From The Blog

Mobile-Friendly Websites And Search Rankings

mobile-friendly website search rankings

 

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]eggining late April 2015, Google will begin increasing search rankings for mobile-optimized websites. The best bet is to transition to an advanced responsive website design now, if this hasn’t already been done.

Over the past two months in particular, DMG has been asked a number of times for its thoughts regarding mobile-friendly website search rankings:

* Does having a mobile-friendly website affect rankings?
* Which type of mobile-friendly site should my business have: responsive, dynamic serving or a separate mobile site?
* Is my current business’ mobile site OK?

In some cases, the questions were prompted by a notice in Google Webmaster Tools (now called Google Search Console) to fix mobile usability issues. In other instances, it was after reading a DMG Marketing Report pointing out the growth of mobile users for a given client’s business. Some of the questions were born simply out of curiosity.

Mobile-friendliness will now affect rankings!

59% of US smartphone owners engaged in mobile shopping during Dec 2014, according to the International Smartphone Mobility Report. For ecommerce businesses, that isn’t a trend. It’s a sea change.

B2B and B2C? You all know which way the wind is blowing. A mobile-friendly website had been needed just to make calls-to-action easier for the user, if for no other reason.

Here is another reason: Lord Google is forcing the issue.

Google has been highlighting mobile-friendly sites in search results since late
Google Mobile Friendly  2014. The nearby graphic includes, in grey, the
Google-added words “mobile-friendly”. Further, since then, it has been experimenting with using the mobile-friendly factor as a ranking signal.

Look out, here it comes…

Beginning late April 2015, Google has stated it will begin increasing search rankings for sites that are mobile-optimized. The purpose is to provide users with easier-to-get, relevant, high-quality search results that are optimized for their devices. Learn more on from this Google Webmaster Tools blog post.

Which type of mobile-friendly website should my business have?

There are 3 basic types of layout and construction that will cause a website to be mobile ready: responsive, dynamic serving and having a separate mobile site.

For our purposes here, we’ll forgo the explanations of the 2nd and 3rd options in order to concentrate on what DMG believes is the most effective and efficient option: responsive website design (RWD).

A RWD is one in which the layout is crafted to automatically adapt to the device (desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone) on which a website is being viewed. The design is fluid, thus providing an optimal viewing and user experience. This particular website, for example, was conceptualized, laid out and developed using modern responsive website design techniques.

Though they take a fair amount of conceptualization and planning, responsive websites are:
checkmark-20x20easy to maintain, and

checkmark-20x20the content is consistent across all devices.

Is my current business’ mobile site OK?

eCommerce Stores
Stores using ecommerce shopping cart systems such as BigCommerce or Volusion are generally OK. These systems have built-in m-commerce capability.

However, spot checks DMG has performed in the past on behalf of clients have revealed occasional issues that need attention. Most of these were the result of shopping cart system or template updates. So, don’t always assume an ecommerce store is mobile ready. Check and verify.

B2B and B2C
DMG highly recommends transitioning to a responsive web design. It is a necessity, not an option.

To help make client Atlantic Switch & Generator LLC’s website mobile-friendly, a new, responsive web design was created and constructed. In this way, the mobile version is more user-friendly and passes Google’s mobile-friendly tests.

You can see the desktop or tablet version, depending on your current viewing device, here: AtlanticSwitch.com

For the mobile version, check the same address on your cell phone.

You can test whether Lord Google decrees a site to be mobile-friendly with this handy-dandy mobile-friendly site test.

DMG would be glad to help you transition to a mobile-ready, high-converting responsive web design. Feel free to get the ball rolling by completing contacting us.

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