Google's mobile-friendly update. How significant is the impact for us?
-
Hi guys.
Recently I got an email from Webmaster-tools saying our site is poorly optimised for mobile devices, and that it’s going to heavily affect rankings from April 21st. I’m worried to say the least. We literary cannot afford a hit on traffic at the moment
We rank well for niche terms like ‘customised diary’ and ‘personalised diary’.
So question...
Because we rank well for these very specific searches will we still take a hit on rankings after the update? Won’t our high relevancy for those search terms be enough to keep us high in the results?
Also, do you know if this change is specific to the users device? E.g) Someone on a mobile device will get mobile-friendly results, whilst users on a laptop will get different results altogether?
I'm just trying to get a sense of how much this update will effect us. Any isights, suggestion, or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Our site.
Thanks in advance. This community is invaluable to us
Isaac - TOAD Diaries.
-
Hi Dirk. Thank you so much again for your response.
Yes we must get your whole site sorted for our mobile users. But like you say focusing on the landing pages are essential Better get cracking!
Thanks again
Isaac.
-
Hi
according to this article http://searchengineland.com/google-mobile-friendly-ranking-factor-runs-real-time-page-page-basis-216100 Google has confirmed that it based on page rather than site level.
From user experience perspective it would be better to have the full site responsive, given the urgency it would focus on landing page.. Your designer tool pages seem not that important in terms of search - you could eventually put them on noindex if you don't want Google to see them, although I don't think this absolutely necessary.
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk. Thank you so much for you're response! Greatly appreciated!
On what you said....
"It also seems that it's defined on page - not site level, so you could try to provide mobile versions for your most important landing pages (dedicated or responsive)."
Is this to say that if our home page (and other landing pages) were mobile-friendly we may not see any change in (mobile) rankings? Even if these pages link to poorly optimised pages?
On our site our designer tool is where you buy our product. This is a very difficult page to make mobile friendly. So won't google just see that the majority of links are going to this page and penalise accordingly?
Thanks.
Isaac.
-
Google has stated that it's going to impact a large significant amount of results but it's definitely going to be for mobile only so you should check your traffic sources to see if you get a good chunk of mobile traffic.
Dirk is right so you should look at your pages that have good mobile traffic and push out a temporary solution for that until you get a good mobile end for your website.
Good luck!
-
"most discussions seem to agree that the impact will only be for mobile searches"
I agree this is Google's intent. I don't think it'll necessarily be the actual result. If you lose a lot of traffic or your bounce rates go up or your SERP bounce-back rates go up, etc. it could affect desktop search.
I think this update has the potential to affect desktop but as you said, difficult to predict. Great answer & very helpful.
-
There is a similar thread here: http://moz.com/community/q/what-if-my-site-isn-t-ready-for-mobile-armageddon-by-april-21st
If you have a lot of mobile visitors coming in via Google, I think you may expect that this traffic will disappear (unless your competitors aren't very mobile friendly as well).
Nobody really knows what the impact is going to be, most discussions seem to agree that the impact will only be for mobile searches, but again, it's difficult to predict.
It also seems that it's defined on page - not site level, so you could try to provide mobile versions for your most important landing pages (dedicated or responsive). Your lay-out seems pretty straight forward, so I guess it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt it Remember that it doesn't have to perfect - it just needs to pass the "mobile friendly" test - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ - you can always improve later on.
Hope this helps
Dirk
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Thousands of 404's showing up from Wordpress Blog!?!?
Hey guys, Have recently seen thousands of 404 errors thrown up from my wordpress blog in Google Search Console. These are URL's trying to link (i'm not sure where from) to other parts of my site, but they are not relative to the site root... infact they are a mix of random folders/subfolders and pages on my site. E.g: http://www.MYSITE.co.uk/blog/how-to/driving-to-the-alps/attachment/2013-land-rover-range-rover-evoque-front-snow-1/st-martin-de-belleville/chalet-st-martin-de-belleville/ski-holidays/ski-holidays/summer/st-martin-de-belleville/summer/your-stay-st-martin-de-belleville.html This is a link to a picture on the blog: http://www.MYSITE.co.uk/blog/how-to/driving-to-the-alps/attachment/2013-land-rover-range-rover-evoque-front-snow-1/ And the rest of it is finding it's own way there! Any ideas? This is Wordpress by the way. Cheers, Paul. p.s. I got no help from the Wordpress community so am posting here! p.p.s I forgot to mention that MOZ is reporting these issues too, but running Screaming Frog does NOT show any 404's at all on my site...
On-Page Optimization | | SnowTrippin0 -
What's the best Magento Community blog extension?
We are looking at FishPig's Word Press Integrations extension. has anybody used it? Possibly a dumb question, but is SEO adversely affected by the fact it's a WordPress extension on a Magento site?
On-Page Optimization | | Anne_Marie_English0 -
What's the point of my blog?
My website, www.toplinecomms.com has a reasonably good blog that gets quite good interaction and sharing. I introduced the blog at the start of 2013 because the general sentiment from all the SEO books and articles I had read was that a good blog could be invaluable to a search marketing campaign. The posts on the blog are keyword optimised and they get great shares and social engagement. However, I have noticed that the blog is stealing my services' pages' thunder! There are some keywords that I am keen for our services pages to rank for, but the blog is beating them to it! So my question is: How should I be using my blog to get my services pages to rank higher?
On-Page Optimization | | HeatherBakerTopLine0 -
Changing Ttile Tags & 301's
I recently began re-optimizing my title tags site wide. Could this cause 301 redirects and the loss of backlinks?
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop0 -
Should I Remove This Subdirectory From Google?
On my site, I have a subdirectory. It posts articles from a bunch of websites that my readers are interested in & links back to all of those sites. There is no original content in it. There are over 1700 indexed pages in this subdirectory. The rest of my site has about 500 (all original content). The search engine traffic for this subdirectory only accounts for 3.9% of my sites overall visits. Should I consider removing this subdirectory? Could all the duplicate content be hurting the rankings of my legit pages? What do you all think?
On-Page Optimization | | PedroAndJobu0 -
Blog Comment IPs Seen By Google?
I have a page on a client's site for testimonials (a dental practice). The page is actually a post on a Wordpress install where customers can enter their testimonials as WP comments. In an effort to encourage more clients to give more testimonials I was considering setting up an iPad or other tablet at the receptionist's desk where patients would be able to enter their successes as comments on the page. If I made sure the patients all used unique names and emails in the Wordpress comments, would Google still see all the comments are from the same IP and view this as suspicious?
On-Page Optimization | | jargomang0 -
Google Place Pages - Definitive Guide?
Hi good folk of SEOmoz, I've recently updated a number of place pages for my client who is an estate agent. I have to admit that they were a little keyword stuffed, but at the time my competitor; who ranks first, was filled with keywords. For example in their title it states "[company name] estate agent [location]" I thought that this was a big no-no and it should not be done? They also have keywords stuffed into categories and description. Im confused on how they are getting away with this? I have searched on the Google place page support forum and can not find a definitive guide on the exact rules. Could anybody be so kind to help me out? i.e Where to put keywords and locations in the title and categories Thankyou.
On-Page Optimization | | Lakeside0