An Insider’s Perspective on the Google Update

People have been surfing the Internet on mobile devices for at least five years now and this has increased the number of search queries on mobile devices.

It should not come as a shock that Google would recognise the growing importance of these searches and work on improving their system to accommodate this.

Google released their mobile-friendly update on Tuesday April 21, 2015 (USA) targeting search rankings on mobile devices and assessing queries on a page by page basis.

See https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ or www.mobilechecker.com.au to test a page on your website

According to Google’s Webmaster Central Blog:

“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”.

However, from my experience this will not last long due to competition as more and more web designers, developers, webmasters, marketers and business owners recognise the importance of mobile friendly websites.

Mobile sites, Apps and responsive web design are not a new development. In fact the early stages of this concept of a more ‘fluid’ layout (now called responsive layout) can be seen on sites created as early as 2009.

When going through Google’s suggestions for choosing between responsive layout, mobile website and mobile app they seem to imply that they favour responsive design due to its simplicity.

This is not to say that Apps and mobile sites are ineffective but require a bit more consideration regarding their configuration on a server (i.e. whether to use dynamic serving or separate URLs).

TIP: It is also important to make sure that CSS, Javascript and Images can also be found by Google’s crawlers (eliminate render-blocking).

Another thing to watch out for is to make sure that if your site is not responsive to implement switch tags used in your meta data as well as in your XML sitemap. Doing this will ensure that Googlebot will know not only which pages to crawl but also which one belongs to the desktop or mobile version.

TIP: Avoid cross-links where you load mobile sites on desktops and vice-versa.

HTTP/HTTPS redirects are important when implementing dynamic serving or using separate URLs. It is important to make sure that useres are redirected to the correct alternate version of the site (eg. www.bizwebsite.com.au/link goes to www.m.bizwebsite.com.au/link and not to www.bizwebsite.com.au/unrelated-link).

TIP: Use Google’s Webmaster tools to identify faulty redirects in the Crawl Errors section.

Of course, if you are looking for further information in relation to your unique business website, and what we can do to help, get in touch with us here at SponsoredLinX on 1300 859 600 or visit our website here.