By Lucy McCarthy, Dental Marketer at Hive Business.
Isn’t it frustrating when you simply can’t use a website on your phone? Let’s face it, most of our internet use is now on the go; a quick surf on your lunch break, on the bus or on the way to work. You’ll be pleased to hear that those nasty, unfriendly sites that don’t work will now be at the bottom of the list when you search on Google.
When did this happen?
On the 21 April 2015 there was an update to improve mobile search results and being ‘mobile friendly’ is now an important ranking factor in the mobile search results.
What does it mean for you?
If you have a website you will need to make sure your website is ‘responsive’. Put simply, ‘responsive’ means whichever platform you look at the website on, it works perfectly. So whether it’s sat at your desktop computer, on your IPad or on your smart phone – the site will adapt.
How do you know if your site is already responsive?
For every great question the best solution… google it! No seriously, the best way to find out if you website works on every platform is to google yourself (don’t pretend you’ve never done it before). Make sure you try your site on various different devices (again your phone, tablet, computer or laptop for example). If you’re met with a grey “mobile friendly” label next to your meta description – congratulations your site is a mobile’s best friend.
My site isn’t mobile friendly, how will it affect me?
This means your site is going to drop in its search rankings for mobile devices only and you may see a drop in the number of visitors to your site. It isn’t just that, think of all those lovely new customers/ patients/ clients who make it on to your site but exit straight away because it isn’t mobile friendly.
My site isn’t mobile friendly, what can I do?
The best thing to do is to make your site responsive, if you currently manage your own site:
- Trim down the content, it’s hard to keep the attention of your reader with long reels of uninterrupted text.
- Use well-known video platforms – YouTube, Vimeo, Wista – flash is not your friend.
- Strip out the unnecessary data in your images to help them load faster.
- Make the site responsive. Platforms such as WordPress have themes that do all the hard work. Don’t be a victim of what the experts named “Mobilegeddon”.
If you’re not a computing wizard (they are a rare breed) give us a call on 01872 300232 or email us at hello@hivebusiness.co.uk.
