Not a mobile friendly website, will it hurt my rankings?
-
Unfortunately my website is not mobile friendly. As it is based on clickable links within an image there is no way to adapt it either. Now, I have heard Google is getting serious about mobile friendly design, how will this impact my ratings? My current analytics show 57% desktop, 24% mobile and 19% tablet. I really like the design of my site with the clickable images and would hate to have to change it because Google says so :-(.
My website is http://tamarindobeachinfo.com
-
I totally agree with Moosa....I am guessing you also have limited resources. Maintaining two separate sites, one desktop and one mobile requires a lot of major time that most small businesses and small website owners just don't have. One version of your site that's managed via one CMS that is a responsive design is the way to go if you are short on time and resources...and let's face it...even if you are an enterprise corporation, you are still short on on resources.
-
as in the m. version for mobile users only? i would say its not a bad idea but you have to be very smart when redirecting URLs based on the device.
If you ask me what i would have done if i was facing the similar scenario, i will go for a responsive website as its a one solution for all devices and different size screens.
hope this helps!
-
Thank you all, I will go back to the drawing board. What is your thought on designing a separate version for mobile use?
-
Hi Ilka,
- I agree with Dana & Moosa the way to think of this is Google wants to serve the best site for its users and the largest growing sect as well are mobile users.
- In Webmaster tools you will see nonresponsive pages labeled as errors that is a pretty big deal.
- As Dana pointed out April 12 was when the change the algorithm occurred.
- You may want to look at your analytics and see if there is something else occurring.
- With that said I think Google has made it very clear that the end-user comes first and if that end-user cannot find the content because they're on a mobile device your site is not as valuable.
- I took a look at your site. Luckily is not very hard to modify you can easily make it responsive and here's some information that I hope will help you.
http://www.feedthebot.com/mobile/configure-viewport.html
by placing your sites URL in the link below you will be given instructions on how to configure your exact site so it is mobile friendly as well as some other helpful tips.
http://www.feedthebot.com/mobile/
Hope this helps,
Thomas
-
I totally agree with Dana, Google consider this mobile friendly website as part of their ranking algorithm. If you would asked me few months before I would have said its important to have a mobile friendly website as it will serve your users better but from the ranking standpoint, its ok to live with the current version of the website but now after the Google official announcement its must to go either responsive or a separate mobile version of the website.
Whatever you choice but if you don’t have a mobile website it will hurt your rankings no matter what.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Ilka,
Unfortunately, it's probably now more important that you initially realized. This past week, Google announced that mobile usability will be a ranking factor in their algorithm beginning April 12th of this year. On the up side, there may be ways to maintain the design elements of your site that you like while maintaining mobile usability, you just might need a little help. Remember, no matter how much in love you are with your design, if it's not serving your end users, and the devices that they are accessing your site from....the design is not serving your business goals.
Think of it more like this: Google is saying you have to change your site. Google is trying to tell you that your visitors want you to change your site...that's a whole different thing.
Here's a link to the Google announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html
That's probably not exactly what you wanted to hear, but it is important to know where things are headed. If 25% of your site traffic is currently coming from mobile it might be safe to say that will double to 50% over the next year.
Cheers,
Dana
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
-
My website is not configured in AMP pages, but it is mobile-friendly.
Hi
Algorithm Updates | | rayabahadur
My website is not configured in AMP pages, but it is mobile-friendly.
Last month, my website was ranked to 10 positions for this keyword (Magento Development Company).
Sometimes it's showing on 25 positions but not in the top 5 positions. Here is my URL (for analysis):
https://www.nevinainfotech.com/magento-development-service/
Would you please explain why my keyword rankings are often not showing in the search listings?
Would you mind letting me know is there anything I need to change?
Thank0 -
Sub-domain with spammy content and links: Any impact on main website rankings?
Hi all, One of our sub-domains is forums. Our users will be discussing about our product and many related things. But some of the users in forum are adding a lot of spammy content everyday. I just wonder whether this scenario is ruining our ranking efforts of main website? A sub domain with spammy content really kills the ranking of main website? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Very strange, inconsistent and unpredictable Google ranking
I have been searching through these forums and haven't come across someone that faces the same issue I am. The folks on the Google forums are certain this is an algorithm issue, but I just can't see the logic in that because this appears to be an issue fairly unique to me. I'll take you through what I've gone through. Sorry for it being long. Website URL: https://fenixbazaar.com 1. In early February, I made the switch to https with some small hiccups. Overall however the move was smooth, had redirects all in place, sitemap, indexing was all fine. 2. One night, my organic traffic dropped by almost 100%. All of my top-ranking articles completely disappeared from rank. Top keyword searches were no longer yielding my best performing articles on the front page of results, nor on the last page of results. My pages were still being indexed, but keyword searches weren't delivering my pages in results. I went from 70-100 active users to 0. 3. The next morning, everything was fine. Traffic back up. Top keywords yielding results for my site on the front page. All was back to normal. Traffic shot up. Only problem was the same issue happened that night, and again for the next three nights. Up and down. 4. I had a developer and SEO guy look into my backend to make sure everything was okay. He said there were some redirection issues but nothing that would cause such a significant drop. No errors in Search Console. No warnings. 5. Eventually, the issue stopped and my traffic improved back to where it was. Then everything went great: the site was accepted into Google News, I installed AMP pages perfectly and my traffic boomed for almost 2 weeks. 6. At this point numerous issues with my host provider, price increases, and incredibly outdated cpanel forced me to change hosts. I did without any issues, although I lost a number of articles albeit low-traffic ones in the move. These now deliver 404s and are no longer indexed in the sitemap. 7. After the move there were a number of AMP errors, which I resolved and now I sit at 0 errors. Perfect...or so it seems. 8. Last week I applied for hsts preload and am awaiting submission. My site was in working order and appeared set to get submitted. I applied after I changed hosts. 9. The past 5 days or so has seen good traffic, fantastic traffic to my AMP pages, great Google News tracking, linking from high-authority sites. Good performance all round. 10. I wake up this morning to find 0 active people on my site. I do a Google search and notice my site isn't even the first result whenever I do an actual search for my name. The site doesn't even rank for its own name! My site is still indexed but search results do not yield results for my actual sites. Check Search Console and realised the sitemap had been "processed" yesterday with most pages indexed, which is weird because it was submitted and processed about a week earlier. I resubmitted the sitemap and it appears to have been processed and approved immediately. No changes to search results. 11. All top-ranking content that previously placed in carousal or "Top Stories" in Google News have gone. Top-ranking keywords no longer bring back results with my site: I went through the top 10 ranking keywords for my site, my pages don't appear anywhere in the results, going as far back as page 20 (last page). The pages are still indexed when I check, but simply don't appear in search results. It's happening all over again! Is this an issue any of you have heard of before? Where a site is still being indexed, but has been completely removed from search results, only to return within a few hours? Up and down? I suspect it may be a technical issue, first with the move to https, and now with changing hosts. The fact the sitemap says processed yesterday, suggests maybe it updated and removed the 404s (there were maybe 10), and now Google is attempting to reindexed? Could this be viable? The reason I am skeptical of it being an algorithm issue is because within a matter of hours my articles are ranking again for certain keywords. And this issue has only happened after a change to the site has been applied. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | fenixbazaar0 -
Rankings fluctuating by around 10 pages between night and day
Hi all, I'm experiencing something very odd with my website ranking at the moment. My homepage is fluctuating in rank for my main keyword by 10 pages every day and night. So, during the day i am on page 14, 15 or 16 for my main keyword yet by night i am on page 5 or 6. This trend has continued for the past 7 days now and i can't quite understand why this is. I'm using pagewash dot net to carry out manual searches and a ranking tool - both of which produce exactly the same result. Does anyone have any experience of this or why this is happening? My domain is around 8 years old and has around 50,000 pages. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | MarkHincks0 -
How does this site rank no 1 for big terms with no optimisation?
Hi, A client recently asked me abut a site that appears to have popped up out of nowhere and is ranking for big terms within their industry: http://bit.ly/11jcpky I have looked at the site for a particular term: Cheap Beds I was using unpersonalised search on google.co.uk with location set to London. The site currently ranks no 1 for that term and other similar terms. The question is how? SEO Moz reports no backlinks (they must have blocked?) Ahrefs and Majestic report report some backlinks but not many and no anchor text with the term in. The Page title and meta do not contain the term nor does the page seem to contain the term anywhere. The domain does have some age though has no keyword match in the URL. I'm a little stumped to how they are achieving these results. Any Ideas Anyone?
Algorithm Updates | | JeusuDigital0 -
Will we no longer need Location + Keyword? Do we even need it at all?
Prepare yourselves. This is a long question. With the rise of schema and Google Local+, do you think Google will now have enough data about where a business is located, so that when someone searches for, a keyword such as "Atlanta Hyundai dealers" a business in Atlanta that's website: has been properly marked up with schema (or microdata for business location) has claimed its Google Local+ has done enough downstream work in Local Search listings for its NAP (name, address, phone number) will no longer have to incorporate variations of "Atlanta Hyundai dealers" in the text on the website? Could they just write enough great content about how they're a Hyundai dealership without the abuse of the Atlanta portion? Or if they're in Boston and they're a dentist or lawyer, could the content be just about the services they provided without so much emphasis tied to location? I'm talking about removing the location of the business from the text in all places other than the schema markup or the contact page on the website. Maybe still keep a main location in the title tags or meta description if it would benefit the customer. I work in an industry where location + keywords has reached such a point of saturation, that it makes the text on the website read very poorly, and I'd like to learn more about alternate methods to keep the text more pure, read better and still achieve the same success when it comes to local search. Also, I haven't seen other sites penalized for all the location stuffing on their websites, which is bizarre because it reads so spammy you can't recognize where the geotargeted keywords end and where the regular text begins. I've been working gradually in this general direction (more emphasis on NAP, researching schema, and vastly improving the content on clients' websites so it's not so heavy with geo-targeted keywords). I also ask because though the niche I work in is still pretty hell-bent on using geo-targeted keywords, whenever I check Analytics, the majority of traffic is branded and geo-targeted keywords make up only a small fraction of traffic. Any thoughts? What are other people doing in this regard?
Algorithm Updates | | EEE30 -
Merging Multiple Domains into a Single Domain and Its Effect on Ranking
My client had multiple top-level-domains. Each one represented an insurance program within a specific vertical. For all the sites at these alternate domains, there was a 30/70 mix of duplicate vs. original content. Some of the alternate domains ranked very well for their target keyphrase groups, where others were absent in results pages. We advised the client to merge multiple domains into their existing main domain, for usability and SEO reasons. We recently ran the merger. Here was our process: On the main domain, transfer the content such that it matches 1-for-1 content on the various alternate domains Setup Google Webmaster tools on the main domain Push the new content on the main domain live and submit a corresponding sitemap to Google Establish 301 redirects on the alternate domains, such that each alternate domain URL points to its respective page on the main domain We did this 12 days ago, and pages (previously on the alternate domains) that had ranked well on Google have now plummeted or are entirely non-existent. Did we do the right thing by merging multiple top-level domains into a single domain? Is this initial dip in rankings normal? How soon should we expect to see it return to its normal rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | PinckneyHugoGroup0 -
How to retain those rankings gained from fresh content...
Something tells me I know the answer to this question already but I'd always appreciate the advice of fellow professionals. So.....fresh content is big now in Google, and i've seen some great examples of this. When launching a new product or unleashing (yes unleashing) a new blog post I see our content launches itself into the rankings for some fairly competitive terms. However after 1-2 weeks these newly claimed rankings begin to fade from the lime light. So the question is, what do I need to do to retain these rankings? We're active on social media tweeting, liking, sharing and +1ing our content as well as working to create exciting and relevant content via external sources. So far all this seems to have do is slow the fall from grace. Perhaps this is natural. But i'd love to hear your thoughts, even if it is just keep up the hard work.
Algorithm Updates | | RobertChapman1