If your website isn’t mobile responsive, expect a penalty.
Google has been moving to a mobile-friendly algorithm change; that’s nothing new in the online world but they have released the date of this change! To be precise, Tuesday, April 21st, 2015, is the day that Google has announced on which they intend to implement the change into the SERP algorithm to weigh in harder with the “mobile friendliness” as a ranking factor.
Google announced the change on their Google Webmaster Central Blog that said “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal…”
This is not normal Google fashion, they have never announced a day that an algorithm change would take effect. Many times, they implemented it and then told the rest of the world about it. This announcement is pretty significant and must be treated as so when dealing with mobile responsive sites.
THE GOOD (WHAT IS KNOWN):
Before this change, mobile rankings were tied back to the ranking of a desktop site and would help strengthen the ranking. Having a site that ranked highly on the desktop SERP (search engine results page) meant normally that you would rank highly on the mobile SERP as well. With this new change, we now know that the responsiveness of your mobile site can/will greatly impact your organic rankings.
This is what Kraus Marketing can assume: Sites that have responsive and mobile-friendly websites will see a dramatic increase in rankings. Featuring not all sites are responsive, anyone that isn’t will not receive the added benefits compared those that are responsive. For purposes of this blog post, Kraus Marketing is referring to strictly mobile search rankings and not on desktop as we are unaware those effects for now.
THE BAD (WHAT HASN’T BEEN DECIPHERED):
As we mentioned above, we aren’t sure what the effects on desktop SER will be…yet. The team here at Kraus believes that there will be a change on the impact that mobile will affect the desktop search engine rankings, we just don’t know yet whether it will be on April 21st, or rolled out later this year.
The one thing Google hasn’t done yet is to inform of whether or not, the mobile-friendly rankings will be on a page-by-page basis or if it will apply to the entire-site. Why is this important you ask? Some websites who use separate mobile sites only have certain pages that are mobile-friendly and the entire site can’t be accessed. The mobile-friendly SERP does award separate pages on a domain, which is good because it’s not an “all-or-nothing” rank. So one of two items will happen; one is that website pages will be judged on individual merit or two if the amount of mobile-friendly pages aren’t enough compared to the site, does the entire site lose merit?
AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN (HOW DOES ALL THIS AFFECT MY SITE)?
At Kraus Marketing, we have been explaining the benefits of having a mobile-responsive site. It may take a little bit longer to create and may cost a little bit more but now it’s clear that if you haven’t made this switch, it can and will affect your rankings. The added benefit of having a responsive site is that no matter how you access the internet, tablet, smartphone, desktop, laptop, etc., the website will always load properly. We can only assume that responsive sites are going to be favored by Google, which in turn will help your company rank higher than your competition, which can help your ROI.
If this is confusing you to or you need a responsive site, be sure to contact us at Kraus Marketing. We can help take your website to the next level and make sure that you aren’t penalized by the new algorithm change. Contact us at (973) 998-5742 or online at www.KrausMarketing.com.