Ok so the title of this post is a bit clickbait-esque, but if you own a website then you need to be aware of some upcoming changes to the way Google orders results for searches made on mobiles.
Back in February this year Google announced that:
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. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.
Google Search Central Blog
This means that if your site is optimized for mobile you can expect it to be listed higher in results for Google searches made on mobiles compared to sites which aren't optimized for mobile.
So how can you tell if your site is optimized for mobile? Hopefully your web developers will have mentioned the term 'responsive' when talking about your website. This means the layout of your site changes, or 'responds', depending on the screen width of the device your website is being viewed on. The acid test for your site comes via two tools that Google have helpfully provided:
- The Mobile-Friendly Test tool - for testing individual pages.
- The Mobile Usability Report tool - for testing an entire website.
If your site doesn't pass these tests then any good web development agency will be able to refactor your site to make it responsive in a relatively short space of time. This is definitely a high priority task to add to your website 'to do' list as these search ranking changes will have a big impact on your organic search traffic, and therefore your business, for the foreseeable future.