For those of you with your ears close to the ground, you will be aware that Google has just rolled out its mobile-friendly update. The consequences on the wider web have the potential to be a game-changer. Websites that Google considers “mobile-friendly” will see their search ranking on mobile devices increase, while the opposite will be true. Although this does not affect tablet and desktop results, the implications for search results and SEO are clear – it is estimated that there are as many as 1.9 billion smartphone users around the world and as much as half of all searches performed from Google come from mobile devices.

There’s no better way of seeing this change in action than looking at how it affects the biggest websites out there. A recent survey from techcrunch shows that as much as 40% of all websites in the Fortune 500 aren’t considered mobile-friendly by Google. If we take this to be a rough reflection of the state of websites in general then there are a significant number of websites that are not optimised for mobiles, especially if you consider that top companies are more likely to take the time to optimise their websites than the rest of us.

If we consider the relative lack of mobile-friendly websites out there, then what this leaves is a huge potential for ordinary businesses to take advantage of the new mobile-friendly search algorithms. By having a website that is mobile-friendly your business stands to benefit from the increase in search ranking and the associated increase in mobile traffic that comes with it.

“So what makes a website mobile-friendly?” you might ask. Google considers a website mobile-friendly if it has text that can be easily read without the need for tapping or zooming, has content that can be played or displayed on mobile devices, avoids horizontal scrolling and has buttons or bars that are sized appropriately and can be easily accessed.

There’s no need to scroll through every page on your website trying to tell if it is mobile-friendly or not. Google have a handy tool for letting you know if your website’s pages are mobile-friendly and it can be found here.

At Complete Website Works, each new website we design has mobile-friendly optimisation built-in so our clients can maximise their website’s visibility and traffic. Ultimately, our goal is to help you win more business and revenue. Mobile-friendly optimisation was once helpful, but with this algorithm update from Google it is now essential.