Is your website mobile-friendly?
Well it better be! April 21st is quickly approaching and for those of you non-techies this marks the dawn of a new and major Google algorithmic change. Google makes slight changes to their infrastructure all of the time, but this is no small alteration and will have a massive impact on every website across the world. Plumbing and HVAC companies be warned, take the time to see if your site is ready for Google’s new mobile crawler. This system is designed to sniff out any sites that have not been set up for smartphone use and whisk them down the Google rabbit hole. Yes that’s right, if your site does not meet a certain set of criteria it will no longer rank as it should. If you are currently on page 1 say hello to page 50 if you fail to take action now. We find that around 30-40% of our plumbing and HVAC clients website visits are via mobile devices like smartphones, so all of that traffic could be lost, along with a lot of business in the process.
What are the criteria you are wondering?
You need to have content that is readable without having to scroll over, zoom, or pinch your screen to do so. Software that is not common on mobile devices like Flash will also need to be avoided like the plague. You must additionally make sure that links are not too close together, so users with stubby fingers don’t get sent to an incorrect section of the site when they click on something. Lastly, you must (and I can’t stress this enough) have a click-to-call button so prospective customers can simply hit the button and reach your direct line.
What can you do to make sure your website is mobile-friendly?
Start by ensuring that your site is responsive. Pull up the website on your computer, take your cursor and shrink your screen down either to the left or the right, if the text condenses accordingly and a click-to-call button appears you should be in good shape. Still, there are other conditions that need to be met before you can confidently say that your site will pass the new update. Google offers a mobile-friendly tester that we suggest you use to safeguard your site from the digital atomic bomb that is being dropped on April 21st. However, you can’t just test your home page and think that everything is A-Okay, you need to test every single page on your website to make sure that it is ready for the upcoming change.
When creating new sites people are using responsive web design to guarantee that they are marked with the mobile-friendly gold star. In other words a small tag that appears below your title and next to your Meta description indicating that it is user friendly when accessed from a smartphone.
Responsive web design simply makes sure that your site is streamline and responds accordingly when brought up in a mobile format. If you are rushing to get a site that was not created with responsive web design protected from the algorithmic update try Duda Mobile Web Service. The difference here is that when someone searches for your website on their smartphone they will actually be redirected to another URL that is mobile-friendly.
I always recommend that Plumbing and HVAC companies make sure that their site is mobile-friendly for conversion purposes, but now it is essential in the SEO battle that is approaching.In closing, I want to wish you a safe and prosperous journey and hope that you will survive this new step in the ever changing realm of Google. Although it has been said this will not affect desktop or tablet rankings, it likely will in the near future, so be careful, because whether we like it or not April 21st is coming.
Are you looking for a company that can help bring your plumbing or HVAC company to the next level? We are here to help, contact us today at 866-610-4647.
