Do you need to worry about Google’s mobile friendly update?

Google’s mobile-friendly update goes live this April 21st, which means taking your local site mobile is no longer optional. However there is a key item to note in all of this frenzy over the coming Google update. Yes Google will weigh your mobile friendliness in its search engine algorithm and it will affect your ranking in mobile results if your site is NOT mobile friendly. BUT it doesn’t affect your desktop search rankings. This is important. You are not going to fall off the search engine planet for desktop searcher if you site is not mobile friendly.

Google is just realizing that mobile search is growing hand over foot these days and they want to be able to serve mobile search results that send visitors to sites that optimized for mobile viewing. If you are a local business this becomes a very important proposition. Having customers in your local area be able to find you on their mobile devices (remember when we all called them cell phones?) is now a crucial thing in order to ensure that you don’t lose out on any potential clients.

Is your site mobile friendly? Well Google has a tool to check it for you and tell you what they think of your mobile view.

Google Mobile Tool

Some info from good sources (Whitespark and Link-Assistant)

What You Need to Know

1. Local Pack Results Will Not be Impacted
As of now, Local Pack Listings will not be impactedby the update. If your Google My Business listing is showing up in pack results and you’re site isn’t mobile friendly – don’t sweat it just yet, your current rankings shouldn’t be impacted (but who is to say this won’t change in the future).

2. Organic Results Affected
If your site isn’t mobile-friendly and you currently rank in mobile-organic results (generally up to 10 results/page), you may not rank as well after the update. This update is intended to provide a better mobile experience for searches and give them what they want. Ultimately results that provide a positive user-experience that is mobile-friendly will receive rankings.

3. Update Targets Only Mobile Results
Worried about your desktop rankings? Don’t. This new index is specifically directed to mobile search results and not desktop.

What Now?
This update is targeting sites that provide mobile users with an awful experience. If your current site is adaptive or if you have a separate mobile site, you can still provide a positive mobile experience without going responsive.

Why go mobile?

Mobile search presence is not an option anymore.

With over 60% of all traffic now being mobile for Google, you are risking more than half of your visits if you don’t take your site mobile. Strikingly, that may mean losing even more sales — recent studies show that mobile searchers have higher purchase intent, with over 50% of them reaching for their smartphones to choose what to buy and where to buy it. With local mobile searches, the numbers are even more staggering — 78% of consumers who search for a local business on their smartphone end up making a purchase.

So what do you need to do?

This article gives great steps if you are DIY.

But

If you want help and need to get your site mobilized. Give me a call today and I can get your site mobile friendly according to all the best practices that Google wants to see. 510-289-3495