[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ast year the number of daily searches coming through mobile devices surpassed searches from computers. On April 21, 2015, Google rolled out a major update to better serve smartphone users. If your business appreciates earning revenue from the search engine traffic passing through these ubiquitous devices, this transformation is likely making an impact… not for the best if your site is failing the mobile responsiveness test.
If you have ever used a smartphone to search the web you probably landed on websites that look like miniature versions of what you see on desktop monitors. To read, you have to zoom in, drag the page side to side and tap with surgical precision to hit the right links on navigation menus. Despite the awkward effort required to use these sites with your dinky screen, at least you could find a business that offers what you were searching for, place a call, and maybe even become a new customer. The business you found still landed a new visitor despite the website’s mobile shortcomings.
[highlight color=”yellow”]Mobile search has changed![/highlight]
Google announced that the search engine giant is testing sites for mobile responsiveness and, during the few weeks following 4/21/15, sites that fail to pass the mobile test will be dropped from the search results for smartphone users. This is good news for the smartphone masses. For businesses ignoring Google’s warnings, the results could be dire.
[box type=”shadow” align=”alignright” class=”” width=”450″]“For businesses that ignore Google’s warnings, the results could be dire for online marketing efforts.”[/box]
Handing your site’s mobile traffic over to your competition may impact your search positions on desktop searches as well, since Google’s ranking algorithm cares so much about user engagement. When sites lose traffic, they tend to lose authority. It’s the sites with higher authority that get the higher positions and the resulting traffic that turns into customers. Is your site ready?
With this update being this big, now is the time to run your site through the quick audit tools on https://hcbusinessleader.com/mobiletest
[button color=”green” size=”medium” link=”https://hcbusinessleader.com/mobiletest” icon=”” target=”false”]Get A Free Site Audit[/button]
