So you've got a good looking website -- it looks super cool on the desktop computer. But have you checked to see how it looks on an iPhone or Android phone? Is the text so small you can hardly see it? Can you touch the links you want to click, or are they too close together so you push the wrong link? Are images that looked good on desktop way too big and take up most of the screen space so you can't see what the site is really about?
Here is an example of an old website that was built before mobile phone viewing became a thing. Great on desktop in its time, but whoa! on mobile you can say it is NOT mobile friendly. It was never optimized for mobile viewing.
Will your website viewers decide to skip this "unfriendly" site if they are using their phone to view it? Or will they take the time to try to work with it by zooming in and out and scrolling sideways and back, making them view the site in a very inconvenient and frustrating way?
Searches from mobile phones began as a novelty in 2009, and by 2018 mobile phone searches outnumbered searches from desktop computers. Google started making "mobile friendly" a ranking factor at this time. As of July 2019 all new websites are now accessed by Google from the site's mobile version for Google to gather site content and information to show and rank the site for searches on Google Chrome. So being mobile friendly is absolutely vital for SEO.
Google has provided a Mobile Friendly test that is super simple. Take the test yourself by clicking the button below and place your website url into the input field on the Google test page.
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
The old website shown above took the Mobile Friendly test, and (no surprise) this was the result:
The factors that weighed negatively for the site were:
Because of the new mobile focus that Google has incorporated, a site that is not mobile friendly can slip way down the ranking in Google searches, and some pages may not be accessible for Google to rank at all. Make sure your site doesn't slip down.
There are several ways to make a website mobile friendly. By designing and coding the layout with all the mobile views in the plan at the start of building the site, the outcome will look and work well for all viewers, whether they access your site from their phone, from their tablet, laptop or desktop computer. Some of the ways for mobile design and development include:
Responsive websites adapt to the width of the viewport and change the styles and layout automatically. One website is made to fit many different devices using styling codes, or CSS. The site responds easily to a change in width, making the viewer's visit a pleasant experience.
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