Mobilegeddon is the
nickname give to Google's
latest mobile-friendly search
algorithm that promised to
uproot rankings for websites
that weren't mobile-friendly.
But in reality, it’s not quite as
potent. We recently
discussed the effects of this
algorithm thus far on
websites, and they have not
been catastrophic as Google
has threatened. However, a
lot of websites did get hit.
Let's talk about how to take
the first steps towards
recovering from this penalty.
Mobilegeddon is the next big
thing in Google algorithm
updates. Unlikes Panda,
Penguin, Pigeon,
Hummingbird and the other
algorithms, you might have
noticed it’s not an animal
name. This is because the
people who name things
aren’t really consistent or
original. Don’t worry about it.
This particular update, as the
moniker implies, deals
heavily with mobile SEO.
Specifically, it makes “being
mobile-friendly” a ranking
factor. If your site is mobile
friendly, congratulations;
you’re perfectly safe. If your
site isn’t mobile-friendly,
you’ll be hit by the penalty,
which might be pretty bad
depending on how far from
mobile friendly you are.
What does Mobile
Friendly Mean?
Google has a list of mobile
guidelines, but they can all
be summarized fairly easily.
Avoid anything that
doesn’t work on
mobile. This means Flash,
primarily, though it also
includes custom code and
JavaScript that doesn’t
render properly.
Use text that’s properly
sized for small devices.If
the user has to zoom in just
to read your site, it’s not
going to be very useful to
them, and they’ll find
another resource.
The same goes for other
content. Make sure
everything fits on the
screen. If the user has to
scroll horizontally, you’re
going to earn a penalty.
Make sure your links and
navigation are spaced
out and easy to use. The
user should never be able
to “fat finger” the wrong
link because two are too
close together.
If you want to test to see if
your site is mobile friendly,
you can use Google’s testing
tool.
Fixing a Mobile Penalty
Step 1: Figure out how bad
the hit to your traffic was.
The Mobilegeddon update
rolls out over the course of a
week, so choose a 2-week
period both before and after
the date to get an idea of
your traffic. Use whatever
analytics program you want,
though Google Analytics is
probably the best for
diagnosing a Google penalty.
If your traffic wasn’t actually
hit all that hard, you can get
away with taking your time
on a mobile update. Of
course, you’ve had plenty of
time already.
Step 2: Determine the scale
of the changes you need to
make. This is a pretty
complex step, and step three
will depend on what you
determine here.
Step 3: Implement whatever
level of fix you need to. This
might mean tweaking your
existing site, or it might mean
implementing an entirely new
responsive redesign. How
quickly you need it, and how
harshly it hurts you to not
have it, depends on how
badly you were hit. If you’re
using WordPress, WP Touch
Pro is an easy solution.
At the smallest level, use
tools like
Google’s pagespeed ranking
to see if your site is fine, but
just a little slow. Sometimes
you’ll see a drop in traffic
because your mobile site is a
little slow, but there’s nothing
technically wrong with it. Just
work to speed up your side
by making code a little more
streamlined, maybe cutting a
bit of the heavier multimedia
content, that sort of thing.
A step up the chain, maybe
you have a mobile site but it
breaks several of Google’s
best practices. Maybe you
have too many links and
they’re too close together. If
your links are hard to tap
accurately, you’ll be
penalized. Remove or space
out your links. The same goes
for too-small fonts or
multimedia content that
doesn’t load. You can’t force
iPhone users to view a Flash
site, and Google will penalize
you for it.
At almost the top level, you
have the lack of a mobile site
at all. Maybe users can use
your desktop site via a phone
through liberal use of zoom
and magnification tools, but
at least it functions. You’ll be
penalized pretty hard for this,
but the most necessary
visitors can still use your site.
Take the time to develop a
responsive redesign, and
hurry to implement it, but
make sure it works before
you throw up some hastily
and shoddily coded
substitute.
The absolute top level is
when you have a no mobile
site at all, and your desktop
site doesn’t work for mobile
devices. This might be
because it’s too small or
hidden behind code a mobile
device can’t parse. This also
affects heavily Flash-based
sites. If this is the case, you
might as well be completely
deindexed from the mobile
search results. You have
some serious work to do to
get your traffic back, though
to be fair, you probably didn’t
have anything other than
bounces from mobile sources
to begin with.
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