How Mobilegeddon has affected non responsive websites

It was announced that on April 21 ^st Google would begin to penalise companies who weren't ready for Google’s algorithm update, nicknamed as ‘Mobilegeddon'. This would give mobile-friendly sites an advantage in organic search rankings, opposed to non mobile-friendly websites who would then suffer the consequences. We created a blog post on April 20 ^th explaining what Mobilegeddon is, and how it will effect rankings. Six months on we’re discussing what effects there have been to the websites who didn't make their websites mobile-friendly, and what you can do to help your website.

What has happened to the non-mobile-friendly websites?

• Websites which do not have mobile-friendly websites are now paying the consequences of 10% of lost traffic.
• Costs per click (CPC) rose by 16%, according to Adobe.
• Click through rates (CTR) have decreased by up to 9%.
• Statistics show that within the top 10 positions in a search, 77% of these are mobile-friendly websites.

What does the Googlebot look for in a website to make sure its mobile friendly?

• Text is easy to read, meaning the user does not have to zoom in/out.
• Checking which software is used.
• The usability of clicking on a link.
• Allcontent is appropriately sized.

5 tips to make your website mobile friendly:

1. Make every piece of text easy to read, so when looked on a tablet/mobile the text will adjust to the appropriate size.
2. Turn off auto-correct, this will help when customers are filling out a form.
3. Content in your site needs to be in proportion, this allows your website to look neat and easy to navigate around.
4. Use Media Queries, this will allow to know the size of the device your website is being viewed on.
5. Don't blockCSS, Javascript, or image files. As these are widely used, if they don't work on a mobile then customers will close your website and move onto another.

You may be wondering 'What are the advantages of having a mobile friendly website?' Well, here they are:

• User experience will improve, encouraging your customer's to stay on your website. Which will increase the time they spend on your website, meaning the chances of reaching your goals will be more likely.
• Time spent to load a website will become much faster, this then stops the customer from diverting to another website.
• Mobile Search Engine Optimisation will improve.

Testing

If you wish to test whether your website is mobile friendly visit Google's mobile-friendly web tool. If your website isn't mobile friendly it'll come up with a list of things you need to improve on, as well as what your website would look like on a mobile, or tablet.