Mobile is changing the way you are ranked on Google
The term Responsive Design and Mobile First have been thrown around quite a lot recently but what does it all mean?
Responsive Design is used to adapt a website so that it fits any size screen whether that’s a desktop, tablet or a mobile device. This is done by using flexible layouts, images and @media Queries. The purpose of responsive design is to provide an optimal viewing experience making it easy to read and navigate with minimal resizing, panning and scrolling.
Google is one biggest drivers in gaining traffic to your website as they are one, if not, the biggest Search Engine around right now which means that making sure you rank as high as you can within Google is important for you to be found by customers.
With Google making changes to their algorithms from time to time it is important to know what that means for you and your website. One big change that you could be affected by is The Mobile-First Index. This means that Google will now rank websites based on the mobile performance over the desktop performance. However, this doesn’t mean your website won’t be ranked if it is not mobile friendly. Google will just look at the mobile performance before looking at the desktop performance.
So when it comes to making sure your website is responsive and seen as responsive to Google you need to make sure:
- All the content on the website is the same for desktop and mobile. This means that if you remove content for when the user is viewing your website on their mobile device Google won’t rank it as responsive as you are not giving the users the full package of your website.
- Have only 1 URL for your website whether it is for desktop or mobile.
Other things to consider to help in your rankings on Google is to prioritise mobile page speed and load time for all content such as images and other dynamic elements.
Something that was previously treated differently and might have affected the website ranking is content that is collapsed or hidden in things such as tabs and accordions. Google will now not rank you down for using these elements types as it is now classed as a mobile best practice for screen real estate management.
But don’t panic! Google is slowly rolling this out so you have plenty of time to decide what action steps you want to take if any do need taking. Google stated the following on their Webmasters Blog, in 2017:
“We will be evaluating sites independently on their readiness for mobile-first indexing based on the above criteria and transitioning them when ready. This process has already started for a handful of sites and is closely being monitored by the search team. We continue to be cautious with rolling out mobile-first indexing. We believe taking this slowly will help webmasters get their sites ready for mobile users, and because of that, we currently don’t have a timeline for when it’s going to be completed.”
If you are wondering how this might affect your website and whether you need to take action feel free to get in touch with either me or another member of our team on webteam@this.nhs.uk and we will see how we can help you.
Published by Sophie Thomas on 19.04.2018
Sophie is our Student Web Coordinator and has been working within the Webteam since September 2017. Her role involves managing Social Media platforms, creating designs for both web and print and providing customers with website support. Sophie also has a Diploma in Social Media Marketing.
