BlackOutDesign

Is Your Site Mobile Friendly?

As you may have read, on April 21, Google once again tweaked its search algorithm, this time to enhance users’ mobile search experience. The main goal with this update looks to be to provide a higher quality search experience for mobile device users. In short, Google took a look at how it could improve its own search results. The solution was to score or rank sites that are mobile friendly higher on the mobile device component than those that do not. In simple terms, before April 21, if restaurant A was ranking #1 for great beer and restaurant B was ranking #2 for great beer, the old rules would apply; restaurant A would appear higher in Google’s search results. But today, if restaurant A didn’t have a mobile friendly website and restaurant B did when searching on a mobile device, those rankings could be flip flopped, putting restaurant B higher in your search results.

You would think that for as prolific as mobile has been, Google would have started down this path a year or more ago. But there was a roadblock. The problem was that there was not a generally accepted solution for mobile. Today that solution is known as a responsive framework or responsive design. Responsive design takes elements from a website- blocks of texts, images, etc.-  and reorganizes them so that when the same website is viewed on a tablet or smart phone, all the elements fit neatly and precisely within the screen. No matter how big or how small, the website is appears in a legible, neat and perfectly fitted way.

Responsive approaches have become the defacto standard for website design and development and this update has given the responsive movement even more staying power. At BlackOut Design, we’re comfortable saying that over the next 6 months, we expect to see a more than 30% increase in traffic to many of our clients’ websites. As always, as part of our client commitment, we will continue to proactively review traffic patterns of our clients’ sites and alert them to any opportunities available so that they can increase visibility, build brand recognition and ultimately, increase sales.

Want to see if Google is mobile friendly in the eyes of Google?  You can use Google’s test tool here.