What are Google’s requirements that all websites need in order to be mobile friendly? Did you know that if you don’t follow these requirements, then your search engine optimization (SEO) or Google ranking will suffer?
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On April 21, 2015 Google changed its ranking algorithms for searches conducted on mobile devices to factor in whether or not a website is mobile friendly. This change in the ranking algorithms affect:
- Only search rankings on mobile devices
- Search results in all languages globally
- Applies to individual pages, not entire websites
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If your website is not responsive/adaptive, it will not rank as high in search results on mobile devices as it does on desktop or laptop computers. How do you make a website responsive or adaptive? Here’s a start:
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WordPress
Host your site on WordPress.com. If you host your site on WordPress, good news! WordPress automatically presents a mobile-friendly theme for your site depending on your current installed theme and the mobile platform of the visitor.
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JavaScript
One part of building mobile-friendly sites that requires careful consideration is the use of JavaScript to alter the rendering and behavior of the site on different devices.
CSSRWD
Responsive web design (RWD) is a setup where the server always sends the same HTML code to all devices and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is used to alter the rendering of the page on the device. Google’s algorithms should be able to automatically detect this setup if all Googlebot user agents are allowed to crawl the page and its assets (i.e. CSS, JavaScript, and images). To signal to browsers that your page will adapt to all devices, add a meta tag to the head of the document that says:
[ <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0″> ]
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For responsive images, include the [ <picture> ] element.
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With these new Google requirements for mobile friendly website, users now find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.
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Testing Tool
Use this tool to test your website pages for mobile friendliness:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
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Just copy and paste or type your website URL in the search box and in second you will see if your website is or is not mobile friendly. It will also show you a screenshot of what your website looks on a smartphone. You can also see how many of your website’s pages are mobile-friendly by signing into their Webmaster Tools account.
Here at COGO Interactive, the websites we create are often built on WordPress. They are all mobile friendly for all mobile devices, smartphones and tablets. WordPress has stayed ahead of the curve on this recent mobile responsive development in web coding and programming. Contact us at 703.885.8406 or via email if you’re rethinking your website’s mobile friendliness or your online marketing and inbound sales strategy.
