Craig TomlinGoogle hates your non mobile website, and has declared war on bad mobile UX, here’s what you can do to fix it so that you stay in Google’s good graces.
Google hates you, not because you’re cuter than they are or because you always sat at the popular kids table, but because you have a non-mobile website.
How do they register their hatred of your non mobile friendly website? By removing your website from the top rankings of mobile search results. And that is a VERY bad thing if you enjoy receiving any traffic to your website at all.
Think I’m lying to you?
First off, have I every lied to you? And second, if you still doubt me then see the proof below.
Just go ahead and read this, it’s an official letter from Google to one of my clients, I’ll wait while you read it…
Did you catch their drift when they said…
“These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.”
So big whoop you say? What does it all mean?
It means you can kiss your first page or top ranking on the organic mobile search results page goodbye if you don’t have a mobile friendly website.
If you left your popular kids table youth for an all-grown-up job in Marketing, Lead Gen, Sales, Revenue or even UX, then you should be extremely concerned about losing your ranking on mobile search.
Why?
Because losing an organic search listing is equal to losing lots and lots and lots of money. Ouch.
Your boss, who probably did’t sit at a popular kids table which is why he is always grumpy, won’t like it when your website starts losing all that mobile revenue. It will lose money because the traffic from organic listings is typically the best converting source of traffic, converting equals money to your business, therefore disappearing from the organic listings is equal to money disappearing. Therefore you boss will be even grumpier than normal.
For those of you thinking…
“Ha Craig! I don’t HAVE mobile revenue so this doesn’t impact me!”
Ha right back at you!
Mobile traffic continues to increase at a rapid rate, so even if your site isn’t generating a lot of revenue NOW from mobile, it will. Or at least it would, if you hadn’t angered the great search god that is Google and caused your site to disappear from the top mobile listings.
Here’s an example from one of my clients on the amount of their mobile traffic. Guess what. Mobile traffic represented more than 50 percent of their total traffic, if you include tablets. And most of my clients have very similar metrics:
Why Does Google Hate You and Your Non Mobile Friendly Website?
So why does Google hate you and your non-mobile friendly website? Simple. Because not having a mobile friendly website is a bad user experience and Google wants to promote a good mobile UX.
To be more specific, Google wants searchers who click on one of their mobile organic search listings to be able to have a good user experience, and their users can’t if by clicking on a mobile listing in the search results the resulting page is one that is non-mobile-friendly.
How to Get Google To Like You and Your Mobile Website
So how do you get Google to like you and your embarrassing non mobile friendly website? Here’s what Google recommends, so quit dreaming about how much better life was when you were sitting at the popular kids table and take some notes:
- Find problematic pages – View a Google report of the non-mobile-friendly pages found on your site, and the issues discovered. You can do that using Google’s handy mobile usability tool (Webmaster Tools > Search Traffic > Mobile Usability)
- Learn about mobile-friendly design – There are a variety of techniques you can use to make your site mobile-friendly. Specifically, look for information about the issues brought up in Google Webmaster Tools and follow Google’s guidelines .
- Fix mobile usability issues on your site – Fix the issues preventing your site from being mobile-friendly. Here’s a tip, from this point forward ALWAYS design or optimize your site mobile first, and worry about the PC-based experience second.
- Use Google’s handy CMS instructions for making mobile friendly sites. If you use WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or other CMS websites you can find this hidden but absolutely fabulous helpful resource at Google’s Customize Your Website Software page.
- Learn about building mobile friendly sites. The Google developer get started with mobile site is part of the Google developers tool kit. But you don’t have to be a developer to get fabulous information out it it, it’s written for dummies like me, so make sure you save this handy site in your favorites.
- If all else fails, ask the help Google developer help community. It’s a group of nerds really smart people who didn’t sit at the popular kids table, but now get paid good money to fix your crappy improve your mobile website.
Conclusion: Google Hates Your Non Mobile Website
So now you know why Google hates your non mobile website, why you and your grumpy boss will be punished in the mobile organic listings for not having a good mobile UX, and what to do about it.
I can’t think of anything more important for you to do this year than to fix your non mobile friendly website.
Oh, and if you have a mobile friendly website I know what you are thinking, so don’t sit there and laugh at the rest of the poor slobs unfortunate souls that don’t have a mobile site. You should be spending YOUR time optimizing and improving your mobile website UX.
Finally, if you were not one of those kids that sat at the popular kids table then join the crowd, because I cannot confirm nor deny that I may also have been one of those kids that did not sit at the popular kids table, and may or may not have actually sat at the nerds table.
What? Did my playing Dungeons and Dragons give me away?
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