You can practically smell the fear on the web as webmasters and marketers are sweating it out regarding the upcoming April 21,2015 algorithm change that Google will be implementing for the mobile market.
There’s chatter all over the place regarding SEO experts who fear the change will alter things to such a degree that their sites and money will tank. It’s all do to the fact that Google realizes that the mobile market is expanding so fast that surfers who use the devices are dominating the market.
Mobile is huge now and growing at an alarming rate. People are shedding themselves of laptops and desktops to the point you can’t give the classic computers away. Most people aren’t into computing and now that they have handy mobile devices that do just as well as any laptop or desktop, they’re not encumbered with bulky devices. They can email and Facebook and other social media with an easy to carry device that has all the bells and whistles of the big devices. They can even watch movies and play favorite video games too. With all the modern conveniences in mobile devices, businesses, institutions, and governments are changing their game plans to make the best of it.
That being said, Google is now ready to ramp things up to the point of causing quite a stir in the SEO game.
To help things along, Google has webmaster tools that will allow webmasters to check their sites to see if they’re mobile friendly, and not only that, but their tools will allow webmasters to change their sites for better efficiency.
The debate going on is how huge the change will be. There’s so much confusion that no one knows what to expect so everyone is getting ready for the worst but hoping for the best. In some cases there might just be a few tweaks here and there to make your site mobile friendly, and in other cases it might call for a full overhaul. If that’s the case, companies and average folks are in for a big change and that means possibly forking over a good deal of money to web designers.
So far, Google is focusing on size of typeface you’re using, how close the links are, picture and image sizes. There are other parameters as well and it is extremely wise for everyone with a website doing commerce to get on the redesign bandwagon as fast as possible.
Should the algorithm change cause massive drops in traffic, this could mean drops in revenue of a devastating level. It could take months to recover and as a business, you can’t afford it. It calls for too much damage control and even then there’s no telling if the job will be done right as you’ll have to wait weeks or months to find out how you fare.
That’s the big problem right there. SEO isn’t a magic bullet. It can take quite a while to get to the top of the search engine pages. It calls for following the fundamental skills of design to avoid being penalized and adding the new mobile guidelines, it’s going to be a test that no one will envy.
The challenge is on, to make your sites mobile friendly using the new guidelines for mobile SEO. It’s going to call for quite a bit of studying and application, and worst of all, sitting on the bench to see the results down the road.
Take into consideration, you’ll still need to have your sites professional regardless of mobile. That means proper spelling, correctly tagged graphics, no misleading links and so on. In this game you cannot afford to leave any stone unturned nor cracks unfixed. Google’s technologies are getting more precise every day and even the smallest infraction can spell disaster.