The Google’s Mobile Update or the Mobile Algorithm rolling out on the April 21st, has currently become the hottest news in SEO. How it is going to impact your online business is a question coming to the mind of every business owner. This is what I’ve discussed below in my article
The Google’s Mobile Update or the Mobile Algorithm rolling out on the April 21st, has currently become the hottest news in SEO. How it is going to impact your online business is a question coming to the mind of every business owner. This is what I’ve discussed below in my article:
Well, the answer to the most anticipated question for now is pretty simple. How your site is affected by update basically depends on the site itself, whether or not it passes the Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test on April 21st. In doing so, all you need to do is to enter your site’s address in the Google’s Mobile-Friendly test and in a minute you will be shown the results for it.
The test will highlight all the issues concerning your site, such as small text, horizontal scrolling, and small text in addition to the other mobile usability issues.
For the mobile friendly sites, this update will go a long way in determining their final ranking in the search results. This is because; it’s possible that there are sites today that are ranked above yours in the mobile search results, which are not mobile friendly. But to be able to achieve such results, again your eCommerce site needs to have a positive result regarding its mobile friendliness, as the update is all about the upside of the organic search performance.
In case of a negative result, your site would not benefit from the update at all and you would lose your current search mobile traffic and the rankings to your competitor’s mobile friendly sites instead. But, we have already discussed that. The question that comes next is how badly a site is going to get hit by it and this is discussed next.
The mobile update impacting your site depends on two things:
The number of sales and visits the mobile search drives for your business today
The ratio of branded keywords vs. the non-branded keywords in the mobile search.
Even though, no one can estimate an exact ratio until the algorithm is released, what we can do is to do some worst case analysis for estimating the damage.
As a worst case scenario, the Google organic mobile search traffic and sales would be nullified starting April 21, which is why, you need to start the analysis by getting your facts and figures right. Determine the number of visitors along with the revenue which you are getting through the Google’s organic mobile searches.
The update will impact neither paid search performance nor desktop organic search performance nor Bing and Yahoo mobile search performance. This update is Google-specific and specific only to mobile organic search. What percent of your entire site’s organic search medium it takes up and to what percentage does it affect your site’s overall performance? How much the lost traffic and revenue would impact your entire business? These are some of the questions that you need the answers to for the worst case scenario to know where you would be standing after the update hits your site.
In an average scenario, the organic search of Google would decrease by a small percent instead of vaporizing entirely.As we all know that mobile friendliness is not the only ranking factor, as the authority and relevance of a site still holds pretty much a large part as far as the entire mobile ranking algorithm is concerned including some 200 other signals. Again, the exact number between the mobile friendliness in comparison to the other 200 ranking signals is not known.
Mobile friendliness is not the only ranking factor, just a new and “significant” one. Relevance and authority still play large roles in the mobile ranking algorithm, along with more than 200 other ranking signals.
Again, the balance between mobile friendliness and the other 200 or so ranking signals is an unknown. But we can make some educated guesses.
For countering that, we can make some good guesses starting with branding. Without a doubt, the branding search phrases are going to stay steady in the search results as they are more navigational and used by the searchers for locating your site. Google can’t ignore these keywords to work in the best interests of the searchers. The product brands sold through the eStores would become some sort of a challenge.
Check Google Webmaster Tools’ “Search Queries” report to get an idea of the percentage of branded versus non-branded keyword traffic Google currently sends you. If the percentage of branded keywords is high, the impact of the upcoming mobile-friendly update may not have a huge impact on your performance.
To know about your branded and non-branded keywords, you have to go to the Google’s webmaster tools’ search queries section. If the branded keywords percentage is high, your site is pretty much in good hands, However, as discussed above, this is just the start of how Google is shaping up its mobile searches and given the increased number of searches for the smart devices, it’s more of a continuous loss of business opportunities than an immediate loss of existing sales and visits.
