Mobilegeddon and You — Thrive in the world of Mobile with this one Super-Solution

Hopefully, you’re aware that on April 21st, Google updated their search algorithm for mobile sites in an update known as ‘Mobilegeddon’.

And seeing as how, this post is a follow-up to a previous post of mine in which I talk about ensuring that your website is accessible to both PC and mobile. So you can’t say I didn’t warn you!

The Mobilegeddon update gives priority to mobile-friendly sites and pages by rewarding them with a boost in search results rankings.

This is a pretty big deal because let’s be honest, no one searches past page 1 on Google — hence the success of the SEO industry.

Never before has Google given a public announcement before rolling out one of their large-scale algorithmic changes. They let us know this time because, staying true to their good-guy persona, they wanted to give website publishers time to ensure that their websites were mobile-friendly before ‘Mobilegeddon’ hit.

True, the update only affects mobile searches and has no impact on desktop or tablet rankings. And while mobile internet used to be reserved for quick info gathering; it’s now the go-to for everything from banking, social media and shopping to this very post you’re reading because of the bigger screen sizes and ease of use.

Something else to bear in mind is that Google now assesses your mobile-friendliness on a page-by-page basis, not by your site as a whole. I would suggest checking that your most important pages are indexed as mobile-friendly and you can check this with EXPERTE.com’s mobile-friendly test tool.

And don’t worry, as intimidating as it sounds, Google aren’t all-or-nothing on this whole Mobilegeddon thing. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, it won’t be de-listed, it will just be perceived to be less relevant to the device you’re using and therefore not be as visible.

The Super-Solution — Responsive Web Design

Responsive Web Design is programmed to serve the same HTML code on the same URL regardless of the device so that the display is rendered based on screen size.

Translated from geek-speak, this means that no matter what size device you’re using, the website’s content automatically responds and adjusts to display on the screen in the best way possible — ensuring legibility and ease of use. Check out airbnb on your phone and then on your computer to see a good example of this.

The beauty of Responsive Web Design is that you build your site once, and it can be accessed by devices of any size.

This saves you time and money in development and delivers the most cutting edge form of web design available today.

Even Google lists various reasons why you should build with Responsive Web Design in this great infographic. And if for some reason you don’t want to listen to google, at least listen to your customers and the world trends.

Mobilegeddon: A Retrospective

The news of an impending Mobilegeddon caused its fair share of panic, somewhat reminiscent of Y2K. The impact was, in fact, much smaller than expected as most websites were mobile-friendly already, Google just nudged the market in the direction it’s been heading in anyway.

So if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, don’t worry so much. Even though this move by the world’s foremost search giant is an indication of things to come, it’s not like you’ll be banned from the internet. Plus, it’s quick and easy to make their mobile-compatibility changes and you should see an improvement in your SEO rankings within a couple of days.

However, if you’ve been waiting for the right time to update and revamp your site with Responsive Web Design, Mobilegeddon should be the perfect catalyst.

So thank you, Google. Thank you for making the world a mobile-friendly place, and feel free to contact me if you’d like a Responsive Web Designed website built.