Importance of a mobile-friendly website

Users who browse the internet using their mobile devices are expecting the most relevant results, whether the information lives on mobile-friendly web page or apps. The number of smartphone users is rising and Google decided to adapt their algorithms to these usage patterns.

Heretofore Google has made some updates to provide a site is configured properly and viewable on modern devices.

What will happened if my website is not mobile-friendly?

Today, 21 April 2015, Google is enforcing big changes for websites that aren´t enhanced for mobile devices. In fact, no mobile-friendly website will decrease in rank in Google search results. They don´t know the full extent of the changes to the search engin´s by using the new algorithm, but they said it would be “significant”.

This change is called “mobilegeddon” by Search Engine Watch, which highlights the truth that marketing and PR experts can no longer ignore: If you want to be successful online, your content must be mobile-friendly.

How can I test my website?

You can click on this link and check is your website mobile-friendly.

What criteria should I meet?

Over the next few weeks this change will spread to the whole world. According Googlebot-u, your page is eligible for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria:

• Place links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped
• Uses text readable on small screen
• Sizes content to the screen so users don´t have to zoom or scroll horizontally
• Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash

Some common mistakes

Smartphone users represent a significant and rapidly growing segment of internet users, and Google wants to provide the full richness of the web. In order to improve the mobile web, they published recommendations and the most common configuration mistakes.

If you avoid these mistakes, you will help your smartphone users to engage with your site fully and help searchers to find what they are looking for faster. In near future, Google plans to change the ranking of those sites that are not adapted to mobile devices.

Let´s take a look at common mistakes that Google published:

1. Incorrect redirects

Some websites use separate URLs for showing content on desktop and smartphone devices. A incorrect redirect is when a desktop page redirects smartphone users to an irrelevant page on the smartphone optimized website. This occurs when all pages on the desktop site redirect smartphone users to the homepage of the smartphone optimized site. On the picture below red arrow shows incorrect redirects:

This mistake may lead users to stop using your site and go elsewhere. Even if the user stay on your site, incorrect redirects add more work for them to handle especially if they have slow mobile internet. Incorrect redirects frustrate users whether they are browsing webpage, video or something else – because the new Google ranking changes will affect many types of searches.

2. Errors occurs only on smartphone devices

Some sites show content to desktop users via URL, but errors occurs only when you use smartphone devices. There are numerous examples, some common ones are:

If you identify a user is visiting a desktop page from a mobile device and you have an appropriate mobile-friendly page at a different URL, redirect them to that URL instead of serving a error page.

If you can´t show content in a smartphone friendly format, it is better to show them on desktop page. Serving the content the user was looking for is a much better experience then showing an error page.

Smartphone users can´t play the video content on their devices – some websites embed videos in a way that works well on desktop but on smartphones can´t be run. A typical example is when content requires Adobe Flash which is not playable on an iPhone or on Android.

What I need to do to keep my position on Google?

If you care about your visitors and users then you have to make some changes as soon as possible. W are here and we will help you to:

• Improve your website
• Detect and troubleshoot errors
• Optimize your site
• Advise you for possible improvements

For more information, please contact us via e-mail

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