Fix Your Mobile Usability Issues Before You Get a Google Penalty

by | Sep 25, 2018 | Content

Many Webmasters around the world have received message like the below laterly:

Fix mobile usability issues found on https://www.yoursite.com

Google systems have tested 5,550 pages from your site and found that 100% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 5,550 pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.

Google provides some recommendations:

Fix this now:
1   
Find problematic pages
View a report of the non-mobile-friendly pages found on your site, and the issues discovered.

2. Inspect mobile issues
There are a variety of techniques you can use to make your site mobile-friendly. Specifically, look for information about the issues brought up in Webmaster Tools.

3 Fix mobile usability issues on your site (Learn about mobile-friendly design)
Fix the issues preventing your site from being mobile-friendly.

GOOGLE’S ZINEB AIT BAHAJJI IS QUOTED AS SAYING AT SMX MUNICH THE UPCOMING MOBILE-FRIENDLY ALGORITHM WILL IMPACT MORE SITES THAN THEIR PANDA OR PENGUIN ALGORITHMS.

Google did say when they announced the mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that this would have a “significant impact” on the mobile search results. This is key, it is only impacting the mobile results and even so, it will have more of an impact than Panda or Penguin.

In their announcement the 26th of February:

Starting April 21, 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.

So on the back of this blog post, they have launched a new area in Webmaster Tools that can scan your site to highlight issues, here an example of the errors you might see:

NOT SURE HOW TO PROCEED?

If your site is built with software like WordPress or Joomla (also known as “Content Management System” or CMS), we can help you to make a CMS mobile-friendly.
If you are a big DIY fan:

  1. Read more about building mobile-friendly websites on Google Developer site.
  2. Ask more questions in Google Webmaster Central Forum —mention message type [WNC-451500]

Related reading…