Why Google Wants What It Wants In 2014: Part 5 – Mobile Optimisation

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (provided you’ve read the previous 4 parts of this blog series): USER EXPERIENCE. It is the primary driving force behind everything Google expects from a website and Genuine Relevance Gets Results (GRGR).

From Content across your site, Social Media and broader online presence, to your Link Profile and Website itself, if you keep this in mind then Google’s requirements will make much more sense to you and you will be better off for adhering to them.

One of the newest and fastest growing aspects of SEO is Mobile Optimisation. We could rattle off stats until the end of time but we’re willing to bet we don’t need to convince you that mobile search is only going to continue to explode in 2014. We anticipate that somewhere within this year’s updates Google are going to roll out at least one update which will be a serious game changer in this respect. Mobile device usage is skyrocketing and any website serious about its online presence should be mobile optimised by now. We’re confident that this is how Google feels and that they will start to make it a much more serious requirement if you want to rank on their search engine.

If you’re not yet on-board with this then think about it this way: Why would a search engine looking to maintain its dominance continue allowing websites which don’t work properly on mobile devices to rank on the first page? In this day and age? Not a chance.

If it’s a monetary concern then you’re just not looking at it correctly. How many times the cost of mobile optimisation would you lose if such an update kicked in and you suddenly lost all of your organic rankings? Between lost business and the costs involved in clawing your way back to the top, investing now is a no-brainer.

Not only this, if you’re not mobile friendly then you’re likely already missing out on serious amounts of business given that mobile search traffic converts at a higher rate. But even then, if it only converted at the same rate as the rest of your traffic, you’ve still increased your business and then some given the inevitable future where mobile search dominates strongly over desktop.

We won’t mince words here. It would be stupid to continue to ignore this. If your site is not mobile optimised then you are setting yourself up for a fall when Google decides to flick the switch on its importance in their search algorithms. They have no choice but to do this if they want to remain relevant and neither do you.

As a last note we should also point out that just because your website displays on a mobile device, this does not mean it is mobile friendly. Think about it again with the end user in mind. It’s nice that we can see your website on our mobiles, but if it’s difficult or impossible to navigate then you are shooting yourself in the foot. “Mobile Responsiveness” is the new term being thrown around and if you would like an example of this, simply go here on a desktop device and move the browser size around a bit. You’ll see that it responds to the screen size and adapts navigation to the device being used.

You can also go here to check what your website looks like on a mobile device.

Well that’s it from us for the series. We hope you’ve gained a much better understanding of why Google asks what it does of you and can apply this to your day to day activity online.

We’ll have a new series coming in the near future but be sure to keep up on the various blogs we post on a wide range of online marketing topics in the meantime.

For those participating in our SEO Webinar today, remember it is at 2pm QLD time and you should by now have an email with the URL and logins. If not then be sure to call us before then on 1800 859 600!

---