Starting April 21st, Google will be expanding the use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. You understood that correctly: a Google search on mobiles will prioritize websites optimized for mobile devices.
Are you ready for this update? Google has been speaking about being mobile-ready for a long time. When web ranking is close to our hearts, this announcement is kind of forcing our hand.
Trends have demonstrated that mobile visits will only continue to grow. Therefore, regardless of your interest in your website’s ranking, if your business is on the internet and you believe this platform has an impact on your customers and your revenue, you now have an additional reason to finally go mobile.
Do you think your website is already optimized for mobile devices? Try this tool developed by Google to evaluate the mobile quality of your website, and possibly obtain crucial recommendations to better your mobile site.
3 Methods for “Mobile-izing” Your Site
Transforming your website into a mobile-friendly one can be quite a challenge. Here are 3 methods for you to choose from.
Responsive Design
This is the Google recommended method. It’s also the one Funio selected, that we are using to build our new website and also using to adapt all our web platforms. It’s one of our ongoing 2015 projects!
A responsive website uses a technique that requires only one base code for all platforms (web, mobile, tablet). The content on the page adapts to different screen widths through pre-defined breakpoints. It’s the ideal platform because you only have one content to manage. Additionally, the responsive design usually adapts very well to new devices.
Although this sounds pretty easy, this strategy requires a lot of planning and a hefty initial cost. You need a good web developer that will know how to optimize your site without making it too cumbersome, especially considering its new malleability function.
Dynamic Customized Pages
Also called dynamic serving, this method consists of detecting the device used by the visitor to push a device-specific customized page. The primary advantage of this platform is being very user-friendly for all devices and the ability to modify content without impacting all other platforms.
However, managing content can become quite strenuous because the site’s data is independent/different for each customized page. Also, customer experience can change as per the device used, especially if the design is radically different.
A different mobile website
Your third option is to create a custom mobile page on which you would redirect mobile visitors to the site on a subdomain (like m.yourdomain.com). This method ensures having an optimized website specifically catered for mobile users, but not necessarily for other devices (tablets, smart TVs, etc.).
The main disadvantage of this platform is URL redirection which can add to the site’s loading time. Also, remember that content management and your customer’s experience can also differ from your browser website.
Reading Material
To know more, here are some reading suggestions:
- Google – Resources and documentation on making a mobile website
- Google – How to make your website available on multiple devices
- SearchEngineLand – Evaluate Mobile SEO-Pocalypse traffic loss
- Search Engine Watch – Are your ready for Mobilegeddon?
In conclusion, I believe that it’s important for anyone that does business online to have a mobile-friendly website. Not necessarily because of the possible upcoming ranking impact, but for being user-friendly to your visitors that are more and more active on their mobiles. Obviously, you will need the required resources to put that together. Regardless of Google’s alacrity, you can allow yourself to be patient, but for how long?
