Google is up-ing the stakes for the mobile web.
They have looked into their cavernous store of data and deducted that more and more web searches are done from mobile devices.
They are threatening to penalise websites that do not have an optimised mobile site!
Are you mobile enough for Google?
Google Webmaster Errors
A number of my clients have received warnign messages from Google along these lines.
Google systems have tested 67 pages from your site and found that 100% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 67 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.
I think the telling statement is that you will be “ranked appropriately” , get a decent mobile site or have the fawcet of Google juice turned off.
How To Tell If You Are Mobile Enough For Google
The easiest way to check you are mobile friendly is to use Google mobile friendly test
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
I’ll wait while you go off and check.
What Are Your Options
You need to make your site responsive. This means your site will resize to fit a mobile screen.
There are three main option that I can see to fix your site if it fails.
1) Re-Code Your Existing Theme
The first and most expensive option is to hire a developer to recode your theme and make it responsive.
Pros
You will get a mobile match for your existing site
You will get exactly the theme and layout you desire.
Cons
This is very much the most expensive option.
It will take some time to code and test, there are rumours that Google are implementing their penalty in April.
2) Buy A New Responsive Theme
Go to on of the theme markets such as themeforest.net and buy a new responsive theme. You can demo most themes so enter the demo URL into the Google tester URL to make sure it passes their test. The vast majority of new themes are responsive already.
Pros
Much cheaper than custom coding, expect to pay less than $100
Cons
You will need to setup a new premium theme, and change the existing look of your site. Depending upon the theme some setups can be complex.
3) Install One of The Mobile Ready Plugins
The quickest route to a mobile friendly website and the route I have suggested to my clients who have been impacted,is to install one of the mobile theme plugins. These plugins detect when a site visitor is from a mobile device and show a different mobile ready theme.
Here are some of the plugins that can do this work:
Pros
Quick, about an hours work to install and configure.
Cheap, from free to approx $59 for a premium version.
Cons
You are limited to the look and feel the plugins provide. These themes are pre-built, you can change colours and add logos but your design options are limited.
Further Reading
Here is Google’s very own documentation on configuring a mobile ready WordPress site.
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/website-software/wordpress
Wrap Up
As we start to consume more and more of our content from phones, we need to make content readable and usable from small screens. Google know this and that is why they are penalising people without responsive sites. I strongly recommend you embrace mobile browsing.
We can implement a premium theme (option 2) or install a mobile plugin (option 3) as one of our $99 jobs if you need help.
