As mobility becomes more and more essential, Google is taking steps to provide mobile consumers with the best digital content experience. In order to do that, it has decided that mobile sites must adhere to its SEO standards to be found on Google’s search engine.
While Google has often spoken out against Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as it unfairly works around the search engine’s algorithms, its stance on mobile SEO seems to be the reverse. In fact, Google has offered its recommendations for the best SEO practices, and from the looks of it, will now make it required for sites on its mobile devices.
This is in order to make mobile content accessible for the device users. With new algorithms being introduced to the search engine, some mobile sites may find that they’re not as well suited for mobile devices as they originally thought, and will have to meet Google’s new standards in order to be listed.
Google has worked on ensuring some websites and services work well on mobile devices, in order to provide a great customer experience for mobile users, but this is a step beyond its previous ventures. Of course, as Google has some large investments in mobile commerce, it would want to ensure that customers can make purchases from websites with ease and convenience, and a good mobile site is essential for that. Google’s game may involve tightening its regulations for mobile sites to appear in its search, but its goals are both noble and a little self-serving.
Still, if these new regulations make companies and websites up their game to provide better mobile sites, then it’s for the best. While a website on a full-sized screen can be forgiven for small buttons or the occasional annoying image, that’s not a luxury that mobile sites have. If it takes Google threatening them with “up your game or you won’t get to be on our search engine” to make them improve, then so be it.
Edited by
Alisen Downey