“Mobile-Friendly”: Does Your Site Have This Important New Badge from Google?
With Canadians picking up tablets and mobile phones in droves to do everything from find a restaurant to buy a car, the online landscape has seen major changes. Google has been there every step of the way to guide this great migration from desktop to hand-held.
Now they’ve once again updated their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) to make it easier for users to find the best mobile experiences possible. Their most recent innovation? The “Mobile-friendly” label.
Now available on a search engine near you!
“Mobile-friendly” labels make it as plain as possible for users to identify within search results which sites have been responsively designed for ease of use on mobile devices. When faced with a results page, you should now be able to recognize at a glance which websites will make for a more fluid and frustration-free experience.
Here’s a glimpse of what mobile users will see.
Google determines if a website is mobile-friendly through a number of parameters, the three most important being…
1. Whether a user needs to zoom in to see content
Having lots of content is most often a good thing for your organic rankings. Just make sure that it shows up legibly on the small screen, including your image files. Even with today’s newest generation of big battery, tablet-esque smart phones, people can only squint for so long before they’ll move on in frustration. Find the happy medium between condensed and readable.
2. Whether links and objects are placed far enough apart that a user won’t mistakenly click the wrong thing
You shouldn’t need to combine maximum zooming in and the finest point of your fingertip to ensure you access the right link or entry field. Make sure that page design is thoughtfully executed, or prepare to be overlooked by Google.
3. Whether the site uses common software normally found on mobile devices
A dazzling image or a video with a high production valuable are meaningless to your mobile customers if your content relies on software that is unsupported or incompatible with their smart phones or tablets. Unplayable content can arise from many different reasons: unsupported Flash players, license constraints, out-of-date program files. Be sure to test each of your pages and media files on multiple mobile devices before launching any new pages.
Why does this matter for your dealership?
Unless you want to annoy or alienate a good part of your customer base, you should already have a responsive website. Make your first impressions count. “Mobile-Friendly” is your chance to do just that.
Imagine this: Someone searches on their tablet for “GMC Sierra in Edmonton,” or “Toronto Toyota Corolla.” Two nearby dealerships appear prominently in the SERPs. One has the “Mobile-Friendly” tag tucked under its site link, but the other doesn’t. Who do you think will get the first shot at that new lead?
It’s promotion for your dealership that isn’t self-promotion!
Find out in seconds whether your website passes the test
You can test your website with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. If you currently have a website with Strathcom Media, you are already covered and will see the “Mobile-friendly” label appear in the search results. If not, give the professionals at Strathcom a call at 1 (888) 914-1444, or email us at info@strathcom.com.
