Google Planning for Huge Mobile Optimization Update, Starting April 21st

Search engine optimization is no longer limited to just how well your website performs on regular desktop machines. According to Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Zineb Ait Bahajji, a new update that is forecasted to be released April 21st 2015 is specially designed to have a major impact, even stronger than the panda update – on all websites across the world, which do not offer a healthy mobile experience.

As a result, users are going to obtain high quality and relevant search results from sites that are specifically optimized for mobile devices.

Google wrote

“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

Rand Fishkin recently shared on Google+ that the different sections of the Moz site and the traffic generating from mobile searches were incredibly weak, being less than 1%. As they are an incredibly large and well-known name in the Internet Marketing Industry, they are still making their website mobile friendly to keep up with the changes and to take advantage of the impact of the Mobile Update.

What you need to know about Mobile Rankings

In order to fully prepare for the upcoming mobile update you will need to know the following factors:

–    The exact status of your mobile performance

–    How to improve your mobile performance

–    What your competitors are doing differently to you?

– If you haven’t already mobile optimized your website, you will need to do so immediately

How We Can Help

Purple Fruit, are experts in Web Design and SEO and can provide you with all you need for making your site a fully responsive and mobile-friendly site. For preparing the effects of the new Google update, there is no better way than to use Google’s own set of webmaster tools, which will allow you to see results keeping in mind the way Googlebot views the pages. We will be able to check through your website via their mobile friendly test so that we can tie up all the loose ends and make the improvements that are needed on your website.

Furthermore, if you require the mobile usability issues in a full detailed report, we can provide you with this so that you will be able to compare the differences that lie between the Mobile and the Desktop visibility to prepare your site for the April 21st Google mobile update.

We are aware how quickly Smartphone access is becoming more and more popular amongst users and is now considered to be the starting point for most businesses when developing their business.

Mobile phones are changing how users engage and interact online, but many businesses are not changing their marketing strategies to accommodate their audience. Ignoring responsive web design is a fatal mistake for any business and can leave an everlasting bad impression. The fact is, if you are unable to create a mobile friendly design then 9 times out of 10 your client will go to a competitor who can offer them one.

With user engagement being so reliant on smartphones and desktop devices, now is the time to utilise responsive design to allow your website to display its content on different devices without sacrificing user experience. For more information on responsive design, please read our blog post Responsive Design: Why it matters.

As we speak, Google will now be using information from indexed apps as a determining factor in ranking for signed-in users who now have the app installed. As a result, you will now be able to see content from indexed apps across search results.

For further information please read our blog post Google To Use Mobile Usability As A Ranking Factor In Mobile SEO – link to this post please pat

Why it’s important to become mobile optimized

The fact is if you aren’t optimized for mobile you’re ultimately losing sales. Research shows that over 59% of mobile users will abandon your website if it takes more than 5 seconds to load and 35% will abandon a purchase transaction if the shopping cart isn’t optimized for mobile devices.

Considering how important a website can be for any small business it seems only natural to take the extra care to ensure the website is mobile friendly. Now that Google is planning to take mobile ranking factor to the next level, there has never been a greater reason as to why you need to make your website mobile-friendly now.

Get in touch with us now to find out how we can help you prepare for the Google changes and make your website mobile-friendly today!