'Mobilegeddon’ Search Ranking Not Dependent On Optimization

How Mobile Friendly Websites can add value to the websites.

Recently, Google officially launched its new algorithm update in February this year. This has brought the mobile friendliness as one of the essential factors in the search ranking results. Therefore, it is clear that the websites which are not optimized for mobiles can lose their positions in the search ranks.

Mobile Friendly Websites: According to the SEO expert, the websites which are not mobile friendly will only rank high if the content is of high quality and can meet the requirements of the users. Depending on the evaluation of the Search Juggernaut, website ranking depends on 200 criteria and mobile friendliness is just one of the factors.

Not Mandatory, Still Helps: With the help of the internal search of the companies it was found that nearly three quarters of the visitors come back to the site if they are mobile friendly. Though it is not mandatory to possess a mobile friendly site for the ranking in Google, it definitely adds value.

Big Page or Small Text Issues: The websites should be free from issues like huge pages or smaller texts that require a lot of effort in the horizontal scrolling in the mobile devices. The links are to be placed by separating with enough spaces. It should not happen that the links are so closed that they are easily clickable. This will result in unwanted clicks and the user may get distracted. To prove that the site is mobile friendly in nature, Google has introduced various mobile friendly tests as resources to the webmasters of the sites. It has also introduced a badge in the search engine results to show that the site is mobile friendly.

Mobile Friendly Test Tool: This is a new tool from Google which can be beneficial for the webmasters. When you provide the site URL of your website, it will show whether the particular site is mobile friendly or not. In the results, you may find some messages like ‘Not Mobile Friendly’ or ‘Awesome! This Page Is Mobile Friendly’. The tool can sometimes provide with some additional feedback if necessary. For example, it may identify the resources which are blocked in the site by the robots.txt.

So, as a webmaster you can definitely come across the issues which are required to be addressed immediately. The tool can also show results if the text of the site is too small to read, or the mobile viewport is not properly set and the links are very close to each other.

Mobile Friendly Labels: Google also introduced the mobile friendly labels in the search results. The label or the badge helps in identifying whether the site is designed properly for the mobile devices or not. The labels can be beneficial to provide an improved user experience. The Googlebot has identified the following factors which can act as requirements of the mobile friendly websites:

•The text is legible without applying the zoom function

•Links are placed with minimum space gap between one another, so that the right links are clicked whenever required.

•Software like flash which is not commonly used in mobile has been avoided.

•The layout size easily fits the screen of the mobile devices so that the users are not required to scroll horizontally.

Therefore, we may say that mobile friendliness can add value to the websites. Though this is not the only factor for improving the SERP ranking, it can prove to be helpful. The mobile friendly tests and the mobile friendly badges of Google can easily prove whether the site is mobile friendly or not and if there are other issues which are required to be solved immediately.