In our next three posts, we’ll be discussing 2015 marketing changes that affect all brands. Today we’re taking a look at Google’s April SEO restructuring plan (lovingly called mobilegeddon), in which they moved to give priority to mobile-friendly websites in search. This revamp of traditional SEO practices had marketers scrambling to make sure their websites were mobile-ready.
After the update, it at first seemed like mobilegeddon had had little effect on SEO. But within six weeks, reports found that it was affecting site traffic, and the impact was even greater than originally expected. According to Stone Temple Consulting, 46.6% of non-mobile-friendly sites had experienced a drop in Google rankings following mobilegeddon, while 30.1% of mobile-friendly sites gained in the rankings. According to Alastair Barr of the Wall Street Journal, the Adobe Digital Index “found that traffic to non-mobile-friendly websites from Google mobile searches fell 12% in the two months after the changes took effect April 21, relative to mobile-friendly sites.”
Today, the results of mobilegeddon are still impacting your organization if your site isn’t optimized for mobile traffic. In fact, Google has made a clear statement that they value mobile optimization, so future updates may well compound the effects of mobilegeddon.
In order to recover or better your site’s traffic, it’s time to make the following mobile optimizations:
Responsive design allows visitors to see your site sized appropriately for their own screen, whether they are viewing it on a desktop monitor or a smartphone. If you don’t have the resources or simply don’t want to create a separate mobile version of the site, responsive design can provide a clean, user-friendly website experience for your mobile users.
It may seem counterintuitive, but smaller screens require larger type. Don’t make your prospects squint or zoom to read your content; choose a site style that provides easily-read type with plenty of white space.
On a mobile site, you must go beyond making your calls-to-action attractive and engaging, you must also make them easy to click with the tip of a finger. That means spacing out links to avoid the likelihood of “misclicks.”
On mobile, page loading speed is a key factor in gaining and keeping visitors. Page speed impacts your site’s search engine ranking and the user experience. For more on how to optimize page speed, read this guide from Moz.
Search ranking is key to marketing success, and a partner firm can help your organization improve digital marketing across the board. Contact us for more information on how working with Movéo could help your organization thrive.
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