Why Should Your Site Be Mobile-Friendly? Because Google Says So.

November 19, 2014

Google’s mission to help users find mobile-friendly pages has stepped up a gear with their recent announcement that a new ‘mobile-friendly’ label will appear, prefixing a page’s meta description on mobile search results pages.

Although the announcement was made yesterday (Tuesday, November 18, 2014), Google stated that, ‘this change will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks’ – so stay tuned if you don’t see the label just yet.

How Do I Get The Mobile-Friendly Label To Appear on My Web Pages?

The good news for website owners and managers is that, as long as your website is indeed ‘mobile-friendly’, you don’t have to do a thing to get the label to appear in your snippet on mobile search results pages. Google will check your page against its criteria and automatically award the label to your search snippet if you satisfy it. What Is The Criteria for ‘Mobile-Friendly’?

Googlebot will deem a site to be worthy of the ‘mobile’friendly’ label if it meets the following criteria:

– Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
– Uses text that is readable without zooming
– Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
– Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped

How Can I Make Sure My Page Satisfies The Mobile-Friendly Criteria?

Google has released a ‘Mobile-Friendly Test’ tool which will analyse any URL and report if the page has a mobile-friendly design. You can also find out more information by reading their ‘Mobile-Friendly’ announcement.

Will Having The ‘Mobile-Friendly’ Label Help Improve My Rankings?

Google’s official party line on the subject of SEO value and the ‘mobile-friendly’ label is that they are ‘experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal’. However, even before direct correlation between the label and rankings is established, we’d anticipate a higher click-through-rate from mobile searches to pages that display the mobile-friendly label, meaning that if the value and return on an investment in a mobile friendly or responsive website was ever in doubt, those doubts have just been answered.

It would be great to hear your comments on the roll-out of the ‘mobile-friendly’ label – and do get in touch if you’d like to discuss how we can optimise your online presence; mobile-friendly and all.