Mobile SEO in 2015 Get ready for the April algorithm update
Mobile SEO in 2015 April Algorithm Update Mobile has provided Google a number of challenges This includes the quality of search results on mobile devices To date, mobile search results have largely been the same as desktop Google has announced an algorithm update to roll out in April Websites that are mobile-friendly will benefit from the update However websites that are not embracing mobile may face penalty Overview Over the past few months Google has made a number of changes that hinted that there would be a change to how it ranks website on mobile devices. It has now revealed that there will be an update made on the 21 st of April 2015. Websites that are deemed not to be mobile-friendly will have reduced visibility in organic search results. It s also possible that this reduction in visibility may extend to desktop as an added incentive to improve the mobile experience. Google have revealed this update will be run in real time, i.e. if make changes to become mobile-friendly, as soon as the changes have been indexed by Google, the benefits will be incurred. It has also said that this algorithm update will take place on a page by page basis. That means that if you have some webpages that are not mobile-friendly, the change will only impact those pages and not the wider domain. Why the change Quite simply, mobile search results have not been good enough, and more people than ever before are now using Google on their phone. Despite all the promotion of YouTube, Android, and Google+, 98% of Google s revenue is still generated from Adwords. People use Google because it delivers the best quality search results. If the search results are not good enough, users may turn to a different search engine, presenting a risk to that revenue. Currently mobile search results largely match desktop search results. Mobile websites are therefore ranking on the merit of the desktop website, rather than the merit of their own user experience. This is no longer acceptable with mobile traffic soon to be greater than desktop. Across many of our clients, we expect this switch to happen in Q2 2015. Google is soon to find itself in a position where half of its users are getting served search results which are potentially not as good as they could be.
Let s illustrate this with an example: Desktop results Mobile results Both desktop and mobile search results for the query trains to Paris return Eurostar in first position. The user experience does however differ massively. The desktop user lands on their Paris route landing page. The page providers the user information about the route, and offers the ability to start the booking process. The mobile experience is different though. The search listing indicates that the user will land on the same, or at least a similar page. However, the user is instantly redirected to a page to select their language, despite having come from Google UK. Furthermore, once the user has selected their language, they are redirected to the mobile homepage. Whilst this webpage does permit them to navigate to the page they ultimately need, it is a poor user experience.
Desktop landing page Mobile landing pages This is just one example, but if the mobile search results frequently provide users a poor search experience, this reflects badly on Google as much as it does brands. If people continuously have bad search experiences with Google, this may lead to users turning to another search engine, and this is exactly Google s problem. It s no surprise that this update was coming Over the past number of months, Google has put in a lot of effort to inform webmasters about the performance of their mobile website and alert them to any issues they have. 1. Mobile Usability Report Within Google Webmaster Tools, Google now details webpages on your website with errors for mobile users, going down to the granular detail for instance of when buttons are too close to each other. 2. Mobile-friendly snippet Google start to signpost mobile friendly websites in mobile lists next to the meta description. 3. Automated messages Google sent emails to webmasters with sites offering a poor mobile experience. 4. Notification of update it is rare for Google to confirm an algorithm update, let alone give advanced notification.
The only circumstances that Google is likely to offer so much help and provide advanced notice is that it is about to make a change that will be unpopular with a lot of webmasters. A backlash follows every algorithm update, and all this aims to mitigate that. How to be ready for the algorithm update Here are five recommendations to action to be ready for the April algorithm update: 1. Be mobile ready - make sure you have a mobile-friendly website but importantly that the user-agent handling and redirects are handling Googlebot correctly. 2. Have a view on mobile look at your web analytics package to know what proportion of traffic comes from mobile and how sizeable this impact may be. 3. Review behaviour metrics now is the best time to understand how the mobile traffic performs on your website. Benchmark aspects such as bounce rate, and time on site to see what pages need improvement. 4. Check for notifications look within Google Webmaster Tools see if Google have sent a notification about your mobile experience. 5. View the Mobile Usability Report again within Google Webmaster Tools, look at what errors Google are reporting and what pages they apply to. If you re unclear of how this change will impact your SEO performance, we can audit your website and give you an indicative view with actions. Equally, most brands know that they need to be mobile-friendly, but there many ways to embrace mobile, and Google does prefer certain approaches, and discourages others. If this something you are unclear on, let us know as it is something we can help with.