make your website mobile friendly:

Responsive web design: Around a month ago we blogged about ‘What to consider when developing your website’, in which we touched upon favouring a responsive web design. If the term responsive is entirely new, it’s one you should learn. A responsive web layout will allow your web pages to adapt to all devices, and this is Google’s recommended design configuration. This however, does not mean that your site has to be responsive to be considered mobile-friendly, but if you are developing a new website or thinking of upgrading your existing one, Responsive is definitely the way forward. It is likely to cost you more for development but it will certainly make for a sound ROI.

JavaScript Adaptive & CSS: Make sure that Googlebot can access JavaScript, CSS, and image files. If a website requires JavaScript, JavaScript Adaptive is recommended by Google. And, helpfully, the mobile friendly test will highlight any blocked resources.

Dynamic Serving: Dynamic serving is a setup where the server responds with different HTML on the same URL depending on who requests the page. Google have recommended for the server to send a hint request to their bots for smartphone, which can be implemented using the Vary HTTP header.

Avoid silly errors: Put simply, make sure:

All your resources are crawlable
You do not use robot.txt to block search engines from accessing important files on your site
All playable/ video content works
You fix or remove any faulty 301/ canonical redirects
Your pages loads quickly on mobile

More detail on the above points can be found in Google’s Mobile SEO guide, here:

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/

Many website owners have also been concerned about the length of time it will take Google to recognise any changes they make to their website now. However, Google have confirmed that once your site becomes mobile friendly, they will automatically re-crawl your URLs and index your pages. If you wish to expedite the process you can do so here:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812

* For our SEO addicts, it’s worth us mentioning that there’s no benefit in linking to sites that are mobile friendly. Unlike the Panda and Penguin updates, this one does not take into consideration link building of any kind.

To conclude; Google’s majority search market share is so dominant that it often seems as though web developers, digital marketing companies and website owners are living in fear of what update they might conduct next. There’s no denying that historically, their updates have caused uproar and frustration across the board. But ultimately, their intentions are only good. Realistically, how annoying is it having to zoom and squint at your phone screen when looking at a website online? And also, how frustrating is it when your finger selects the link to a page you didn’t mean to select? We’d say on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a definite 7. And on the flipside, when it comes to generating conversions, very few will happen on websites that don’t make the experience for a user easy and straightforward. So, overall, it is important that developers and site owners start to improve the mobile user experience and we guess Google have just given everyone a kick up the backside.