Anxiety seems to be on the rise in the big wide Online. The focus of this anxiety is the seemingly innocuous date - 21st of April. The reason behind the anxiety is Google's announcement from February 26th, stating rather tersely"... we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal". Responsible providers of IT solutions should have talked sense into their clients to switch/ upgrade to a mobile-friendly solution by now. If your provider didn't bring this up to you last year (even nagged you about it) you need to think carefully if they are worth their salt.
The new scare obviously had to have a name and what else can be more evocative than Mobilegeddon or Mobigeddon (the more recent and more pronounceable label)? As you can see from the caption above there are already 200k + results for it and the trend will show no signs of abating in my estimation for at least a month. By the 22nd of April most of us will see the ranking changes and people predict everything in between from plummets to business as usual. The next month will be filled with case studies and I-told-you-so's and recipes for how to get back your lost ranking points.
The whole splash is rather strange, if you ask me. First of all, it has been blindingly obvious that Google will have to do something to accommodate the increasingly large mobile search segment.
Don't tell you haven't heard repeatedly last year that mobile is overcoming the desktop segment?!? Responsible providers of integrated IT solutions (which we, at ke Solutions, proudly claim to be) should have talked sense into their clients to switch/ upgrade to a mobile-friendly solution. For instance, we have upgraded most of our clients to responsive web design last year; even as we speak, ke Solutions is finishing upgrading sites for some of those fence-sitting clients that didn't want to do it initially. On the left you can see how our own website fares when diagnosed by Google's Mobile-friendly test. If your provider didn’t bring this up to you last year (even nagged you about it) you need to think carefully if they are worth their salt.
Is there reason to panic? Not really. The extent to which "lazy" websites will be punished come April 21st is yet to be seen, but the problem itself is relatively easy to solve. Another thing that should bring some solace is that the fact that Gary Illyes explicitly stated at SMX West that that the website rankings in the "desktop index" should not be concerned if the searcher is on a desktop device. Meaning that only mobile index rankings are Google's targets. For now.
The upshot is that if you haven't made your website mobile-friendly it is no longer an option but a must, especially if your organic traffic is mostly from the mobile segment. Find a company to patch this soon-to-be glaring deficiency in your online strategy. But even more importantly, instead of always patching things up choose a provider with a good track record of anticipating changes such as this. It's way more business-like.
Call us now, we can help. Even now.
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