For most people, “March Madness” is a term to describe the NCAA basketball tournament which leads to the crowning of a national champion. However, this year in the world of the web design and SEO, March Madness takes on a whole new meaning…
As we wrote about last week, Google recently announced that starting on April 21st 2015, they will be expanding their use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. In simple language, this means that if your website is not mobile friendly (AKA “responsive”), your website rankings will be impacted starting on April 21st.
The clock is ticking! This gives you approximately 1 month to get your rear in gear and plan how you are going to make your website mobile friendly. If your website is already mobile friendly, congratulations! You are ahead of the game. If your website is not mobile friendly, you should consider the following options:
- Ask the developer who built your website if it can be made mobile friendly. If it can, ask them how much it will cost.
- If your current site cannot be converted to be mobile friendly, ask about the option of selecting a new design that is mobile friendly. If you have a CMS like WordPress, this is a viable option. Selecting and installing a new WordPress theme requires some technical knowledge and will take some time, so unless you are a website guru, I suggest hiring a developer or website company do it.
- If your website can’t be converted to a mobile friendly version, you will need to build a new website. I realize that this isn’t the news you wanted to hear, however, we here at OurChurch.Com would be happy to talk with you about building a mobile friendly site that will help you reach your goals. You can contact us here to talk more about it.
- Craw into a hole and pretend that none of this is going to happen. This may require you pulling out your 8-tracks and parachute pants but at least you can reminisce about the good ole’ days while listening to ABBA and The Boss!
What are your thoughts and questions about Google’s announcement? Please post your comments below!