We first talked about Google’s mobile-friendly update last month, revealing some helpful tips for webmasters and bloggers. In case you missed it, the Mountain View company rolled out a major update to the algorithm it uses to rank websites. Called “Mobilegeddon” by some marketing gurus, it’s designed to improve the search rankings for mobile-friendly sites, while lowering the rankings for mobile-unfriendly sites. So, how will this update affect bloggers?
Google began rolling out its new mobile-friendly update on April 21st. At the time, it was unknown just how significant this update would be. Some experts were predicting that it would affect up to 40% of all U.S.-based Google searches, whereas others had more conservative predictions in the 10-20% range. The truth is that we still don’t know how many sites were affected by this update, as the changes are still being felt.
Google engineer Gary Illyes confirmed on Twitter last week that the update was in fact complete. However, he reiterated the fact that many sites just recently became “MF” (mobile-friendly), so webmasters are still noticing some changes.
“Not all pages were reindexed yet so they don’t have the new scores. Yet,” wrote Gary Illyes on Twitter. “Also, there were a load of sites that became MF recently, so the actual number of sites affected decreased considerably.”
As a blogger, you should take the news of Google’s mobile-friendly update as a sign of a growing new trend. Just several years ago, very people used their smartphones and tablets to access the Internet. But now more people access the Internet on their mobile devices than desktops and laptops. Failure to cater your blog towards this demographic of mobile users is a serious mistake that will cost you visitors and ultimately conversions.
There are several different ways to create a mobile-friendly blog, including the use of a separate mobile domain (e.g. mobi.yourblog.com), dynamically serve HTML based on the user’s browser, or using a Responsive Web Design (RWD). The only configuration that Google recommends, however, is RWD, as it ensures a universal design that loads and functions the same across all devices. If you aren’t familiar with HTML/PHP, you can always download and use one of the many Responsive themes for your blog. Assuming your blog runs WordPress, simply search for “responsive theme” in the theme directory. Alternatively, you can hire a professional web designer to create a custom Responsive theme for you.
Was your blog affected by Google’s recent mobile-friendly update? Let us know in the comments section below!
