SMALL BUSINESS TIP #1: The Google Mobile Friendly Test

If your website is not mobile friendly—AKA responsive—you ARE losing potential customers. The good news is the Google Mobile Friendly Test makes it easy to check.

On April 21, 2015, Google released a new version of their search algorithm that punishes website pages that don’t deliver a user-friendly experience from mobile devices. Typical symptoms of an outdated website include unreadable text, frustrating navigation, or pages that load too slowly or not at all.

In 2018, they switched to mobile-first indexing, which means they look at the mobile version of your site to decide how high you should rank. So, if the desktop version of your site is amazing, but the mobile version is not responsive, you have a big problem!

Why these changes? Because Google wants to do the same thing you do—give their customers the best possible experience. The less frustrating a Google search is, the happier the searcher is, and the more likely they’ll use Google again. And, you see all those people staring at their phones everywhere you turn? They’re looking at websites. In fact, more than half of all visits come from someone on a mobile device.

Good News from Google

The news isn’t all bad—here are a few nuggets of good news:

• Each page on a website is judged individually so, if a specific page is unfriendly, they don’t punish your entire site.
• If you correct an un-friendly page, Google will re-rank it in “real-time.” (Note: Vice versa is also true.)
• Word has it that super high-ranking pages are not impacted quite as much.

Take the Google Mobile Friendly Test

Click on this link and, starting with your Home page, check every page on your website:

If Google says your pages fail, don’t panic. Check out their recommendations listed below the test results—it may just be as simple as updating your theme.

A website is a living, breathing entity—even if it previously passed the test, it can fail on retests so test regularly!

If your head is spinning, give me a call. I’m happy to test your site for you and give you honest recommendations. My goal is to make the process not only painless, but exciting as well.