Posted by Clayton Johnson | March 24, 2015
Prepare for Mobilegeddon: Google’s Big Mobile Update April 21
Google next big update is going to target non-mobile friendly sites and is expected to roll out April 21, 2015, and roll out for a few days to a week.
This is a big one, and could affect a large portion of your traffic.
That’s why here at the HOTH, we’re going to break down the hype and make it simple for you to understand!
Here’s What’s Going On:
In the last few years, mobile traffic has increased dramatically. It’s speculated that more than 50% of Google searches are performed on mobile.
Even Google is saying this update is going to have a bigger effect on search rankings than Panda or Penguin, the biggest updates Google has ever launched, as quoted by a member of Google’s Webmaster Trends team, Zineb Ait Bahajji at SMX Munich.
The problem is many sites are not responsive, meaning that they were only built for desktop computers and are hard to navigate on mobile devices.
Here’s a picture of what the difference would be like between a mobile site and a non-mobile version:
A Mobile Website vs A Non-Mobile Version
Google doesn’t want to serve up results that don’t are not user friendly, so they are implementing a new algorithm change to demote sites that aren’t usable on phones and tablets.
On a positive note, if your site IS mobile friendly, google will add a little tag to it like the one below:
Mobile Friendly Tag
If you have clients, this is a GREAT time to upsell them on a new website (money in the bank and rankings preserved, #kaboooom)!
How To Find Out If You Will Be Affected
Google has officially announced the update and it’s coming on April 21, 2015 so you still have time to prepare your site.
Here’s how to find out if you are mobile friendly or not:
1) Webmaster Tools
Google has been sending out messages like the one below via webmaster tools for all affected sites, but if you don’t have webmaster tools installed, you wouldn’t get a warning.
Mobility issues warning
2) Google Mobile Friendly Test
You can also check your site using the Mobile-Friendly Test tool here. Just plug in your domain and Google will tell you if it thinks you are mobile friendly or not.
3) Quick Personal Mobile Test (Bust out your phone)
You can also just search for your site on your mobile phone, and see if Google displays a mobile friendly tag.
What To Do If Your Site Is Not Mobile Friendly
Google has said there is no degree of mobileness, it’s either yes or no.
For many people, this is super easy to fix – If you’re using WordPress and your site isn’t mobile responsive, you probably have an OLD theme and it’s time to update the design of your website anyways.
All you have to do is install a new “responsive” them, test again with this tool, and you’ll be good to go!
Example: I was able to take an old website of mine which didn’t pass the Google Mobile test, add a new theme, and viola, problem solved in less than 3 min.
Solve Mobile Friendly Issues By Installing A New Theme
You can find lots of free themes that are responsive via the wordpress admin, or you can go to a site like Theme Forest and search for a new awesome theme for your site.
Alternatively, if you are operating on another type of CMS other than WordPress, you can probably find a new responsive theme for that as well. Theme Forest, for example, also sells lots of e-commerce themes as well as HTML templates.
(No affiliate links, Theme Forest is just awesome)
If you are not running on a CMS, I would consider upgrading to a popular CMS. If not, you can follow this guide here for some additional resources on making your site mobile friendly.
Conclusion
Google’s mobile update is prepared for launch April 21, 2015. Make sure your site is ready so you don’t lose rank!
Our goal here at The HOTH is to keep you updated with the best SEO info. If you’d like us to send you regular updates on Google and SEO, just subscribe to our free mailing list below.
If you found this helpful, please share this article with your circles with the buttons on the left (we’re trying to bring everyone up to speed before April 21st!!).
If you have any questions, let us know in the comments!
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Clayton Johnson is the CMO of The HOTH SEO company. He has over 8+ years experience in the SEO industry and has spoken at events like SEJ Summit. The HOTH has been featured in Inc 5000, Forbes, SMX, Pubcon, Content Marketing World, Affiliate Summit, Brighton and more.
After you make your site mobile friendly how do you submit the site for review?
Hey Edgar,
No there is not submittal that is necessary.
Honestly I was excited by this and was thinking money in the bank, just show them the results on that webmaster tools/mobile friendly page. Well I have put some of the crappiest non responsive sites in that tool and EVERY one has come back with “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly.” Y’all let me know if you actually see a page that comes up with something else. I’ve tried a couple dozen. So far the only url I’ve tried that the tool didn’t like was the Space Jam site.
Hey Tim,
Lot’s of old themes won’t pass the mobile friendly algo, for instance: https://blogging.com/
With that said, the algo is either yes or no, so it either passes or not. But that also doesn’t mean that the algo won’t ever change and tighten up a bit… as have all the other major updates. 🙂
This is going to be interesting to see what actually happens. We recently did a rebrand and the old site (not mobile optimised) still is live getting most of our organic traffic / leads but now that the update is coming I wondering if I should just set all the 301’s to our new site. The fear here is that we do the 301’s we will lose some leads and might not get the exact same ranking.
Any advice?
Thank you for the update!!
This is a good start if you can easily switch out themes on your site, but just having a mobile site is just the start. If you take a look at some other tools and info google has posted, the mobile version of your site also needs to perform well…
Check out this link from google.
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
And what about plugins? Can this be fixed with a plugin like WPtouch or do we have to change themes as well? Also, one more question regarding the theme. Is the Genesis Framework (which hasn’t been updated for a while now) mobile responsive?
PS. I did receive that message in WMT, however, when I check my site with PageSpeed Insights I get 100/100 User experience. The speed is however 69/100 which is not very good. Any thoughts on this?
Please answer!
Regards,
Lukovski
yes, there is chance, they alter the search results. as a web design company we are getting hell out for calls for website redesigning.
@Timothy – check out DomFoto.com
The tool’s responses:
– Page appears not mobile-friendly
– Text too small to read
– Links too close together
– Mobile viewport not set
This is a great article. Google has been encouraging their Adsense partners to have a mobile responsive website for a while now. However this is news to me that they have actually announced this. Mobile responsive websites have actually had an advantage for quite a while now. A mobile responsive site gets improved metrics such as average time on site, and lower bounce rates. These improved metrics do have a positive effect on the SERPs.
One thing I can ad to this article. Some companies have two websites, a mobile website, and a regular website. This is not the same as having a mobile responsive website. In my humble opinion, one mobile responsive website is better than redirecting to a mobile version of the website. It is a fact that Google doesn’t like unnecessary redirects. Also if the mobile site isn’t responsive to different tablet and mobile screen sizes, it will look outdated and cheesy.
On another note some websites attempt to be mobile friendly by having their content in a narrow column (a lot of local tv stations do this), which may look great on an Iphone, but to anyone else it makes the content harder to read and gives a terrible user experience.
Quite excited for the update.. 🙂
Lined up the website to earn some bucks..
I have a client with more than 1 site. Both sites use the same version of the same theme (Themeforect Avada). The color scheme is different, there are different images, and different content, but the structure and layout are identical. Yet one site passes and the other doesn’t. I have gone through every option I can think of and double checked the robot.txt file to make sure Google’s robot isn’t being blocked. Does anyone have an answer to this?
Never mind. I found the problem. The robots.txt file was blocking access to the wp-content folder on one of the sites. I edited the file and now it’s working.
How will this update effect sites that have both mobile friendly features as well as not mobile friendly features?
Thanks so much for the information. Very useful, and I see that I have lots of work to do to get my sites mobile-friendly.
(BTW, anyways isn’t a word and should never be used. Friendly suggestion from one writer to another.)
Maggie
thanks
Great article, thanks.
My site Bridal Shows NJ was already mobile ready but I had some friends that were not. I did have one friend that said his placement did fall from mobile view. His site is now mobile friendly but he has not climbed back to his original position.
The mobile index will be the most important change in Google algorithm in this year, poorly websites and badly mobile friendly design are condemned to the death.