More Changes to Google’s mobile friendly algorithm
In April last year Google announced big changes to its mobile friendly algorithm which is believed to have affected thousands of website’s mobile search rankings.
Google recently announced on their webmaster blog that they’re now boosting the effects of the mobile friendly algorithm they launched last year.
So before we move on, lets recap on what happened last year. Google released an update on April 21, 2015 that was given the name within the SEO industry as “Mobilegeddon”, for reasons that it was going to be the end of the world for so many websites on the mobile search results, simply because business owners have ignored the principles of a mobile responsive website experience.
Google has decided to cracked down on websites that would not adapt to a small screen (phone tablet), would not load quickly on mobile device, or was hard to read text and see images.
So what’s the boost Google promised to roll out at the beginning of this month.
Well as announced, they intend on increasing the effects of the mobile friendly ranking signal. They however made it quite clear if your website is already mobile friendly, you don’t have to worry.
This update will not impact your mobile search results. Only those websites that don’t comply with its updated guidelines will see an impact.
When the update eventuates, it will be rolled out gradually. There should not be a major drop off for non-mobile friendly websites when in fact this update is pushed out.
The mobile friendly algorithm is a page-by-page signal. It can take time for Google to access and crawl each page of your website and that is why the impact could be slow to show up.
So what’s the solution to all of this.
Well instead of waiting to see if your website will lose its mobile search rankings, you can be proactive and check to see if Google views your website as mobile friendly.
Go to the Google Mobile-Friendly Tool to check the result of your website. The result will give an all clear or it will list the elements that require fixing for it to pass.
My thoughts are this update will have significantly less impact that the original algorithm update, however best to be ready.
Other ways to optimise your site for mobile friendliness
Google takes into consideration many signals to pass your website as mobile-friendly.
An area to optimise is page load speed.
The load speed of your website can have a big impact on click-through-rates and conversions which ultimately provides a signal to Google that will have a drastic effect on your mobile rankings.
Some recent testing has concluded mobile search results tend to favour sites that load quickly. Google knows people are out and about when using their mobile and need websites to load quickly.
So how to check if your website loads quickly.
Use a this free online tool Pingdom, to check your website load speed.
You will receive a report and areas that require attention.
The benefits of a fast loading site will increase or bring back lost rankings and more important you should see a big increase in conversions.
So that’s a wrap of the latest Google mobile friendly algorithm update.
