The latest announcement by Google about their algorithm update has people worried. On April 21st, 2015, Google will be rolling out another update targeted at mobile users and those performing searches through mobile devices. It’s no secret mobile usage has increased over the last several years and it’s important bloggers, developers and search engines stay up-to-date with the trend. Google has taken an aggressive step forward by announcing an algorithm update which will be bigger than Panda and Penguin combined. Google is all about increasing the user experience and what better way than to ensure they find what their looking for when using mobile search. I browsed over to the Google website to find out more about this update and here’s what they have to say:
“This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.â€
For all of you worried…you should be! A bulk of your traffic may be coming from mobile devices so it’s important you start making changes right away. It’s not a complicated job, but tweaks are necessary. Start by heading over to Google and searching your URL. When the results display it should say “mobile-friendly†if website display is mobile compatible. If not, then it’s time you start making changes right away. Here are “3†strategies you can implement into your blog before Google’s mobile update.
Install Responsive Theme
If your not using a CMS platform when designing your website your missing out on a lot. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are amazing platforms which allow you to design the type of website you want within hours. However, let’s focus on the themes and how a simple click can make your website mobile-friendly. I use WordPress and I know they’ve already started to make changes to their platform. If you do a quick responsive theme search you’ll have pages of awesome designs perfect for mobile users. These designs are known as “responsive†because they’ll automatically adapt to the size of the display screen no matter if your viewing through desktop, tablet or mobile phone. However, if you already have a website online then utilize cool plug-ins like WPTouch.
This plug-in can be installed with a click of a button and will allow you to configure your site for mobile usage. You have different options and layouts perfect for all types of websites.
Mobile Load Speed
Many of you are subscribed to different cellular networks and load speed matters as much as if surfing on a desktop PC. Google algorithm will be taking many mobile factors into consideration when ranking your website and load speed will be one of them. Its plays an important role just like it did when searching through a desktop PC or tablet. When you have a slow loading website it hinders user search experience. I know many of you think you don’t have too much control over load speed because much of it has to do with cellular network like 4G, 3G, etc. Keep these things in mind…
Load speed can be affected by external factors like hosting provider, clutter and layout. The more your website needs to load for mobile the longer it will take. Start by finding out how fast your hosting server will load your website in general. Secondly, clean up the clutter and only show what’s important to mobile users in order to get the conversions. You can even utilize CDN (content delivery networks) so your website will load from a server closer to the visitor.
Start Testing Now
April 21st, 2015 is NOT far away so start making changes right away. Give yourself time to test and tweak so things are just right for when the algorithm update kicks in. Start by checking if you already are mobile compatible and move forward from there. If you need help just do a quick search in Google and you’ll find enormous resources on tweaks you can make to your website. If your using WordPress things will be much easier, but it’s still a good idea to walk through WordPress resources online about making your theme mobile-friendly.