Time to Mobilize Your Site!

If your website is mobile-friendly, congrats!

Your site will soon become part of Google’s dedicated mobile—and PRIMARY—search index.

Bad news for non-mobile-friendly websites? These sites will remain in Google’s current and not-refreshed-frequently desktop search index. Basically, these sites will live only in Google’s second class search engine real estate.

This announcement came from Google webmaster trends analyst, Gary Illyes, speaking recently at Pubcon, the digital marketing conference.

While the timeline to this search engine index change is unclear (in months, says Illyes), the ramification is all too apparent: Google will provide two separate search engine experiences.

Simply put, Google searchers will be able to find your site on their mobile devices IF your site is mobile friendly. Otherwise, they won’t find you on their cell phones.

Mobile Users are Online—Big Time!

Nearly 90 percent of mobile consumers turn to search first on their phones to address their need to “know, go, do and buy” according to a recent Google survey.

Earlier this year, a SimilarWeb report, shared on Marketingland.com, showed that 56 percent of consumer traffic is now on mobile devices. The top 10 mobile traffic site categories that receive at least 60 percent of their traffic from mobile devices:

  1. Beauty and Fitness
  2. Home and Garden
  3. Health
  4. Pets and Animals
  5. People and Society
  6. Shopping
  7. Gambling
  8. Auto
  9. Recreation and Hobbies
  10. Sports

 

And those consumer numbers are growing—fast.

Considering that St. Augustine, Northeast Florida—well, all of Florida—is a heavy tourist-based economy, I’d imagine mobile search usage is much higher. How many people drag their desktop on vacation?

Time to Mobile Up Your Site

If you haven’t done so already, it’s past time to make your site mobile friendly.

That means your site experience should look good and be easily navigable on a mobile device (if you have to zoom to read your site—it’s not mobile-friendly).

Plus images and videos should be optimized for mobile devices.

As we reported back in April, 2015 [link: https://bsullc.com/google-to-give-mobile-friendly-websites-a-ranking-boost-starting-april-21-is-your-site-ready/], Google’s been working toward a mobile-preferred search world for a while.

Now, they’re moving on to the next phase of their mobilization of our online experience. Let’s make sure you can move along with them.

If you’re concerned about your site, or have questions regarding its mobile-friendliness, we’ll be happy to provide you with answers. Give us a call: (904) 429-4588.