On April 21st Google unveiled their latest algorithm update that expands the application of “mobile-friendliness” to provide a ranking signal in conjunction with App Indexing, which does feature useful content from apps for signed-in users searching on mobile devices.
Precisely what does this mean for your website when you’re a Local Business?
You might discover a large number of theories in the SEO industry and considerably more speculation. Bottom-line: owning a website that meets the needs of both desktop and mobile users is crucial. Mobile usage is continuing to increase and evolve, and for that reason businesses also must accommodate and grow with users as long as they desire to continue to be in the first page of the search engine’s results.
The Essential Information
1. Local Pack results are not going to be impacted
At this point, Local Pack Listings are not going to be affected by the update. Should your Google My Business listing be showing up in pack results and your website isn’t mobile friendly – don’t worry right away, your existing rankings shouldn’t be impacted; but considering how Google is, this is likely to change in the future.
2. Organic Results Affected
In the event that your website isn’t mobile-friendly and you currently rank in mobile-organic results, you may very well not rank as well following the update. This update is intended to give a better mobile experience for searches and offer users exactly what they want. Ultimately, results that give a worthwhile user-experience that is completely mobile-friendly will receive rankings.
3. Update Impacts Only Mobile Results
Concerned about your desktop rankings? Don’t be right now. The newest index is specifically targeted to mobile results in the search engines, but not desktop.
What’s next for websites?
This update is focusing on websites which offer mobile users with an unpleasant experience. In case your current website is adaptive or if you own a separate mobile site, it’s possible to still ensure a positive mobile experience without going responsive.
Begin with figuring out the way in which your website presents, by utilizing the Google Mobile-Friendly Test or searching your website on your mobile device, the findings will return a “mobile-friendly” message. Let us evaluate your analytics data to obtain a significantly better understanding of your existing mobile search visibility and user behavior. From here, we can help you choose which of our custom website design packages that will ensure a user-friendly, positive experience on all devices.
Update March 17th, 2016
Google Announces Update to Mobile-Friendly Ranking Signal
Google’s latest artciel release “Continuing to make the web more mobile friendly” on Wednesday, March 16, 2016 announced the update coming in May that will increase the effect of the mobile-friendliness ranking signal.
“Today we’re announcing that beginning in May, we’ll start rolling out an update to mobile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.” Klemen Kloboves, Software Engineer Webmaster Central Blog
In our own research we found hints that they are looking at incorporating even bigger changes down the road. From our reading between the lines they are signaling that responsiveness alone may not be the best solution for mobile-friendliness. As with their recently released mobile AMP pages we are seeing a move toward much simplier webpages for mobile that will load much faster on mobile devices. This means that responsive website would not be as mobile friendly as if the pages content were drastically different as with the more traditional mobile websites. We have been taking a in between approach for our customers for sometime now. While we have two different pages for desktop and mobile, we also keep them on the same url which has it’s own advantages when it comes to SEO.
What this all comes down to can be summed up in two questions. Is your current internet marketing agency proactive when looking at Google’s ever changing search algorithum? Is your web developer forward thinking with design and user experience? If not, we at Serious SEM would love to help you address these issues.