Getting “Mobile-Friendly” With Google
“It used to be that we imagined that our mobile phones would be for us to talk to each other. Now, our mobile phones are there to talk to us.” – Sherry Turkle
Everyone knows the struggle of being on your phone or tablet, searching something and ending up on a website that isn’t mobile friendly. Well that problem is something we don’t have to deal with anymore with Google’s mobile-friendly label. Mobile search results will now show a label for sites that have been optimised for mobile, to give users a better mobile web experience.
When you search for something on your mobile device, sites that are optimised for mobile will show a small “mobile-friendly” tag just under the URL, with an example as shown below:
With a global rollout of the mobile-friendly label, it’s time to make sure that your site is properly organised for mobile, and you can analyse your site for free at Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page. For developers that want to get started on turning their sites mobile-friendly – here is a guide on how to get started. If your site satisfies the following criteria (as detected by GoogleBot), then you have rightfully earned the label for your website:
- Avoid software that is not common on mobile phones, such as Flash
- Use text that is readable without zooming
- Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
- Links placed far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped
The biggest winners are developers that are already on board with responsive design websites, which seamlessly adjusts the website so that it functions and looks the same across all desktop and mobile devices, all while reducing site load time and increasing user experience. With mobile friendly as an inevitable ranking factor for mobile search, the time to start optimising your site to be mobile friendly is NOW.
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