Will Your Non-Mobile Website Lose Google Rankings?

Will I Lose My Google Rankings Non Mobile Website

You’ve probably heard that if your website is not mobile optimized your Google rankings will suffer.

Fact Check: This is true!

Losing Your Google Rankings

In a world where mobile is becoming more and more dominant, Google and other search engines are prioritizing how websites are ranked and one of the key factors will be whether your website is very mobile optimized and FAST. Google has announced over the last several years that they would be making this switch, giving website owners ample time to update their websites.

Websites that don’t display properly on mobile, are difficult to navigate, or too slow, will be impacted in search results.

According to Google, (our emphasis added)

“Starting April 21, 2015 we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

[[ UPDATE 09/2020 – Google has fully switched to prioritizing websites based on their mobile appearance and performance. With mobile-first indexing, Google Search primarily uses a page’s mobile content for creating its search index and ranking. Google announced this initiative in 2016 and has announced in September 2020, that it will become the default behavior for all sites!]]

What Does This Mean for You?

This means if your website is NOT optimized for mobile, you are at risk of seeing traffic decline slowly or even abruptly from Google. Access to websites via smartphones and tablets has been skyrocketing for years and overtaking desktop browsers in many cases. We see this across all our clients.

Google wants website owners to make the experience on mobile amazing for their customers and for Google’s billions of users, so they can bring users the very best websites for any device. Google needs to remain relevant as a search engine by giving customers the best websites on any subject. That not only includes the content but also the EXPERIENCE of the website.

  • 80% of the top-ranked websites are mobile-friendly.
  • 70% of the searches made on mobile phones lead to online engagement.
  • 60-70% of web traffic comes from mobile phones.
  • Users spend around 5 hrs/day on smartphones.
  • 61% of users will never return to a website that is not mobile-friendly.
  • 80% of smartphone users will buy from companies with mobile sites and apps that are easy to navigate.
  • Mobile phone data usage is predicted to grow 46% by 2022.

Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Use

If you don’t optimize your website for mobile, you will likely see a continual decline in your traffic or you may wake up one day to notice a drastic loss in traffic. This will keep getting worse over time.

There are many tools you can use to determine if your site such as this mobile-friendly test and Google’s Page Speed Insights test.

Statically, around 80% of the top ranked websites are optimized for mobile.

The biggest culprits for making your website fail the mobile optimization test are:

  • website does not resize the content based upon your users’ device, forcing users to scroll horizontally or zoom in. (“responsive” web site design handles this)
  • text and images appearing outside the mobile browser viewing area
  • using outdated software that is no longer supported, like Flash
  • using text that is readable only by pinching and zooming
  • not placing links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped / clicked
  • website is too slow on mobile devices

Traffic stats are climbing faster than ever for mobile users. If you’re not sure where to start, we can help.

Go Mobile with ClearTech Interactive

ClearTech Interactive has been building websites since 2003. We’ve helped a multitude of clients, in a variety of businesses reach top positions for their chosen keywords.

We develop websites for any size business; for entrepreneurs, established brands, professional athletes, services based businesses, membership portals, streaming services, e-learning systems, software vendors, non-profits, and everything in-between.

We have what it takes to get you where you need to be in your rankings, and we’re an honest, reliable company that have been providing web services since 2003.

And we are not going to scare you into buying our services.

For a free SEO Marketing consultation, submit an online request or call us Monday through Friday from 9AM to 5PM EST at 727-562-5161.

We look forward to helping you.