46 . Glasgow Business June 2015
BIG TALKS Euan Blair, Digital Account Director, The BIG Partnership
Will Mobilegeddon really be the end of the world?
» The BIG Partnership’s Digital Account Director, Euan Blair, looks at what the latest Google update could mean for your website
R
un for the hills. Google has announced a new update. In a nutshell: it’s designed to keep the search engine’s indexing up with
the times. With so many people browsing the web on their mobile devices, Google has decided to adjust its algorithm to boost the ranking of mobile-friendly pages. Cue the usual sweeping statements and the
gathering of doomsayers… But, it’s important to keep an eye on the
detail. Remember, Google has announced that a site’s mobile experience will be a major contributing factor to how well it ranks for searches made on mobile devices. Importantly, that means the update won’t
change rankings for searches made on desktops. Tere’s no denying mobile searches are
growing in number, aſter all, supposedly the past five years have been “the year of mobile”. But, before you drop to the floor and curl up in a ball and panic, think about your existing and potential customers. Do they use mobile devices to search for
your product or service? Have you seen growth in mobile traffic to your site? Tis information is readily available within your site analytics package. If you have a high percentage of traffic or,
more importantly, a high percentage of converting traffic coming from mobile devices, you should take this update seriously. It will undoubtedly impact your business’s botom line in a profound way. As a first step, run your key pages through
Google’s mobile friendly test tool. Tis will tell you if you meet the minimum threshold for “mobile friendliness”. If you have your site registered with Google Webmaster Tools, new reports here can help to improve your mobile performance.
”Before you drop to the floor and curl up in a ball and panic, think about your existing and potential customers.”
If your site fails the test and you see mobile
as important to your business, Google offers advice within the testing tool results that you can discuss with your developer. You might not be able to produce a mobile-friendly solution quickly, but it is still a worthwhile investment. If you don’t have a high percentage of mobile
traffic, carefully consider why this is. Is it because your site doesn’t perform well on mobile? Or, is it because your customers simply don’t use mobile devices? I’ve found many B2B business receive
negligible amounts of mobile traffic. Tis update won’t impact their businesses much, but
it’s always worth keeping up-to-date with search habits in your market. If you’re considering a site build or rebuild in
the future, make accommodation for mobile traffic to help future-proof your web presence as much as possible. It’s clear Google is heading this way, and you don’t want to be leſt behind. While it’s not the end of the world as we
know it and initial analysis has shown litle movement in ranking results so far, take some time to get to grips with what Google’s changes could mean for your business. Whatever kind of website you have, they’re likely to have an impact in the long run.
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