Next Google Update Will Penalize Mobile Unfriendly Sites

responsive theme

If you haven’t already heard, Google is preparing for an update sometime around 21st April that will primarily target sites that are not mobile friendly.

Recently I changed my own site so that it uses a responsive design rather than having a dedicated mobile friendly version of the site. For me it seemed a lot easier to do it that way!

What Website Design Does Google Suggest?

Well there are 3 different options that Google will recognise as being mobile friendly:

1. Using a responsive design

2. Having a separate desktop and mobile site – so they will have different urls

3. Having the same url but each one has specific coding depending on the device it is seen on

Does Google have a preference?

Well they have always stated that their own recommendation is to use a responsive design.

Why?

This is what they say:

  • It keeps your desktop and mobile content on a single URL, which is easier for your users to interact with, share, and link to and for Google’s algorithms to assign the indexing properties to your content.

  • Google can discover your content more efficiently as we wouldn’t need to crawl a page with the different Googlebot user agents to retrieve and index all the content.

However, they have made it clear that responsive websites will NOT have any ranking benefit. This is good news for those who have already sorted out their mobile site using a different method.

What Should You Do?

You have a bit of time to sort your website out if you haven’t already.

Recently I received an email from Google Webmasters letting me know that one of my sites was not mobile friendly. The email didn’t mention any forthcoming update but it did suggest that I do something about it! So obviously Google is intent on getting webmasters to improve their sites.

I shall of course update that site with my responsive theme before 21st April as I wouldn’t want to lose my first page rankings!

I purchased my responsive theme (X-theme) for just $29. If you go to their site you might be lucky to see a discount being offered as I noticed they are offering 10% off at the moment. I expect they are anticipating plenty of people buying a responsive theme ready for the Google update!

It is easy to install and once done that is it.

 

You’ll get a guide and there is a forum too for any questions.

So this post is indeed a sales pitch! 🙂

You need to make sure your website is ready for the next update.

Whether you purchase one from SoloStream or elsewhere you have no excuse to be unprepared for this next algorithm change. Please take action on this because it would be a real shame if your site lost rankings for something you could have prevented.

If you do purchase X-theme theme then of course feel free to email me if you have any questions about installing it.

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