Google made a fairly big splash this week with a blog post. The post, helping users find mobile-friendly pages, touched on something Google is doing to help website owners to create websites that are optimized for the best possible user experience.
Basically Google is doing something they’ve mentioned before. They’re seeing the trends in Internet usage and recognize that more people are accessing websites with smartphones and other mobile devices.
It was actually back in 2010 that studies found that sales of smartphones were surpassing computers and that trend has only accelerated in the years since.
Google’s Mobile Push
Google gets a bad rap sometimes for a variety of things, but I think in general they are trying to provide their users with great online experiences. Two areas of focus have been mobile-friendly pages and page speed.
You’ve probably visited a website on your smartphone. And you’ve probably visited web pages that weren’t easy to view on your smartphone. This is what Google is looking at. They want to help fix it by helping website owners that have mobile-friendly pages.
Google is doing a few things to help pages that are mobile-friendly. First, searchers will now see a mobile-friendly link in search results indicating that a page is optimized for mobile devices.
And Google said at the end of the post that they might consider mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor.
Take Google Out Of The Picture For A Second
Google can be a major part of the traffic your website gets. But Google has done things like this in the past. Website owners have adapted and then Google has redone the ranking factors and you can sometimes get caught running behind all the time.
The best way to think about SEO is to not think about what Google wants. You need to think about what your target audience or target customers want.
But Google is right on this one. People want good experiences on their mobile devices.
What You Should Do Now
So that’s the news, but now comes the action. Remember, this is all about making sure your customers get the best experience possible on your website.
First, talk to your designer about a responsive design for your website. Responsive design is the process of creating versions of your website that automatically render the appropriate version depending on the device or screen size a visitor is using.
You basically have one design for people on smartphones, tablets and desktops. And don’t forget about the hundreds of thousands of devices in between.
Responsive design is an investment, the future seems to be all about different screen sizes whether it’s phones, tablets, watches and whatever else might come along. Investing now and getting started thinking about mobile-friendly pages is an important step.
We did it for my company a while ago and the results were great.
Google Webmaster Tools
In the post linked above Google shared tools you can use to check your website. You can use the Mobile-Friendly Test as well as the Mobile Usability Report within your Google Webmasters Account. I also recommend checking the Page Speed Tool and the page speed reporting in Webmasters.
Regular Content Audits
I also recommend doing regular content audits. When you start discussing a new responsive design for your website you’ll need to review your content. On smartphones, you obviously don’t have as much screen space to give visitors the information they need to make an informed decision about your products and services.
When I create content and do my own content audits I always think about the sales process of our service. I try to think about how a visitor will go through that process on the website.
A visitor usually comes to a blog post first. They subscribe to the email newsletter. They read more posts. They go to the homepage to read about the service. They get more details on the services page and then use the contact page to get started with the service.
Then every six months I audit the content and the process. I try to identify new questions inquiries are asking over and over. And I try to answer those questions on the site.
I work with my designer on those content changes and we make sure it works well for the mobile experience.
Final Thought
Google was the one to make this change and mobile is important for SEO, but changing your site over to one that is mobile-friendly is not just about SEO. It’s about providing the best mobile experience for visitors for all channels they use to visit your site.
