With the growing tension regarding Google’s announcement that on April 21, 2015, their algorithms will change to include a greater focus on mobile friendly websites, the race is on for webmasters and marketers to get their mobile SEO game on.
The change is due to the ever growing mobile market. Mobile devices are dominating the computing field because of several reasons. One is their affordability. Instead of paying hundreds and perhaps a thousand dollars or more for a desktop or laptop, people find the smaller tablets and smartphones easier to use. Most people don’t go in for major computing and geeking out so to speak and just want devices that allow them to do simple things like email, text, play video game apps, and do some social media.
Developers around the globe know the importance of catering to the mobile market and they keep pouring out one app after another as well as new techniques and technologies. Some to the point they’re shying past traditional computers. That being said, the popularity of mobile devices is quickly putting traditional computing devices in the dust and Google recognizes this.
To help with the growing mobile usage, Google it tinkering with its software to make it more mobile friendly for surfers. This gets pretty technical but it is logical. Google has its own guidelines for what is mobile friendly and what is not. Some webmasters and marketers already feel like their sites are ready for mobile but now Google has come up with their own guidelines that changes the game across the board. Luckily though, Google isn’t leaving people in the dark about what they want and offer a variety of tools and diagnostics to help webmasters to tweak their sites accordingly.
Just sign up over at Google for their webmaster tools and you’ll be on the first step to see if your sites are mobile friendly and how to fix them. Here’s where knowing mobile SEO will come in handy in the short and long term. It calls for webmasters to look at the Google guidelines and see what they need to do now.
There’s much fear regarding the upcoming algorithm changes and it’s almost to the point of panic in some circles.
This is because any major change can mean a drop in search engine listings and of course a major drop in revenue. Add to that the possibility the competition is already on top of their mobile friendly SEO tactics, any company caught unaware will suffer greatly. This doesn’t mean that the changes by Google will cause major havoc, but the possibility is there and it’s not a good idea to be caught short.
This is especially important for local SEO. Local SEO is a more finely tuned application of SEO. It focuses on a business’ locale and important data that allows for a narrowing of searches to your specific business via its location data. These types of pages have to be mobile SEO friendly and done so immediately. The Google changes are reportedly going to favor a site’s pages that are mobile friendly. So if you have a ten page website and only one of those pages is mobile friendly, it’s more than likely, that page in particular is going to go to the top of the results regarding your site instead of perhaps more important pages like your front page or contact page.
Using the tools for making your site mobile friendly, you’ll see what needs work on and what doesn’t.