Is your website mobile? In May 2015, Google officially published figures that said that searches on mobile and tablet devices (mobile) have exceeded the number of searches from conventional PC (desktop). Non-mobile-friendly pages are punished Search engines give their users the highest priority and, in order to stimulate increased mobile adaptation, now punish websites that are not stamped as mobile friendly by search engines. 21. April 2015 came the algorithm update that makes mobile sites worse in the ranking game against other pages, when searching for them on mobile.
Although modern smartphones are equipped with large and high resolution displays, a completely different requirement is imposed on a mobile-adapted website:
- The font size must be readable without zooming.
- Does the contents fall inside the screen so that they do not scroll sideways and zoom?
- Uses the page software not supported by mobile phones and tablet, such as Flash?
- Are links and buttons located far enough apart so that easy press can be activated?
- That the site does not spend too long loading when the mobile phone is not available on fast wifi networks is an important hygiene factor.
How to check if the page is mobile? Google has made it very easy to check if websites meet mobile friendliness requirements with a simple test which diagnoses and gives concrete instructions for remaining actions.
You may get an insight into any errors that occur to mobile users visiting your site in: Mobile Usability Report in Google Search Console.
You can also check how your mobile site behaves by visiting it with your own mobile phone.