If your website has been designed by Footprint, the good news is that it will be. However, if the necessary steps have not been taken to optimise your website for use via mobile devices, you may notice a significant change in the visibility of your website via mobile searches.

Mobile optimisation of your website was already important for the following reasons:

  • The balance has tipped with more people using mobile devices to search the internet
  • Mobile phone optimisation is crucial for targeting local areas
  • Your website will become more user-friendly if it is mobile optimised

With Google’s recent announcement, this has become even more important.

Mobile-First Indexing Has Happened!

Google announced that “after a year and a halfΒ of careful experimentation and testing, we’ve started migrating sites that follow theΒ best practicesΒ for mobile-first indexing.

To recap, our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have typically used the desktop version of a page’s content, which may cause issues for mobile searchers when that version is vastly different from the mobile version. Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they’re looking for.

We continue to have one single index that we use for serving search results. We do not have a β€œmobile-first index” that’s separate from our main index. Historically, the desktop version was indexed, but increasingly, we will be using the mobile versions of content.”

Basically, this means that if your website does not display to optimum levels via mobile and smart devices, you are very unlikely to rank as highly via search results as you do via desktop results. With more people now using mobile devices for their online browsing, this is something that you want to avoid at all costs.

An image of someone using their mobile phone to browse the internet

Google is quoted with the following:

β€œStarting on 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. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high-quality search results that are optimised for their devices.”

For more on this please visit the following link – http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html

What Does Mobile Optimised Actually Mean?

The mobile optimisation of a website means that your standard β€˜desktop’ website will be converted into a specific user-friendly format. These can easilyMobile Optimised be read on any smart mobile device.

This conversion will ensure that all of the hard work is done for the user, ensuring they get the best possible experience when visiting your website.

The need for β€˜zooming’ in order to read the content will be eliminated and the navigation will become far easier, therefore minimising the risk of hitting the wrong link.

How Can We Help?

The need to design websites whichΒ display to theirΒ optimum abilities has never been greater. This is an aspect of web design in which we possess great experience.

To achieve the best possible results, creating a responsive web design will ensure that your website is optimised for display on all platforms. These designs ensure that as well as your normal β€˜desktop’ version, in addition, you will receive a β€˜mobile’ version. This is where the term ‘responsive’ comes in.

Due to the way in which the designs are created the browser will be able to identify the type of device being used to view the website and will display the correct version accordingly.

Further Information

If you’d like to speak to us regarding how we can help you to use web design to grow your company, give us a call on 01883 372488 or contact us via Facebook and we’ll be happy to talk you through your options.

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