Google’s new mobile-friendly algorithm, which has been dubbed the “Mobilegeddon,” descended upon the web on April 21. The Mobilegeddon demotes sites that are deemed not mobile-friendly in searches performed on mobile devices. Below are some tips to ensure your website is up to Google’s standards for mobile devices. We will also introduce several tools that help show whether a site is mobile-friendly.
First, make sure that your site can be easily read on mobile devices. A good tool to determine this is your everyday smartphone. The mobile-friendly algorithm only pertains to web searches performed on smartphones. Searches from feature phones and tablets are not affected by the new update. To judge whether your site is mobile friendly, first check if the text is large enough to be read on a smartphone’s screen. Ensure that you don’t have to pinch and zoom to view the website’s content. Make sure your site does not use Flash video since it is unplayable on mobile devices.
A mobile-friendly website should load quickly. This is because users frequently use slower 3G and 4G networks to browse the web from their smartphones. Mobile hardware also tends to be less powerful than today’s desktop computer hardware. The Google Page Speed Insights tool can be used to analyze your website’s loading speed on mobile devices.
Google’s Mobile Friendly Test is another tool you can use to determine if your site complies with the new mobile-friendly algorithm. This tool reports how mobile users view a website. For example, the site’s text may be too small or links may appear too close together. The Mobile Friendly Test tool also reports how Google sees a website. The site’s robots.txt file may block the Googlebot from accessing certain JavaScript and CSS files. Google uses these files to determine whether a site is mobile-friendly, so inaccessible JavaScript and CSS files can cause a site to rank poorly on mobile search results.
In addition to Google’s tools, several third-party tools are available to help you evaluate whether your site is mobile-friendly. Mobiletest.me is a tool that shows you how a website looks on different mobile devices. Mobiletest.me supplies emulators that mimic various devices on the Android, iOS and Windows Phone platforms. Website owners who do not own a wide variety of smartphones will find this tool useful.
Another tool for evaluating a website’s Mobilegeddon compliance is MobiReady. MobiReady analyzes your site and provides free reports and recommendations delivered straight to your email inbox. This tool also allows you to compare your website with your competitors’ sites.
Google has stated that the new mobile update will have more impact on search results than the previous Panda and Penguin updates. Fortunately, many tools are available to help you tame the Mobilegeddon.