Google's Stance on Mobile SEO

From April 21st Google has said it will take how a website is displayed on mobile devices into consideration as a ranking factor. This will have a massive impact across the web as only 6% of SMB's in the UK have mobile optimised websites. ⁽¹⁾

As the use of mobile devices for browsing the web has had a steady increase over the past few years it has become evermore important to ensure your website works effectively on a mobile device.  This has been further reinforced by Google's latest announcement that it will use this as one of its ranking factors.  

Google say the reason behind the change is so that "users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices". They have been monitoring the trends on how web developers have been approaching mobile websites since 2011 using their Googlebot-Mobile crawler and based the new changes on the findings.

With 32% of UK consumers making purchases and 68% of all internet traffic coming from mobile devices ⁽²⁾ it has become a necessity that all websites need to adapt to the medium it is being viewed on.  We have been designing our new (and updating some exsiting) websites to be 'Responsive' since 2012.   We feel that this has become a market requirement as we look to future proof our designs and keep up with the latest technologies.

You can test if your website is mobile friendly using this tool. 

Sources: 

1. Hibu
2. TNS research commissioned by Google