HOME › 
TECH › 
SOCIAL MEDIA

Get Mobile Ready with Responsive Design for SEO

By Lisa @Lisapatb

Are You Mobile Ready with Responsive Design?

Do you know that starting April 21st, 2015 Google will start to rank websites based on being mobile friendly? Have you been reading up to see what this means for your website or blog? It may cause you to lose ranking in the search engines and cause you fewer visits! They will not actually penalize your website but you could get lost in searches!

It all can be quite confusing. Google does not make it mandatory for websites to have a responsive design but they do recommend it. If you making a new website I would highly recommend you go with a responsive design. If you are not sure about your website or blog – check out this site that will tell you and if it’s not mobile friendly it will tell you what is wrong – https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/. You may be able to do a few fixes vs. a new design as I’m doing here.

You can also check your own Google Webmaster Tools. There is a new section: Under Search Traffic you will find Mobile Usability.  If you have any errors they will show which pages. (I had 5). You can even download them into s spreadsheet to work on. Some issues I had were: Too small text, touch elements too close and viewport not configured. You’ll always find more to learn, right?

What’s a Website Owner/ Blogger To Do?

  1. Check to see if your website is mobile ready via the link above.
  2. Check your mobile usability on your Google webmaster tools for errors. See image on the right.
  3. If you do not have many errors – fix them.
  4. If you have a lot of errors – consider changing your website/blog to a responsive design.
  5. Don’t forget to recheck #1 and #2. Repeat 1-5 again.

Mobile Usability Is Part of SEO Now

Google uses over 200 ranking factors when ranking websites – we can now add mobile usability to the list. Check out the other latest SEO ranking factors from December.  If you haven’t kept on SEO over the past year you should really check out these factors. So much of SEO has really changed over the past few years. At the same time mobile usage has skyrocketed and thus changing the way users view websites and search on the web.

See Why Mobile Today Is So Important via This Infographic

by pybusa21.

Is your website mobile ready? Do you use a responsive design? If not will you redo your website or blog soon?

Top Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Lisa

Lisa loves helping others to thrive online through Social Media, Blogging and SEO. What good is knowledge if you cannot share it with others?
She has 20+ years experience in marketing/advertising with 4 years experience blogging, social media and SEO. Get her new eBook Tweeting Like It's 2nd Nature Today!

Latest posts by Lisa (see all)

  • Get Mobile Ready with Responsive Design for SEO - March 30, 2015
  • Google Plus Social Network or SEO Advantage? - February 28, 2015
  • Facebook Page Posts– Who is Seeing Your Posts Now? - January 29, 2015