Description

Google has made a major announcement that affects YOUR website. They will now be measuring your website’s mobile-friendliness.In other words, how good does your site look on a mobile device? In this video, Eric Spellmann explains why they are doing this, the key requirements Google will examine, and how to test your site. Google has specifically said that YOUR rankings will be affected by this new test. Find out if your site passes the test!

Transcript

Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice!

Hey. I am Eric Spellmann. And today’s topic is an important one if you own a website. You’ve got to make sure that it meets one of Google’s new requirements; your website must be Mobile-friendly! I’ll explain what that means and how to see if your website is Mobile-friendly in this video. So, let’s go.

Why is this even important? Why is mobile even important? We’ve got to realize that mobile traffic is now the majority of internet traffic. In other words, people aren’t just going on their computers and looking at your website anymore! The majority of people out there who are looking at your website are now viewing it using another device like a smartphone or a tablet. And you’ve got to realize that people out there who are doing this for the most part have ADD. And if they can’t read something on that screen or if they have to zoom in on it, they’ll probably give up. Because as I’ve told you before over and over and over, everyone on the internet has ADD. And they’re lazy! And they’re only gonna give your website a couple of seconds to give them the answer they want. And if they don’t see it, they’re gonna go to someone else’s website who does! So you’ve got to make sure that you give people the experience they want on the device of their choosing. And you’ve got to make sure that your website can adjust.

A lot of people on the planet, their only computer they have is a smartphone or a tablet. They don’t have a PC! Especially a lot of the young people who have a smartphone and that is their computer. And that’s all they use! And so their only view of the world, their only view of websites is what comes across their screen. And if they have to constantly zoom in to read what’s on yours, they’re gonna give up and go somewhere else.

So, what are the requirements? What are these requirements? In other words, when Google says Mobile-friendly what do we mean by that? How does Google define Mobile-friendly? Well, here’s requirement number one from Google itself.

Your website should avoid software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash. Now, I’ve told you all this before. Macromedia or Adobe Flash which was kind of a programming language. It was used on a lot of older websites, it doesn’t even work on Apple devices. And that’s because Apple iPhones don’t support it, the iPad doesn’t support it. And so if you’re using a special kind of software that only works really on computers, and someone tries to view your website on a mobile device, well they’re not gonna get the experience. Heck they may not even get the website itself! So, check to make sure that your website doesn’t have any flash on it. Or you could be running a risk that people aren’t seeing anything.

Requirement number 2: You’ve got to make sure that when people click on a link and go to your website, that they don’t have to zoom to read the text. In other words, the text should automatically resize. The text should automatically adjust to something that is readable to someone using a mobile device.

Requirement number 3: The size of the other content on your website should automatically adjust so that people don’t have to zoom horizontally or scroll horizontally or zoom. We’ve all seen this. You go to a website and you’re having to scroll left and right because it goes off the sides. A good website adjusts! And you want to make sure that yours does as well. When you pull it up on a phone, you shouldn’t have to scroll left and right to read everything. Google looks at this. And Google is judging that factor about your website.

Requirement number 4: You’ve got to make sure that when you put links in your website, that they’re far enough apart so that someone with big fingers doesn’t accidentally click on 2 links at once. Google looks at how far apart your links are. Now, most people don’t have this problem. Unless they just go overboard on putting links on a page. So just realize that the link should be separate. And you never want to put 2, totally separate links directly together. Because most people don’t know where one ends and one begins? So keep the links separated.

So you must be wondering what does Google think of your website? How do you know if your website is Mobile-friendly or not? There are 2 ways for that. Number 1, you need to go to Google and just do a search on Mobile-friendly test. Just type (“Mobile-Friendly Test”) into Google and you’ll actually pull up Google’s Mobile-friendly test and you put in your website and it will tell you whether it passes. Now keep in mind Google looks at each page individually. So, keep in mind each page individually could come up in the search engine results, not just your site. So it’s not a matter of looking at your whole site, it’s a matter of looking at each individual page. Now I’m not saying you have to run every single page through this test, I’m just saying keep in mind that Google kind of grades each page on its own merits!

The second way is that whether Google tells you whether you’re Mobile-friendly. In other words, what I want you to do is pull out your mobile phone and go to Google and do a search on your company. And in the search results that come up, Google will actually tell you whether you’re Mobile-friendly. Let me give you a good example. One of the most popular pages on my site when people do a search is the “How to rank well on Google?” page I have. And what I did was I screen-shotted this from a Google search I did on my company. And you’ll see that it has the title, then the URL and then right below that you’ll see the words Mobile-friendly. Now I didn’t put that there. Google put that there! And you will only see that if you’re using a smartphone or a tablet to look at this. If you’re on a PC you won’t see this. So, one of the ways to tell is to simply use a smartphone or use a tablet, and find one of your pages in Google and see if Google even lists it that way. If Google is not marking it that way, you may have a problem. And if you’re not showing up as Mobile-friendly, keep in mind that Google has said your ranking will be affected on whether you are Mobile-friendly or not. So contact whoever is working on your website for you and get this fixed, or it could hurt you tremendously in showing up in Google results.

Well as always, I am Eric Spellmann. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to go to my website or call me at the number there and I’ll be happy to help in any way I can. I’ll see you in cyberspace.