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new-google-mobile-friendly-algorithm

Data from 2014 shows that as much as 30% of Google searches have been done through a mobile device. Add that to the fact that mobile searches are growing 10 times faster than desktop ones and you’ll understand that Google needs to do everything in its power to keep its mobile customers happy. In 2015, this meant changing the search algorithm. Read on and find out what are the most important changes and what you can do to remain in the top search results.

What’s new?

The biggest algorithm update in the last years brings great news to those who are already mobile-friendly. This is what you can expect:

  • Each page on the website will be scanned, checking for load times, mobile best practice and elements of mobile responsive design.
  • Searches on tablets are not yet affected, but this is a planned change, so you’d better do tour best and stay ahead of the game.
  • Websites that use Flash (which is unsupported by mobile devices) will be penalized.
  • The new algorithm applies to individual pages, not to the entire website. So, if you only have a few mobile responsive pages, you might not be penalized YET and you still have time to fix the others.
  • The changes affect only results in mobile searches in all languages globally.

What can you do?

Unlike the last Google algorithm changes, Panda and Penguin, this one is not focused on penalizing bad practices, but on actually improving the web. This is the main reason why all businesses committed to delivering excellence to their clients should welcome the changes, not dread them. However, if your website is still not mobile responsive, this is what you should do as soon as possible:

  • Check your website’s mobile-friendliness here. The best part about Google’s test is the fact that you can see not only if your website is mobile-ready, but also what are its actual problems.
  • The size of the text is usually the first thing you should check for/improve. If the text is too small to read on any device (without zooming!), then your website is definitely not mobile-friendly.
  • Consider your website’s usability – do you need a lot of clicks and scrolling in order to get the information you need? Then it’s not mobile-friendly and you should work on improving the user-experience.
  • If you cannot change your entire website to a mobile-friendly one overnight, then focus on the “sensitive” areas, like your home page and other commonly used areas (contact forms and services descriptions for instance). Not sure which of your pages should be revamped first? Take a look in your Google Analytics account and see which ones get the most traffic.

There’s one thing you should bear in mind: patching and fixing a few pages and fonts may be good today, but, in the long run, your entire website needs to become mobile-friendly. Otherwise, you are not only risking being penalized by Google, but also losing 1/3rd of your clients. Thus, you shouldn’t think about the new algorithm as a nuisance, but as the push you needed to finally enter the mobile era.

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