If your business is not currently addressing mobile on you website, you need to start now! The number of people using mobile devices will only rise and Google continues to make mobile friendliness a top factor in their ranking algorithm; therefore, ignoring mobile will only hurt your business and its online results.
How do you know if your website is mobile friendly?
Google has made identifying mobile friendliness issues on a website extremely easy. Google provides specific recommendations on how to correct any mobile issues your website may be experiencing. The first step if you haven’t already, is to set up and verify your website within Google Search Console. This is such a simple, yet important step not only for addressing any mobile issues, but in general for identifying any issues Google is experiencing with your website. Within Google Search Console there is a “Mobile Usability” section that will highlight the number of pages across your website with mobile errors as well as describing those specific errors.
Google also offers a Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool that allows you to test individual pages of your website and provides recommendations on how to correct any issues that Google is seeing including CSS adjustments, image changes and more.
Let’s take an example. Pretend you have set up Google Search Console, ran the mobility tests and it turns out your website does have some mobile friendliness issues. The updates needed are going to cost your business time, resources and money and when you look at some of your numbers, not having a mobile website doesn’t appear to be hurting you too bad right now, so why change anything? The answer is simple. Your competition is investing in mobile because they know users are the answer.
Mobile isn’t going away. According to Google, in 2015, mobile search surpassed desktops and tablets in 10 countries, including the United States. Mobile traffic to your website will continue to increase as more and more users reach for their mobile devices to perform searches, browse websites and make purchases.
Mobile friendliness and user experience are a necessity!
If you want your business to continue being successful online, ensuring mobile friendliness is a must. One of your website’s goals should be to provide potential customers the information they are looking for in a meaningful way. If users cannot click on your navigation buttons or read your content via their mobile device, you will lose that opportunity to gain them as a customer. If a user cannot navigate your website, they won’t be able to take an action and convert into a customer.
Ignoring mobile will also cost you organic search visibility. Google not only uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal but also has moved to using a mobile-first index. Therefore, the more you ignore mobile, the more your organic search presence will suffer, which in turn means less traffic to your website and another way for the competition to gain an advantage.
Moral of the story, don’t ignore mobile. Talk to your web team or developer and begin taking steps to make your website more mobile friendly. You can’t afford not to.
