You might have read that more and more people are searching for information via their smartphones and tablets than ever before. This trend is fast-growing and steep. And it affects your website.
In May 2015, mobile searches outnumbered desktop searches for the first time. Today, it’s estimated that 60% of searches are conducted on a mobile device, while 40% remain on desktop. However, if we look at the data more carefully, we see that it varies significantly by industry.
Mobile searches are more prevalent in restaurant, health, sports, and news searches than in any other industry. For our industry, desktop searches still prevail, but there is enough volume on both platforms that your site needs to look good on both.
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Google will soon be changing its search algorithm to include something called mobile-first (or they might have already by the time this article posts). Here’s what you need to do, if anything:
- If you have paid someone else to build you a mobile site that you can access by entering “m.yourdomain.com,” you will need to rethink this content. Usually there’s less content on these pages, and this will impact your search results as Google will now look to this content instead of your desktop version. If your site is already mobile-friendly, then I recommend deleting the “m.” site.
- If your site is mobile-friendly, you’re all set. If you are on our monthly packages or have changed your theme, you are good to go. If you are not sure, you can do a test here: https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly. If your site is not mobile-friendly, you need to convert to a “responsive” theme in WordPress which will make it mobile-friendly. This needs to be done yesterday as it affects your search results as well as the look of your site. We can do this for you; just email us and ask about it – if you have the two-column theme, it’s only $150 to make it mobile-friendly.
For those of you on our monthly packages, know that we’re watching this for you, especially at the industry level and what Google is doing, and how it impacts your search results.