Speed matters. Address your mobile readiness now.
The rumours are true! Another Google update is coming (official start date — April 21, 2015). And it’s expected to be bigger than Panda. 🙁
The new algorithm change uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor. (You can get more details/information here.) This is not really surprising since mobile use is growing at a high rate. You don’t want to lose your hard-earned Google rankings by being penalized with this update.
Wondering what your website looks like on various mobile devices?
Recently I’ve been using this tool from Brick and Mobile to test that for clients as well as myself. You can find other mobile emulators here: 3 Tools For Checking Your Site’s Mobile Friendliness.
For a detailed report on any shortcomings your web site might currently have in the eyes of Google, you can take their mobile-friendliness test here.
I knew our site wasn’t going to pass this test but re-design plans are already underway. (Mobile responsiveness wasn’t a concern when our current design was launched.)
Load speed is the other and always-important factor in Google rankings. Mobile devices are sensitive to this.
Since SMARTSTART serves a global community, I periodically test page load speed in multiple countries: United States, Europe and Asia/Pacific using this full page load testing tool. You might want to take your own URL(s) for a spin as well to see if there are any improvements you need to make.
Finally, if you’re not all that familiar with how load time affects your Google rankings this infographic can help fill in the blanks for you.
Source Credit: Quick Sprout
As an online business owner, these are things you must stay on top of at all time. Even if (no, especially if!) you are not doing the technical work on your website yourself. It’s the only way to know what you need to do to optimize your site’s load time for the benefit of all those visitors and rankings you worked so hard to get!
Now for all the hard-core folks in the SMARTSTART community, you’ll want to also check out this post by Cindy Krum over on The Moz Blog: 9 Things You Need To Know About Google’s Mobile-Friendly Update (hat tip to SMARTSTARTer Lisa Johnson, founder of the True Food Movement.)
More next time. Until then, remember to LOVE YOUR WORK, whatever it may be.
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