If you have a mobile-friendly responsive website you might soon see a boost in your SEO through higher rankings in Google’s search results, according to a recent announcement from Google. For years people have been using mobile devices to search for things online, with the savviest of businesses capturing those shoppers by serving websites that are easy-to-use on smartphones. The use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal is bound to create new winners and losers in the search results. Find out how you can be on the winning side of the battle for higher rankings in today’s post.
A Better Website Experience Leads to Better Rankings
From the article that was recently posted on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog:
Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.
That Google wants to send people to user-friendly websites should come as no surprise to anyone. Helping searchers find easy-to-use, cream-of-the-crop websites increases the odds that they’ll return to Google whenever a new question or need arises.
For businesses, these changes mean that your website’s rankings will be affected by how it stacks up against Google’s mobile-friendliness criteria. Falling short on these criteria may result in lower rankings for your business, as your competitors rise to the top positions and get more traffic to their mobile-friendly website.
Announcing the exact date on which these ranking changes will arrive is surprising, however, but the forewarning does help business owners by offering some time to prepare for making their website mobile-friendly.
Find out whether or not your website is mobile-friendly by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool.
The Solution: A Responsive Designed Website
Without the proper guidance, knowing how to approach this task can be challenging from both a strategy and a cost standpoint. A variety of mobile-friendly options exist in the market, and the two most popular solutions you’ve probably heard mentioned include mobile websites and responsive designed websites.
Since 2012, Google has stated that responsive design is their recommended configuration for creating smartphone-optimized websites. A responsive designed website is a website that is user-friendly on desktop, tablet, and smartphone devices. Regardless of the device visitors are using to access your website, on a responsive website visitors are shown the same information across devices, but the information has simply been reformatted to fit their device.
At Mannix Marketing we’ve been helping businesses get found online by creating custom designed, search engine-friendly responsive websites. In fact, we’ve been creating responsive websites for years now, knowing that responsive design is in the best interest of our clients, their SEO, and the people who visit their website.
Get a Responsive Website Before It’s Too Late
With the imminent changes that can affect your visibility in the search engines, and knowing that people prefer to use websites that are user-friendly on mobile devices, doesn’t it make sense to start the discussion on responsive web design for your business? If you’re considering a responsive website then contact us today.
