By now you may have heard that April 21 is doomsday for your website if it is not responsive (mobile-friendly.) I am not a fan of melodrama or scare tactics, but this one is actually a big deal.

 

What do you mean by “Doomsday?”

On April 21, Google will change the way it ranks websites, giving tremendous favor to responsive sites. If your website is not mobile-friendly, no matter how fierce your SEO efforts, you can pretty much kiss Page One search results goodbye.

 

Why are they doing this??

According to Comscore, more than 60% of today’s website traffic comes from a smartphone or a tablet. (This percentage could even be higher, depending on your industry.) Google strives to be the most relevant, useful search engine available. If you are one of the 60% Googling on a mobile device and your search results are sites you can’t really view on your device, that’s not really helpful, is it?

 

How do I know if my website is responsive?

You can check it out a couple of ways:

  1. On a mobile device, type site:yourdomain.com into the search bar and see if mobile friendly shows up next to your results.
  2. On a desktop, go here and type in your URL.

 

For crying out loud – I just had my website redone and it’s not mobile-friendly! Now what?

Responsive website design is still somewhat new, but if your site was created in the past year or so and your web development team did not educate you on the importance of it working on mobile devices, shame on them. For a number of reasons, you can’t just convert a non-responsive site to be mobile-friendly with a simple fix. Mobile-friendly sites are built with completely different technology than non-responsive sites, and your current design may not translate to a mobile site. Your best bet is likely going to be a new website.

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