Mobile Friendly Websites to get High Google Ranks
The sudden and constant upsurge of the mobile web has left many businesses to either adapt or to stand and wonder. With this upsurge, another need surrounded though—mobile users should also get the most relevant and timely search results just like their desktop counterparts—whether information lives on a mobile web site or an app. No surprises, major search engines had been already working hard to make them more accessible from a mobile device by optimizing their algorithm, lately. As always, following the suit and taking a step forward of its competitors, Google has announced a major update to its Algorithm.
The present Situation: Google and Mobile devices
Since the advent of mobile web, Google to ensure a rich mobile web experience, has prioritised sites in its search results that are configured properly, viewable on a modern and legacy device, alike. Not long ago, it introduced App Indexing to shadow useful content from Apps.
From April 21: the major update
As I mentioned, Google has just announced through its official “Google Webmaster Central Blogspot” that the new update–dubbed “Mobile-Friendly Ranking Algorithm”–will be effective from April 21. Following the update, mobile friendliness will be a substantial ranking signal in Google’s search algorithm, taking further its already prominent insistence on mobile devices to the next level. While, as with its previous updates, the changes might be hard on some websites, the users will get to better interact with their mobile devices using a mobile web browser. It means lesser taps on your devices for the best piece of information, all in a mobile friendly fashion.
Secondly, information from indexed apps will also be considered a duo factor in ranking. However, this ranking factor would only be applicable for signed users who have the app installed on their mobile device. So, don’t be surprised if you find far more content from mobile apps in Google search results in coming days.
What is there for a webmaster?
For webmasters to get ready for this update, Google has introduced two tools: Mobile-Friendly Test and Mobile Usability Report.
- Mobile-Friendly Test is a tool for testing individual or set of few pages on your website
- Mbile Usability Report is a suite of tools for analysing a website from “mobile web” point of view and generating suggestions and improvements on the basis of the analysis.
What has changed and how Webmasters should cope up?
For webmasters, first and most importantly, the time to change their whole outlook about Google search engine has arrived. Google has announced that this update will have a “significant impact” on the mobile search results, an impact more than Panda and Penguin combined. So much that Google’s Zineb Ait Bahajji from the Webmaster Trends team went on to quote, “this update will impact 40% of mobile search queries, whereas Panda impacted about 12% of all English queries and Penguin was closer to 4% of global queries across both desktop and mobile.” Purported to be a mobile only update, however, only time will tell how it’s going to affect desktop web pages if only.
The motive of this update is clear, to make everyone to start taking mobile web seriously otherwise face a penalty or a warning on the face. Otherwise, when was the last time you heard Google bothering itself enough to announce an upcoming update!
Conclusion
With 50% of Google’s traffic coming from mobile devices, Google has fairly well reason, than ever before, to make such substantial changes to its search algorithm. Not to mention, it will help the websites and Google alike in the long run. My personal suggestions, rather than sulking around on Webmaster forums about this update, get started with your web developers to optimize your site for mobile devices. Or like a said before “either adapt or stand and keep wondering”. The choice is yours.
Original Published at: Click Here
