5 Good Reasons You Need a Mobile Friendly Website, Already

google mobile algorithm updateLet’s put them in reverse order, too – from least to most important.

If you’re reading this, you probably don’t quite understand the thing that happened with mobile, and that’s ok. It’s not a trend. But it’s not a challenging thing to understand either. There’s been a lot of hype, and that’s mostly only hurt the calm, reasonable people like you. It’s almost worth wagering that part of the reason your site is not mobile friendly is because there’s just been so much hype.

In short, smartphones interrupted the way people use all computers, including those on the internet, and marketers have had to catch up with people so we can better meet their needs. We all make money along the way.

Here’s why you need to get your site Mobile Friendly right away.

5) Google is Updating Its Algorithm to Better Reward Mobile Friendly Sites
And Searchers will presumably reap the rewards too. Who loses? Sites that are not mobile friendly but that are frequently searched from mobile devices. For now, this is only going to be true of searches that originate on mobile devices, smart phones and tablets, but…

4) Google May Penalize Non-Friendly Sites in All Searches
Maybe not tomorrow, but this is likely to happen down the road. Google has always rewarded up-to-date sites and penalized those following their own standards. Sites that seem abandoned and out-of-date simply slide down the rankings ladder. Is yours one of them?

3) Searchers Already Penalize Non-Mobile Friendly Sites
Believe it or not, Google learns what searchers are doing and then they do it, too. And Google watches how searchers respond and then they reward the good sites. Good sites can be navigated and “used” from mobile devices.

2) Local Search is Particularly Affected by Mobile Search
That is to say, we’re not really concerned here with big national companies already conducting most of their business and sales by internet. On the contrary, local businesses and those selling to local and visiting customers benefit like fireworks from Mobile optimization. Think about it. What do you search on your cell phone and when?

1) Mobile Searches Are Better for Immediate Sales
Alright, we promised it. This is the big important reason that tons of small business owners – and their SEO consultants and their marketing people – all continually miss.

People simply don’t “surf” for information on their smartphones. Lots of SEO consultants still refer to it as “Mobile Surfing.”

Smartphone searchers want immediate results – often when they are in a far less familiar environment than when they are surfing from the home or office. Desktop surfing is casual. Mobile searching is wallet-in-hand searching.

People have also been touting growth in mobile web-site search traffic for years now, but let’s leave that aside for the moment.

If your current site is not mobile-friendly, getting it to be mobile-friendly is easier than you might think. It does often mean scrapping everything, but that’s not nearly as devastating as it used to be (in most cases). We’ll be happy to discuss something elaborate or something pleasingly simple, depending on how you’re using your current site, and what’s working, or not working.