On April 21, 2015 Google made a major change to its search ranking algorithm. The change impacted mobile searches. Since the algorithm change, Google’s search results give a boost to “mobile friendly websites” when searching on a mobile device.
It makes sense. Every day more and more searches are done on mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets. Since these devices have smaller screens, many websites that are designed to look good on a desktop computer or a laptop aren’t very easy to navigate on a mobile.
Mobile Search Grows Ten Times Faster than Desktop
Google’s goal with its search engine has always been to provide users with the best possible results for their situation. The company has decided (quite rightly, in my opinion) that users on mobile devices prefer to see websites that are optimized for these devices and these smaller screens.
What does Google consider “mobile friendly?”According to Google itself, a mobile-friendly website is one where “text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.”
You can check to see if Google considers your site to be mobile friendly by using their Mobile-Friendly Test. Our recent website design update made this website mobile friendly and improved its look. We’re quite proud of it, if we do say so ourselves.
The changes to Google’s search algorithm could have a huge impact on many different websites. While website operators were warned months ago that these changes would be coming, it’s estimated that more than two thirds of Fortune 100 companies do not have websites that are considered to be mobile friendly. This means that these websites could lose a significant amount of traffic due to this update.
How to Achieve Higher Google Rankings
Whether or not your website is mobile-friendly isn’t the only factor that comes into play when determining rankings. Google notes that “While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal — so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query.”
This shows that, as always, high quality written content is crucial when it comes to achieving high rankings on Google. No matter what your site looks like, if the content is poor, the ranking will be poor.
In order to achieve higher Google rankings, it’s important that your website has high quality content that is relevant to the search queries that your customers are using.
If your website has been harmed by Google’s recent search algorithm update, it’s not over. You can always improve your ranking by making your website mobile friendly and by improving the quality and relevance of your website content,
Want to find out more about how website content and web copywriting can increase your Google search rankings? Please contact us today. Speaking with a Toronto website copywriter can help you improve your search engine rankings.