Not a mobile friendly website, will it hurt my rankings?
-
Unfortunately my website is not mobile friendly. As it is based on clickable links within an image there is no way to adapt it either. Now, I have heard Google is getting serious about mobile friendly design, how will this impact my ratings? My current analytics show 57% desktop, 24% mobile and 19% tablet. I really like the design of my site with the clickable images and would hate to have to change it because Google says so :-(.
My website is http://tamarindobeachinfo.com
-
I totally agree with Moosa....I am guessing you also have limited resources. Maintaining two separate sites, one desktop and one mobile requires a lot of major time that most small businesses and small website owners just don't have. One version of your site that's managed via one CMS that is a responsive design is the way to go if you are short on time and resources...and let's face it...even if you are an enterprise corporation, you are still short on on resources.
-
as in the m. version for mobile users only? i would say its not a bad idea but you have to be very smart when redirecting URLs based on the device.
If you ask me what i would have done if i was facing the similar scenario, i will go for a responsive website as its a one solution for all devices and different size screens.
hope this helps!
-
Thank you all, I will go back to the drawing board. What is your thought on designing a separate version for mobile use?
-
Hi Ilka,
- I agree with Dana & Moosa the way to think of this is Google wants to serve the best site for its users and the largest growing sect as well are mobile users.
- In Webmaster tools you will see nonresponsive pages labeled as errors that is a pretty big deal.
- As Dana pointed out April 12 was when the change the algorithm occurred.
- You may want to look at your analytics and see if there is something else occurring.
- With that said I think Google has made it very clear that the end-user comes first and if that end-user cannot find the content because they're on a mobile device your site is not as valuable.
- I took a look at your site. Luckily is not very hard to modify you can easily make it responsive and here's some information that I hope will help you.
http://www.feedthebot.com/mobile/configure-viewport.html
by placing your sites URL in the link below you will be given instructions on how to configure your exact site so it is mobile friendly as well as some other helpful tips.
http://www.feedthebot.com/mobile/
Hope this helps,
Thomas
-
I totally agree with Dana, Google consider this mobile friendly website as part of their ranking algorithm. If you would asked me few months before I would have said its important to have a mobile friendly website as it will serve your users better but from the ranking standpoint, its ok to live with the current version of the website but now after the Google official announcement its must to go either responsive or a separate mobile version of the website.
Whatever you choice but if you don’t have a mobile website it will hurt your rankings no matter what.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Ilka,
Unfortunately, it's probably now more important that you initially realized. This past week, Google announced that mobile usability will be a ranking factor in their algorithm beginning April 12th of this year. On the up side, there may be ways to maintain the design elements of your site that you like while maintaining mobile usability, you just might need a little help. Remember, no matter how much in love you are with your design, if it's not serving your end users, and the devices that they are accessing your site from....the design is not serving your business goals.
Think of it more like this: Google is saying you have to change your site. Google is trying to tell you that your visitors want you to change your site...that's a whole different thing.
Here's a link to the Google announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html
That's probably not exactly what you wanted to hear, but it is important to know where things are headed. If 25% of your site traffic is currently coming from mobile it might be safe to say that will double to 50% over the next year.
Cheers,
Dana
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
The Google Algo update that happened 1-8 is KILLING my rankings
Does anyone know what happened?? I have a great website, we ranked very highly for a slew of industry keywords, #1 in most of our top-money kws....and our keywords have been in freefall since the update. Help?!
Algorithm Updates | | Sean_Gutermuth0 -
Mobile SERPs
Morning Mozzers, Please can someone tell me if Mobile SERPs are different to desktop? Do they have a separate algorithm? Mobile makes up 50% of my sites traffic and I want to make sure I am visible on all devices. Any articles welcomed. Kind regards Ben, London
Algorithm Updates | | Bendall0 -
Ranking For Synonyms Without Creating Duplicate Content.
We have 2 keywords that are synonyms we really need to rank for as they are pretty much interchangeable terms. We will refer to the terms as Synonym A and Synonym B. Our site ranks very well for Synonym A but not for Synonym B. Both of these terms carry the same meaning, but the search results are very different. We actively optimize for Synonym A because it has the higher search volume of the 2 terms. We had hoped that Synonym B would get similar rankings due to the fact that the terms are so similar, but that did not pan out for us. We have lots of content that uses Synonym A predominantly and some that uses Synonym B. We know that good content around Synonym B would help, but we fear that it may be seen as duplicate if we create a piece that’s “Top 10 Synonym B” because we already have that piece for Synonym A. We also don’t want to make too many changes to our existing content in fear we may lose our great ranking for Synonym A. Has anyone run into this issue before, or does anyone have any ideas of things we can do to increase our position for Synonym B?
Algorithm Updates | | Fuel0 -
Can someone explain the attached rankings?
I just don't understand how we can have a long list of 1's and 2's in google, but in Yahoo and Bing, some are close, some are in the 20's and some are not even in the top 50. Is there something that Yahoo and Bing care about, that google doesn't? I know about the meta language being more important for Yahoo and Bing than Google, so I added that. There's nothing I can do about the domain age, which I know is important to Yahoo and Bing. Is there anything else? thanks, Ruben [URL]]([URL=http://imgur.com/Vem594l][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Vem594l.jpg[/IMG][/URL]) [IMG]](http://i.imgur.com/Vem594l.jpg[/IMG])
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
PO box address for mutli reagional website
Hi Mozers 🙂 I have a multi regional website which serves uk, india, china, usa and more. I want to increase my rankings for the specific country. I dont have a physical address at the UK and in am thinking of getting a PO box address and have it placed on the UK version of the site and also at google places/+. Will having a PO box address against physical address help me in getting better ranks and will i be penalized in any way. Looking forward for the views 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | HiteshBharucha0 -
Are Some Websites "White Listed"?
I track several niches that I am not in so I am not to biased with my own, and I noticed one site despite its rather mediocre quality, never moves. I have seen other websites rise and fall in rank, a few with pretty good content. He writes reviews, but very obviously never touched the products he reviews. However I see some other sites with real photos, and good advice for making a decision - they will sit on page two or three. I havent done a lot of research other than the size of the sites, and the links, and they are about equal. Sometimes the ranking site is smaller (its about 90 pages in google). The other sites I have seen have more content on one topic as well, which is interesting google opts for his one page "once over" review over something more in depth and authentic. It got me thinking about whether some sites are white listed by google, as in hand picked to rank despite what else is out there. Is this possible?
Algorithm Updates | | PrivatePartners0 -
How to retain those rankings gained from fresh content...
Something tells me I know the answer to this question already but I'd always appreciate the advice of fellow professionals. So.....fresh content is big now in Google, and i've seen some great examples of this. When launching a new product or unleashing (yes unleashing) a new blog post I see our content launches itself into the rankings for some fairly competitive terms. However after 1-2 weeks these newly claimed rankings begin to fade from the lime light. So the question is, what do I need to do to retain these rankings? We're active on social media tweeting, liking, sharing and +1ing our content as well as working to create exciting and relevant content via external sources. So far all this seems to have do is slow the fall from grace. Perhaps this is natural. But i'd love to hear your thoughts, even if it is just keep up the hard work.
Algorithm Updates | | RobertChapman1 -
Whats the best thing to do after rebuilding a site to get old rankings back ?
A website changed its platform from the old one to magento ecommerce. In webmaster tools google says that yesterday was the last time that crawled the site, but the old rankings for keywords are gone , traffic went down big time and now i'm not sure where to start working in order to bring everything like it was. any advice ?
Algorithm Updates | | footballearnings0