It seems to be SEO executives everywhere have a love hate relationship with Google. On the one hand we love it for providing a tremendous amount of traffic to our websites, but on the other hand the constant updates can become a bit tedious now and then. It is because of this that our team of digital marketing executives are always making sure they keep up to date with all the latest news and trends regarding SEO. One story, which caught our eye this month, was speculation around a possible update where a websites responsiveness can contribute to their page rank.
This idea surfaced a couple months ago when Google announced changes to web search results when using a mobile device. This update was issued to help encourage webmasters to make their websites mobile friendly (responsive), and improve the user experience when accessing the web from a mobile device. The update surfaced back in November and allows mobile users to see if a website is mobile friendly when viewing search results on Google.
The new update provides a short note next to the meta description of a site expressing if the site is mobile friendly or not when carrying out a Google search from said device. In order for Google to express if a site is mobile friendly or not the search engine checks if the site can be viewed easily on different screen sizes, and also if it contains plugins from programmes such as Adobe’s Flash, which isn’t supported on the current versions of Android and iOS. A site will also be marked as ‘mobile friendly’ if it follows the following format: Text that is readable without zooming in; content is sized appropriately so navigation isn’t and issue – i.e. horizontal scrolling is not required; And also hyperlinks and anchor texts appropriately spaced apart for easy tapping.
Ryoichi Imaizumi and Doantam Phan of Google’s Mobile Search have stated in a blog post that they “see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience”. But the main debate that came from the latest update was Google’s statement about issuing algorithms in the future, which would use their “mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal”.
Here at Thunderbolt Digital, being a digital agency based in Surrey and offering both web design in Camberley and the surrounding areas and online marketing services such as SEO, this update came as know surprise to us. Our team of web designers and SEO executives work hand in hand on every project ensuring each website can be efficiently crawled and index by Google, focusing on an exceptional user experience across all devices, allowing your site to accumulate a strong page rank.