Business Owners: You've Just Been Served. By Google That Is!
If you're one of the millions of businesses across America that have been dragging your feet when it comes to having a mobile website created, or, if you just haven’t thought that having a mobile site is important because you already have a desktop site, pay very close attention to what is about to happen. The life of your business presence on the Internet now depends on it!
Henry Kim, contributing writer for Entrepreneur Magazine notes, “With 2 billion smartphone or tablet users expected to engage in some form of mobile commerce transactions by 2017, brands can’t afford to not be mobile.”
The tech giant and search engine dominator Google has been warning businesses for quite a while that changes were coming to search results and now the day of reckoning is upon us. Google just announced in a blog post that the deadline for having a mobile website is April 21, 2015, if you want to keep your search ranking high on the list of results.
We’ve been predicting this for years now, as there are more searches being conducted on mobile phones, and other mobile devices than on all desktops worldwide combined. Google has announced that “They decided to make it easier for users,” according to their post, “to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”
In other words, because most people use mobile devices to search the Internet for, well just about everything, beginning April 21, Google will incorporate “mobile-friendliness into its new ranking algorithm.”
Is Google’s New Search Criteria Anything to Fear?
Well, let’s put it this way. Google is the great granddaddy of all the other search engines such as Bing, Firefox, Yahoo, Ask and the like. And if history is any indication in the tech world, and it is, the other search players always play follow the leader.
Googles new algorithm will actually search for sites that are mobile friendly first, and that will now and forever be a key determining factor on where your business comes up on Internet search results.
Many businesses are asking, “So what about apps?” Forget about it. Unless you are a national brand like Walgreens, Macy’s or Target, first, an app isn’t an appropriate tool for your optimization. For most all businesses out there today and I mean over 90% - apps are so yesterday and mobile websites are the only way to go. They’re friendlier, easier to navigate, don’t have to be downloaded onto your device and about one-tenth the cost or less. Plus, mobile is how the masses are searching for you, not via apps, hello?
“This means that web pages still giving mobile the cold shoulder will be ranked much lower by Google,” explains Jeff Peltin the Chief Marketing Officer for MaxGroup Business Solutions, a
Top 25 Mobile Site Company. “The company [Google] is pretty clear about that, noting that the change will have a significant impact in our search results."
And what will that impact be? Well, it’s hard to determine exactly, but tech experts familiar with Google predict that a desktop only business could in some cases drop in rankings many, many pages over the next few months as the new search parameters take effect.
Businesses Scramble to Keep Their Market Share
What will be the effects on your business for ranking lower in search results because it isn’t a mobile site? Well that’s the simple part to explain according to Google:
•Lower ranking in any Internet search.
•Less times that your business gets found.
•Less visitors to your website.
•Lower inquiries about your business.
•Less visits to your place of business.
•Less sales.
Stuart Marler, a digital marketing expert and consultant asks, “Can your business sustain a hit like this?”
“Making your website more mobile-friendly, is now your number one business priority,” cautions Jeff Peltin of MaxGroup, “Since you now have Google to fear. The tech company just served all you procrastinators a concrete deadline: Beginning April 21, it will incorporate a site's mobile-friendliness into its ranking algorithm, and sites that aren’t mobile-friendly, can expect to see their name disappear from the first several pages behind their competitors that do have mobile sites.”
Google, the undisputed leader in search, has decided websites now need to meet the growing consumer demand for mobile performance and is rolling out a new “mobile friendly” label for smartphone search results. The new feature, which will soon affect websites’ search rankings, will make it easier for people to find what they’re looking for in a format that performs better on mobile devices.
While the mobile-friendly label will be friendly to consumers, it won’t be so friendly to online businesses whose sites aren’t mobile. In addition to sub-par search rankings, experts estimate that “if a retailer isn’t on mobile, they risk losing up to 50 percent of potential sales.”
“We’ve got the highest amount of web traffic, inquiries and telephone calls that we’ve ever seen in our 5 years of operation,” observes Jeff Peltin of MaxGroup. “Foreseeing this day approaching, we ramped up our mobile creation team several months ago so that we can handle the increase in requests for mobile sites, which are up over 1,000%. And since we’re about half the price of our competitors and we produce better quality sites in record time,
we’re seeing the biggest share of the increase of mobile business in most of the industry.
We’re fully prepared.”
EDITORS NOTE: For sites looking to make the update before the April 21 deadline, you should immediately contact a reputable Mobile Site Creation and Hosting Company.