Google Search Update April 21

healthstatus · Apr 2, 2015

If you don't follow this stuff, Google has announced on April 21st they will be making mobile abilities a higher ranking factor in search than before. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html

You can test your site, and pages within your site at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

If you have followed any of my threads you know we get over a million visitors a month via search so it is pretty important to me. So I also went to semrush.com and ran the free report on my site, on that report is a list of competitive sites that share similar keywords. I took that list and ran it through the test as well and 5 of the 10 sites were not mobile friendly at this point.

If SEO is part of your strategy, make sure you pass the test, otherwise it looks like you are going to be swimming upstream. Of course if you just like to spend money to get traffic and the idea of doing work for free traffic is horrifying, then just proceed as you have.

Growth & Learn · Apr 2, 2015

healthstatus said:
If you don't follow this stuff, Google has announced on April 21st they will be making mobile abilities a higher ranking factor in search than before. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html

You can test your site, and pages within your site at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

If you have followed any of my threads you know we get over a million visitors a month via search so it is pretty important to me. So I also went to semrush.com and ran the free report on my site, on that report is a list of competitive sites that share similar keywords. I took that list and ran it through the test as well and 5 of the 10 sites were not mobile friendly at this point.

If SEO is part of your strategy, make sure you pass the test, otherwise it looks like you are going to be swimming upstream. Of course if you just like to spend money to get traffic and the idea of doing work for free traffic is horrifying, then just proceed as you have.

Do you have any recommendations for a wordpress plugin that will make a site mobile friendly?

SlowlaneJay · Apr 2, 2015

@Growth & Learn
You'll likely need a new theme. Unless you want to play with the CSS and PHP.
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/website-software/wordpress

csalvato · Apr 2, 2015

I am in the process of selling my site that is heavily based on SEO.

After doing a test of my top competitors, about 4/10 are not mobile friendly. It could be possible this may boost my valuation in just a few weeks..

Maybe I should hold off the sale - but another part of me is saying that I don't know what ELSE may change rankings that they are NOT disclosing. What do you think @healthstatus ? Bird in the hand or the two in the bush?

healthstatus · Apr 2, 2015

My recommendation would be to find a responsive theme that you can use on your site. About 2/3rds of my big site is powered by Wordpress, and we switched over to a bootstrap based responsive theme last year. I don't have any experience with plugins that make your site mobile friendly, but there are some, but there is a lot more to it than just fitting on the screen, dynamic images that shown based on the viewing device, spacing of links and other touchpoints

healthstatus · Apr 2, 2015

csalvato said:
I don't know what ELSE may change rankings that they are NOT disclosing. What do you think @healthstatus ?

My site has handled all the Google changes well and is mature, if your site is the same, I would wait until the switch. My thinking at the moment is worst case I will be in the same spot, best case I may pick up another 20% in traffic by moving from #2-#5 in some high traffic keywords up at least one notch and maybe more.

healthstatus · Apr 2, 2015

I think the other thing this bears out is what is the next big thing? I think with things like Siri, the Amazon Echo, Google Voice, you have to start figuring out what the differences are between what users type into a search engine vs what they will say to a search engine. Then you will have to optimize your site to be read back to the user on some devices. I think another part of marketing is think about ways to get people to put into the search box what you rank for.

tafy · Apr 2, 2015

I have a website that is not mobile friendly while the 4 other competitors have mobile friendly sites!

So yeah I better move fast!

Lex DeVille · Apr 2, 2015

tafy said:
I have a website that is not mobile friendly while the 4 other competitors have mobile friendly sites!

So yeah I better move fast!

I'll build you one for $10,000.

Supply & Demand FTW!

jmusic · Apr 2, 2015

I find it silly that Google is doing this given that it's already trivial to tell what browser/platform users are operating on. Why screw with existing results for desktop users? [/rant]

healthstatus · Apr 2, 2015

jmusic said:
Why screw with existing results for desktop users?

PC desktop use has been on decline for 3 years now, and most people browse with multiple devices, so getting the same results regardless of the platform seems to make sense to Google, and there opinion is the only one that matters to anyone working on SEO.

Mattie · Apr 2, 2015

It says awesome i'm mobile friendly.

Vigilante · Apr 2, 2015

Thanks. Just tested one of our BigCommerce templates with your test site, and it works. Thanks for the heads up.

nzerinto · Apr 2, 2015

jmusic said:
Why screw with existing results for desktop users? [/rant]

They aren't. The update is for mobile searches. ie, search performed on mobile devices.

csalvato · Apr 2, 2015

nzerinto said:
They aren't. The update is for mobile searches. ie, search performed on mobile devices.

I'm not sure that's true. Source?

nzerinto · Apr 3, 2015

csalvato said:
I'm not sure that's true. Source?

From the article that was linked to in the first post in this thread, which was the official post from Google....:

"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...."

It could be argued that no one should trust anything Google says, but I digress.... (coming from a jaded SEO....

tafy · Apr 3, 2015

So basically this means who cares then, as mobile searches for non friendly sites are crap anyway as the mobile users just bounce off the page

healthstatus · Apr 3, 2015

tafy said:
So basically this means who cares then, as mobile searches for non friendly sites are crap anyway as the mobile users just bounce off the page

In the last 30 days 62% of my traffic has been from mobile or tablets, if you can ignore that percentage of potential traffic, I would like to have a look at your business model.

tafy · Apr 3, 2015

healthstatus said:
In the last 30 days 62% of my traffic has been from mobile or tablets, if you can ignore that percentage of potential traffic, I would like to have a look at your business model.

I totally agree that you absolutely need a mobile friendly website

But

If you dont have one, then this change is of no effect as any mobile traffic you may have had would have bounced anyway

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