The Google Mobile Update - What you Need to Know for Local SEO

[Linda Buquet]

I'm sure many of you are scrambling to update client sites before April 21st for the coming Google update. OR your clients are worried and asking about it. Or maybe you are lucky and all your clients already have mobile or responsive sites.

But I have to say we are ALL lucky in that Google never (or seldom) alerts us in advance of a new update. We now know a lot about what's happening, thanks to information coming out of the SMX event.

Below are 3 posts with some important new details that were just released.

1st up Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land.

<a href="http://searchengineland.com/google-mobile-friendly-ranking-factor-runs-real-time-page-page-basis-216100">Google: The Mobile-Friendly Ranking Factor Runs In Real-Time & Is On A Page-By-Page Basis</a>

Google’s Gary Illyes answered some questions around this new ranking factor explaining that the ranking factor is run in real time and that is works on a page-by-page basis.

If you have 10 web pages on your web site and 5 of them are mobile-friendly and 5 are not, then only the pages that are mobile-friendly will benefit.

Many web sites have sub-sections or specialized pages that would be hard to make mobile-friendly, so webmasters do not need to fret about going 100% mobile-friendly by April 21st.

Next up Jennifer Slegg - SEM Post

<a href="http://www.thesempost.com/googles-gary-illyes-qa-upcoming-mobile-ranking-signal-change/">Google's Gary Illyes Q&A on Upcoming Mobile Ranking Change - The SEM Post</a>

Responsive does not have a ranking benefit

Because Google has been pushing responsive design as a way to handle mobile traffic, some people wondered if the only solution was to also use responsive because it could give a rankings boost. However, Gary Illyes says that they recommended it because it worked well for Google, so they believed that solution would work for almost everyone. That said, webmasters do not have to use responsive for mobile, as other mobile site choices work just as well. He reiterated that responsive design does not have a ranking benefit.

Is Google considering a completely separate mobile index in the future?

Illyes dropped a bit of a bombshell by saying that Google already has plans for this and there is a team already working on it.

Then too Jenn has a post about the new separate mobile index Google is working on too:
<a href="http://www.thesempost.com/google-working-completely-separate-mobile-index-desktop-index/">Google is Working on Completely Separate Mobile Index From Desktop Index - The SEM Post</a>

Head over to read the rest.

I have to admit my old Catalyst eMarketing site is not even mobile. And my brain just freezes over thinking about it. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. But luckily I don't live by Google rankings like many small SMBs do, so due to lack of time to even think about it, I might have to just live with it for a bit longer.

This forum is my most important site now and it's mobile thanks to TapaTalk.
(And thanks to David, my forum admin who keeps up with all the updates to make it run smoothly.)

What about you? Are you ready? Or will you be??
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[mborgelt]

Thanks for sharing, Linda. I'm really curious if ratio/percentage of mobile-friendly pages will weigh in on rankings or if it's really as cut and dry as he makes it seem (hope it's the latter). Also, the comment, "I will say April 21st is a very important day? will have us doing a lot of analysis that day as I'm sure some good information will be gleaned.

 

[Dialady]

One of my questions was how to tell if a website that has been flagged by Google (in GWT)and has been repaired to meet Google's requirements. The site I'm working with is Homeowners Association Management |Community Manager | Atlanta It's a brand new website. It had 5 pages that were flagged, but I don't see a way in GWT of telling which pages.

Fortunately I believe the homepage is alright because it has a little "mobile-friendly" in gray next to the link when I do a Google search on my iphone (but not when I do it on my laptop). Currently, it has 0 issues with mobile in GWT, but the flag for mobile in GWT hasn't disappeared. Is the site good to go now?

Thanks!

Theresa

 

[Linda Buquet]

Since it's only a 5 page site Theresa, maybe run each page through...
the <a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/">Google Mobile-Friendly Test</a>.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I've been wondering about this too!

<a href="http://www.thesempost.com/googles-mobile-ranking-does-not-affect-desktop/">Google's Mobile Ranking Signal Does Not Affect Desktop Searches - The SEM Post</a>