Mobile phones are responsible for over half of all the internet searches, but will this affect your Google ranking factor if your website isn’t mobile-friendly? The claim that your ranking factor is affected without a mobile-friendly version might be true, as Google boosts websites that provide the best customer experience. It is found that websites that are mobile-friendly are ranked higher than those that aren’t. This reminded many websites to become mobile-friendly. Yes, being mobile-friendly is a Google ranking factor.
Friendliness Is a Ranking Factor
Websites which are designed to fit on mobile screens are known to benefit from a ranking boost over sites that are only optimised for desktops.
It is a fact that a greater percentage of searches are performed on mobile devices. And also depending on the understanding that Google focuses to serve pages with the best user experience.
Having many users searching on mobile, the best user experience is guaranteed by serving results that work on both desktop and mobile.
People used to search Google before mobile was dominant and it was common for users to land on pages that weren’t optimised for their smartphone or tablet.
Users became disappointed with visiting pages they cannot easily navigate. Google began noticing search quality matters.
It could have taken years having no incentive, waiting for webmasters to make their sites compatible with all devices.
Google couldn’t compel websites to become mobile-friendly as it may be fair to threaten websites with severe action for having an outdated design.
Rather, Google rewarded domains that choose for a mobile-friendly design on their own.
The ranking advantage that was earned by mobile-optimised sites caused the adoption of responsive web design on a larger scale.
Now, it’s rare to conduct a mobile search and land on a page that isn’t optimised for a smartphone.
HOW TO MAKE A WEBSITE MOBILE-FRIENDLY?
Mobile-friendly websites must meet specific criteria like link spacing, text size, horizontal scrolling, content width, etc. There are different ways to make your website readable and completely usable:
Responsive web design:
This means that the page display adjusts or “responds” as per the screen size, using the same URL and code irrespective of the device type. Compared to other methods responsive web design uses CSS media queries and different cascading style sheets to transform the layout of the website properly. May it be desktop, smartphone or tablet, landscape or portrait screen mode, layout seamlessly reshapes itself without any loading delay.
Responsive theme:
Going mobile might be as easy as choosing a new design. You can install custom themes with responsive layout that will be mobile-friendly out-of-the-box. There is no necessity to develop a website from scratch, with new responsive design theme factors will be automatically repositioned to match any screen size.
Content block positioning:
Due to the difference in screen sizes between desktop and mobile devices, it is appropriate to rearrange existing parts of content in a mobile-friendly design pattern. People want to finish their tasks as quickly as possible, so you will have to reduce the number of user interactions and keep the most vital information at their fingertips.
Mobile First approach:
The concept is to design a website firstly for mobile devices and then extend into pages for tablets and desktops. There’s almost nothing that can be put on a mobile page and can’t be provided in the desktop version. Mobile first idea is used for responsive and dynamically served websites, where the page content on the mobile and desktop versions must be identical.
With all these in mind mobile-friendliness is a confirmed Google ranking factor.
