They’re calling it Mobilegeddon. In case you haven’t heard yet, Google recently made this announcement:

“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.” 

Even though this announcement doesn’t provide a whole lot of detail, we can make some educated guesses about a few things:

  1. What does this mean?
  2. Why would they warn us about this algorithm change when they don’t normally do that?
  3. What do I need to do in order to be in Google’s “good graces”?

Let’s break down what this announcement means. Essentially, Google plans to give better mobile search rankings to websites that are mobile-friendly starting on April 21. On the other hand, if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, it may see a drop in mobile rankings. This means it will get less mobile search traffic and will have to depend more on traffic from desktop searches.

So why would they provide us with a date? And why would they alert us about an algorithm update? Google is known for surprising us with these changes and seldom shares the exact date for when they will occur. The reason Google has given a timeline is to motivate those who don’t have a mobile-friendly website to start working on it!

This announcement solidifies the importance of having a mobile-friendly website, but hopefully this has already been on your radar. The amount of people accessing websites from their phones or tablets has skyrocketed in the past couple of years. In fact, mobile usage has overtaken desktop-based digital media. Mobile usage accounts for 60% of time spent online.

How much time spent online on mobile devices

So what can you do to make your website mobile-friendly? You have two options.

  1. Responsive Web Design – If you have a responsive web design, the size of your website’s pages will adjust to the viewer depending on what type of device they are looking at the website on. The great plus to this is that you only have to have one website. It’s highly flexible and you only have to create and maintain one website. Also, it’s Google’s recommended configuration, so that basically is the ultimate seal of approval. Click here to learn more about responsive web design.
  2. Create a Mobile Site – Mobile sites are a separate website created solely for mobile devices. While this option is typically cheaper to design, they can be a bit of a pain because it’s essentially a duplicate site. This means that if you update one page, you also have to go over to your mobile website and update the page there too. This is time consuming and adds more to your plate. Also, while they might be optimized for today’s devices, there is no accounting for whatever new device that may come out.

Grass Roots Marketing recommends that you consider having a responsive web design when creating or redesigning your website. If you build your website on HubSpot’s COS, your website will automatically have a mobile responsive design (add it to the list of reasons we LOVE HubSpot). For more information on the HubSpot COS, click the button below.

If redesigning your website for mobile is something that you have considered doing in the past, it’s imperative that you add it to the top of your marketing to-do list. Come April 21st, if you haven’t done this yet, you may be taking a hit to your site’s web traffic.