Adopt a mobile-first strategy
Back on February 26th, Google announced a couple of major algorithm changes that increased the weight of mobile-friendliness among its ranking factors. This created a big push encouraging website owners to have mobile ready websites before the changes took effect on April 21, 2015. If you still don’t have a responsive website for mobile devices, it’s not too late to adopt a mobile-first strategy in your web development and SEO marketing efforts.
This post won’t get into the details of how you should create your mobile-first strategy; however on a very high level, Googlebot — Google’s spider — that crawls your site must be able to access the website’s CSS and JavaScript. The Googlebot’s ability to crawl your site influences how your site is ranked. Don’t have a mobile friendly website; your ranking declines. If the negative impact to your search ranking doesn’t motivate you, perhaps the potential impact to your bottom line (i.e., revenue) will do the trick.
If you want to improve the mobile friendliness of your site, call +1 (646) 926-6584 or schedule a consult with One Epiphany and we’d be happy to help.
E-commerce sites get ready for mobile customers
On May 15th, the Wall Street Journal shed some light as to what may have been the driving force behind Google’s algorithm change – buy buttons. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google plans to add buy buttons directly to its search results. Google Chief Business Officer Omid Kordestani confirmed while at the Code Conference in Southern California this week, “There is going to be a buy button soon. It’s imminent.” The Wall Street Journal report offered additional information by stating the buy buttons will initially be available only on mobile searches. Hence the reason for the algorithm changes and the urgency behind the mobile friendliness of business sites; or so I believe.
Is your paid search game up to par? Or looking to purchase Ad Words (Google, Bing/Yahoo) at a discount? Give One Epiphany a call today (+1 646 926 6584) or schedule a consult to learn more.
The importance of mobile friendly websites
Buy buttons will appear alongside paid search ads results under a “Shop on Google” heading. “Organic” search results returned by the algorithm will not have a buy button option. As more people perform searches on their smartphones than on computers, the likelihood of making purchases using mobile devices increases. Even if you don’t have an e-commerce site, don’t forget people are more frequently making mobile searches that lead to offline purchase too. Mobile ready websites motivate users to stay on the website, click, and even purchase (online and off) because of faster load times and information being presented in a manner that is simple and easy to digest. The ease of navigation is another major factor in whether a user continues through the sales funnel or quickly exits to see if a competitor’s site is any better.
Does your e-commerce site provide a user friendly and seamless buying experience? Contact One Epiphany for an audit of your website and we’d be happy to let you know.
Image credits: Carlos Luna, MoneyBlogNewz via Flickr
