Mobilegeddon Update – May 2015
So firstly; The latest updates are being rolled out in USA only initially, (but Google have indicated that the updates WILL happen worldwide, and they WILL affect every language).
Secondly; The industry experts expect YOUR BUSINESS to be ranked DOWN if you do NOT have a mobile friendly website. This is likely to primarily affect anyone searching for your business on mobile devices, whilst your site may still be ranking well (initially) via desktop searches (be wary of your SEO expert’s proof of results).
Thirdly; Does your business have a mobile app?
Google have indicated that they will firstly check to see if a Google browser has your mobile app already loaded onto their mobile device, and if they have, then your site/app will show up VERY highly on the new search results. This takes the idea of creating mobile apps for your business to another level.
What is a mobile-friendly web page?
If you’ve used any mobile device, and tried to search for a website, you will instantly know the difference between an easy-to-read webpage, that may have a menu option to visit the other pages, and a page that tries to squeeze all the information onto one screen, meaning you have to pinch and stretch various areas in order to see the element that you want to read. Of course, if you also have to fill in some information, this becomes a real pain.
In 2012, I apparently became the largest mobile app creator in UK.
See some of my sites here; http://mobi-me.mobi/sample-websites-recently-created
I haven’t updated these sites for a while, but you can still visit my sites here; http://mobime.biz/ and http://mobi-me.org/
mobile friendly web page creators http://mobi-me.org
If your business website does not display well on mobile devices, your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking may plummet, and Google even warned of penalties for the worst offenders, according to SearchEngineWatch.
Google announced on its official blog on February 26 2015, that the change “will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”
What Website Owners Can Do to resolve Google’s latest mobile search update Mobilegeddon
If you needed a little encouragement to optimize your website and embrace mobile readiness, this is it. To find out how mobile friendly your site is right now, Google offers a free mobile-friendly test. Hopefully, you get the “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly” result, but there’s only one way to find out. No matter what your grade, make sure to visit Google’s official mobile SEO guide because this tells you exactly what Google wants. It’s like getting a teacher-approved cheat sheet for the big test. The biggest mistakes are slow mobile pages, mobile-only 404 errors, blocked CSS/JavasScript/image files, faulty redirects, cross-links that don’t make sense, and unplayable content to name just a few.
Use the Google Developer’s Page Speed Insight Tools to find out more information and make your website as fast as it can be–which is a must for viewing on a mobile page. Studies have shown that people want mobile pages to load even faster than desktop.
How To Make Your Website Mobile Friendly (at zero cost)
Firstly; I maintain that nothing to do with the internet is difficult, but it IS time consuming!
So whilst you ‘could’ make all of the changes yourself (at zero cost), you may decide to simply invest in an expert to do this for you, in the same way that you wouldn’t try to fix your own car or TV.
Running a WordPress site?
If your site is running a WordPress theme, either it is ALREADY mobile friendly (responsive)….
Or it’s not.
To test if your theme is responsive or not, simply visit What WP Theme Is That and check to see if your site looks exactly the same on a teeny tiny mobile screen as it does on your desktop screen?
Luckily, the fix is very simple:
1. Change your WP Theme. Virtually every WordPress Theme since 2014 is now responsive, and thus will AUTOMATICALLY resize for all mobile devices. Of course the total look of your site may change completely, but then again, you don’t want your site to look the same, as it’s not working properly on mobiles, so now may be as good a time as any to bring your site into the 21st Century.
Find all the free mobile responsive themes HERE!
If you don’t want to upgrade your theme, you can simply add one of many wordpress plugins to make-your-WP-site-mobile-friendly. eg.
WP Touch (If you get an error that this plugin sometimes shows mobile theme on desktop, check out
https://www.wptouch.com/support/knowledgebase/optimizingcaching-plugins-for-mobile-use/ – it has to do with caching).- Mobile Smart
One thing to keep in mind…
Many free mobile plugins will monetize their work by adding Google Adsense Mobile to their displays. However, you can often insert your Google Adsense Publisher ID instead!
Find out more via:
Non WordPress Sites
Mobile Templates for Blogger Blogs!
Straight HTML Sites
Customizing your HTML website is beyond the scope of this update, but I found a number of solutions that may be help you out…
**WARNING: Please do your own research on this, as I noticed that some of these solutions are quite dated.
- How to Turn Any Site Into a Responsive Site
- How to Create a Responsive Website in about 15 Minutes
- Build a Responsive, Mobile-Friendly Website From Scratch
GEEK alert: In a nutshell, you also need to ensure that your page’s HTML file includes a responsive CSS file like:
Build a basic responsive site with CSS
Google’s Webmaster Mobile Tools
As more visitors access your site via their smart phones, it makes sense that you also learn:
•Who is visiting
•What keyword brought them to your site
•How long do they stay on your site
•ETc.etc.etc.
Google Analytics offers some great resources (free) if you want to explore it further (if you’re on your mobile phone
reading this, make sure you bookmark them for later use too):
- Beginner’s Guide: How to Use Google Analytics for Your WP Site
- The Complete Guide To Setting Up Google Analytics
- A Checklist Guide for Mobile Analytics Insights
Things you’ll want to learn include:
- What are mobile visitors looking for? (Are the keywords that brought them to your site different than desktop keywords?)
- Is this information easily found? (Your bounce rate, the average time spent on pages, etc.)
- Does my website load fast enough so users don’t bounce off? (website speed)
- Are my calls-to-action visible on the mobile website and are they effective? (sales, optins, etc.etc.etc.)
And did you know….
You can also submit a mobile site map as well!
Learn about that over at:
•Add mobile URL info to a sitemap
•Generate a mobile sitemap
•Google XML Sitemaps
Once your site is mobile-friendly, the next thing to do is:
Verify Everything Is Mobile Peachy!
So many things can be done to monetise your mobile and desktop site…. but this article focuses solely upon making your site mobile-friendly.
Thus, let’s go thru the main critical things you MUST ensure have been done:-
First, re-check your site at Google’s Mobile Friendly check:
Mobile Friendly Test
Configuring Your Viewport
gives you a nice visual way of actually seeing what that means.
Checklist for mobile-friendly sites
- Is your site using the right markup language? – XHTML is the computer language that is specifically designed for mobile phones. It means Extensible HTML.
- Googlebot-Mobile has access – that’s the robot that Google uses to index your mobile site
- Site is optimized for mobile – Image sizes are small, above-the-foldcontent shows in under a second, mobile caching is used.
- content shows in under a second, mobile caching is used.
Want additional help? Check out:
• A CheatSheet for Mobile Design
• Google’s 3 Mobile Site Configurations
and then also ensure user-experience is excellent:
Item Size – Mobile users don’t have to needlessly zoom in to view your content
Menus Work – Mobile users can navigate your site in 3 clicks or less
Buy Buttons – Mobile users don’t have to scroll 45 times just to see the first Buy Button
Wait a sec…
Reread that.
Buy Buttons?!
Yes, They are the most important part of making money!
(why else would you invest in a website?)
Here are 2 specific places to submit:
Nowadays, most search engines send out crawling bots so submission just isn’t necessary.
You can also try a place like FreeSEOIndexer for mass submissions, and don’t forget to submit your Mobile Sitemap to Google too via Add mobile URL information to a Sitemap.
Let’s take a moment now to review where you are now
- You’ve made your website mobile-friendly.
- You’ve added Google mobile tracking to your website.
- You’ve resubmitted your website to Google.
Congratulations! You will survive Mobilegeddon!
And for a quick recap, do this:
1.) Visit Google’s Mobile Friendliness Tool and input your site URL to see if you get a thumbs up or thumbs down.
2.) Next visit Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool and input your site URL to ensure your site is fast on all devices.
3.) And then check out Google Analytics Mobile Usability and see if there are any specific issues WMT reports and other data, such as the:
• Mobile Visitors Overview
• Mobile Visitors Devices
Need More Help?
For Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of your website, contact us here
For Mobile Apps, contact me here
Mobilegeddon
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