Google Begins Penalizing Non Mobile Friendly Websites
Starting in April, Google will strongly penalize webmasters who are sitting on their heels. The responsive website has been the talk of the Internet for years, and still some webmasters have not committed to creating a site that is mobile friendly. Despite the fact that more commerce than ever before is coming through mobile channels. The people who grew up in front of iPhones and Android devices have reached an age where their jobs provide expendable income. They do not yet have kids, and they have lots of money to spread around the world.
Google has always been well ahead of the curve when it comes to addressing trends such as this. As of April 22nd, websites that do not have a responsive component will be completely blocked from the search results on mobile phones and tablets. This will drastically reduce the ability of these businesses to reach customers. As the trend of people forgoing laptops and desktops for smartphones and tablets continues the value of mobile friendly websites will become more and more important.
Companies who fail to comply to these changes are forfeiting much of their search engine equity they have worked so hard to earn. Those who already are mobile friendly compliant or make the necessary changes to become so will immediately have a competitive advantage. This represents a great opportunity, if you have been trying to grab market share from competitors.
This includes websites with videos that cannot be played on mobile devices. For instance, if your website still has Flash video, then you might need to convert it to HTML 5 or get rid of it entirely. Flash does not play on any iPhone or on an Android 4.1 or higher. This can completely eliminate your entire website from the search engine rankings.
No matter what you want to do with your website in the next few years, you need to take care of this immediately. The amount of business that you may lose could have paid for your other website changes many times over. You may need to reorganize some of your priorities; however, it will be a decision well made once you realize how much business you are acquiring.