Is your blog mobile friendly? Does it matter if it’s not? According to this post on the Official Google Webmaster blog, it definitely matters – especially from April 21st. Google says:
Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.
What does that mean?
It means that if your blog is not mobile friendly, it won’t show when someone does a Google search on their mobile. So all of your clever SEO for getting your posts to the top of the search engine rankings will effectively go out of the window!
You can use this free Google Webmaster Tool to check whether your blog or website is mobile friendly.
If it is, phew! No need to worry.
If it’s not? Panic stations!
No, I’m kidding. You just need to fiddle about with the design a bit. If you’re on Blogger, select “Template” on the left-hand menu and you should be able to see an example of what your blog looks like on a mobile. If you click the Settings cog underneath, you can change the mobile template. You can set it to show either the desktop template or mobile template on a mobile. If you switch to Mobile, you shouldn’t have a problem.
With WordPress sites, it’s a little more tricky. You should ideally be using a responsive theme to ensure it will work on a mobile – but even then, it might not be perfect. I’m not going to pretend to be a WordPress guru – the basic design of my blog would soon show me up as the great pretender! Instead, I will share this link to a fabulous tutorial that should help.
The important thing is to check whether your site is mobile friendly using the Google tool – so that you know for sure you won’t suddenly be dropping off the end of their mobile search engine come the end of April.
11 Comments
Kimmie · 22/03/2015 at 11:58
Oh, you’re wonderful.. I’ve wondered if mine is mobile friendly..and now, thanks to you..and an incredibly simple test..I know it is :)
Thanks Vicky! x
carla · 22/03/2015 at 13:18
Luckily mine is!
I’ve never really seen mine on the phone before despite doing most of my blogging via my phone but that’s normally just through wordpress. Although my page is looking a tad pink at the minute haha
x
Candace · 22/03/2015 at 15:13
Happy to save all my blogs & my website are mobile friendly. Thanks for the link to check as I hadn’t seen this anywhere before
Kim Carberry · 22/03/2015 at 18:42
Mine is! Phew!
Thanks for the info x
Mari · 22/03/2015 at 20:52
Thanks for this great information !
You Baby Me Mummy · 24/03/2015 at 23:39
Such a useful post and website huni. Thanks for sharing x
Ally Messed Up Mum · 25/03/2015 at 17:54
Phew, mine is! Thanks for this post, I hadn’t realised x
Sharon Powell · 28/03/2015 at 09:02
Great tips! I didn’t realise my site wasn’t mobile friendly, it is now though :) x
Julia Whitmore · 12/04/2015 at 20:21
Cool. Mine passed. Thanks for the link. Visiting from Sunday Blog Share & will retweet. Happy Sunday.
Dunia Kanwal · 04/05/2015 at 06:51
You’re Superb! I read google update recently but thank God my free wp themes are responsive which will rescue me from Big G :D
Vicky Charles · 04/05/2015 at 08:07
Ah, that’s a relief.