Google now has a new warning message they are displaying on websites that are not optimized for mobile use. How is your site? Have you received a warning like the one below? Hey, it’s not pretty! But we can help.
Right now, these messages are really just a warning from Google and they won’t negatively impact your website’s ranking or hurt your search engine results. But still it might be time to get a mobile plan in place before Google begins to implement penalties or uses it in its algorithm when calculating the mobile-friendliness ranking factor.
It stands to reason that since nearly 50% of all traffic for Google is now mobile that Google will continue to focus on the importance of mobile friendly websites. These messages are going out for a reason. Google is deeply invested in motivating webmasters to step up their mobile optimization efforts. In fact, when surfing the web on mobile devices, you’ve probably seen messages like the one below:
Since Google is now labeling sites that have been optimized for mobile devices as “mobile-friendly” in mobile SERPs, it stands to reason that more changes are down the road. In fact, there’s been a lot of online chatter that Google is testing giving “Mobile-friendly” sites a slight boost in ranking and that Google is ready to downgrade sites misconfigured for smartphones.
Don’t wait to the last minute and have your site tank because you haven’t thought ahead and prepared for the likely negative impact a non-mobilized site will have on rankings. With all of the signals that Google is sending out, your best strategy to stay ahead of the ranking game is to get a mobile strategy in place now.
How mobile friendly are you? Take the test and learn where you stand in terms of mobile friendliness. Try Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
We did and passed with flying colors.
How about you? If you got a message like the one below, then it’s time to get an action plan in place to make your website mobile friendly.
There can be tons of reasons why your website failed, but the main reasons found on Google’s website are the ones listed below:
- The text is too small to read
- Mobile viewport not set
- Links are too close together
- Content wider than screen
In addition, there are resources on the page to help you fix the problems (if you’re a web designer) or if you’re not and your head is starting to swim – give us a call. We can help.
For example, for the site that failed in our example, Google determined the website was a WordPress site and gave some helpful resources to explain how to correct the issues and make the site and pages mobile friendly with a link to their technical guide for WordPress. It has similar options if you used CMS, Joomla, a customized website built by a developer, or a customized website built by yourself and you understand how to code.
Whichever scenario you choose, you’ll be walked through some helpful steps to advise you how certain issues can be corrected to make your website mobile friendly so you don’t suffer penalties when Google decides to forge ahead with the anticipated plan.