Prepare Your Website for the Impending Mobile Apocalypse

Anytime Google makes changes to their algorithm, persons who develop websites are never usually aware of the changes that are made, let alone when the new algorithm will be released, until after it is released. Foreknowledge of these changes would, in Google’s eyes, allow people to cheat the system, so to speak, by rectifying any anomalies that may exist on their websites so that once the new algorithm is released they will still have a good search engine ranking.

With this in mind, developers in every nook and cranny of the earth paid close attention to Google’s announcement in February 2015 that their algorithms will have to adapt to the trend of people accessing the Internet more often than not from their mobile devices. To be a bit more specific, Google pointed out that beginning on April 21, 2015, they will add people’s use of mobile-friendly websites as one of their ranking factors, a change that will significantly impact on search results and encompass every single mobile search, no matter the language.

Search Engine World’s Chuck Price made a very interesting statement regarding this new development. He said that penguins, hummingbirds, and pandas in SEO terminology greatly resemble the Apocalypse Horsemen. His statement has caused website developers to create a name for the impending mobile Apocalypse, namely Mobilegeddon.

At this point, you are obviously wondering how this will affect you. Well, all this talk may seem to you as confusing and making no sense if you are not involved in designing SEO optimized websites. There is no doubt that you want your site to attract a good level of readership and interact with your audience. For this to happen, it has to rank well in the search engines so that it can be found by individuals and companies who what to use your services or purchase your products. If that does not happen, then your profit margin will be deeply impacted in a negative way.

One positive spin-off from this whole Mobilegeddon scenario is that you have received ample warning from Google. In fact, you currently have a little less than one month to get your website ready, ensuring that it is friendly to mobile devices, and correcting anything else that may negatively affect it once the new algorithm is released. You could compare this impending Apocalypse to the year 1999 when the new millennium was upon us and we were all making sure that our computer systems did not fail when January 1, 2000 arrived. Even though the algorithm changes are not as drastic as that, it must be considered important enough to pay attention to.

The ease at which people are able to find your website is determined by search engine rankings. If your website is mobile-friendly, you can be sure that it will be found when people search for it since a lot of individuals these days access the Internet from their mobile devices. Google likes mobile-friendly sites because they offer content that is easily accessible, rewarding them with higher rankings. If the opposite is true, then your site will definitely see a fall in its rankings.

Time is winding down to D-day. To check whether or not your website is mobile-friendly, you need to visit Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page. If your website is okay where that is concerned, then there is nothing else that you need to do. But if errors are found, you need to get them resolved right away. The good news though is that Google advises you on how you can go about correcting errors that are most common to websites. If you are capable of doing it, then get started right away; if you are not, employ the services of a website developer to fix the problems that your site may have.

As you decide on how you are going to get your website mobile-friendly, consider two possible options below:

• Option 1 – Have a mobile version of your site created
  The mobile version would be separate and apart from your present website and would be tailor-made for users of mobile devices.
  Pros: It’s an easy and cheap way to quickly deal with mobile-friendliness issues.
  Cons: It is a separate version of your site that will have to be manually updated every time you add content to your website.
• Option 2 – Use a mobile-responsive theme on your website
  Mobile-responsive themes automatically configure your content to display properly on different mobile devices.
  Pros: Over the long term, you will not need to do much, if any, maintenance.
  Cons: Some mobile-responsive themes may still have issues that Google will identify. If that is the case, however, fix the issues that Google outlines as early as possible.

Over the years, dedicated mobile websites have not been received as favorably as ones that are mobile-friendly by Google. When you think of it, readers and other users of mobile-friendly sites enjoy a much better experience and the likelihood of errors popping up is diminished since you only need to update one site.

As the algorithm update deadline of April 21, 2015 approaches, you need to be proactive and get started right away with cleaning up your site to prevent it from being penalized. Failure to do so may result in a catastrophic drop in your website’s rank and traffic from search engines.

In the event that you do not have a website and would like one that is algorithm-update compliant,Power To Be Found will create your website for free if you do a 12-month SEO contract with them.