There are no two ways about it, we all know the benefits of having a website that is mobile optimized. Irrespective of the business you are present in, a big chunk of traffic generated today comes from mobile devices and reaching out to them would make a huge difference for you. In fact, plenty of website developers and owners keep looking for different mobile optimization plugins or tools for websites. Now, if you do have a website that is present – you should look at optimizing your website to a new mobile friendly theme and Google could be the biggest reason for the change.
Google has released a label that is present in the search engine that highlights if your website is mobile friendly. In case your website is not mobile optimized, users would not go to view your website and thus your click through rate would drop heavily. The label known as “Google Mobile Friendly Label” would be present right below the name of your website and it is quite easy to detect too. In this article, we shall go through various tips for using Google’s Mobile Friendly Test tool that will help you to get your website mobile optimized from Google’s point of view.
Need for a Mobile Responsive Website Confirmation from Google
So, why is it so important to have Google declare your website as a mobile friendly website? Well, more than 42% of search results are generated on a mobile phone today and most of the top ranking websites get high click through rates. It is key to note that better action results are generated from phone searches than any other possible devices. It is a no brainer if you are into e-commerce as more people would see your website and the products you have to offer. On the other hand, you stand to lose valuable mobile traffic and even a chance to be dropped down in terms of ranking on the long run. Your organic traffic is going to drop significantly and you will thus see lesser conversions in the end.
Are you eligible for a ‘Google Mobile Friendly Label’?
Google provides an approved label to your mobile responsive website if you follow the simple rules as listed under:
- Readable texts present on your website without the use of the zoom feature.
- Appropriate resizing of your content so that there is no horizontal scrolling or even zooming functions.
- Software that are not mobile friendly (flash player) should not be present on your website.
- Clear demarcations for all click-able links on your website so that there are no misled clicks.
If these points are cleared on your website from Google, you should be able to have a ‘mobile responsive’ label on search results for your website. It is not necessary to sit back and wait for Google’s results. You can test and see if your website is optimized for Mobile usage by using Google’s mobile friendly testing tool at – URL to test your website’s mobile friendliness
This would help you understand simple changes that have to be done to make your website mobile responsive. For example, I checked if this website, www.techtipsapp.com is mobile-friendly and got the following results:
Alternatively, you can perform a Site operator search with the desired domain in any mobile browser i.e open the browser in your mobile phone and search for site:yourdomain.com at Google. If your website is optimized for mobile then you should get the search results tagged with “Mobile-friendly”.
You can directly check out the Google Webmasters Mobile Guide for information on mobile-friendly criteria as well as its impact on Google search results.
It is also important to understand that having a mobile friendly website would help you not increase traffic, but also make your content more relevant to the business are involved in. While there are not many official sayings about it, having a responsive website is bound to give you higher ranking chances for your keywords.
In all probability, you would have designed your website in a mobile responsive manner, but taking it through the Google testing tool would ensure you have a label directing traffic to your website. “Mobile Friendly Search Results” is an innovative idea from Google for sure; making it easier for the common user to know what websites would give him appropriate information if he is using a mobile device. So, learn various ways to make your website mobile friendly or mobile responsive and enjoy these amazing features provided by Google.
