Mobilegeddon is here. In February earlier this year, Google announced that any sites that aren’t mobile-friendly will find their search rank plummet from April 21st, making it extremely difficult to find your site if it isn’t readable on mobile. It comes as very little surprise to anyone keeping an eye on website traffic over the past few years, nearly 60% of all internet browsing is now done from a mobile or tablet, which is why Google is now making it a top priority. This is something that schools need to fix if they want their site to remain in the top hits in Google.
Staying in a search engine’s top results is simply a case of helping the search engine navigate your site in a way that feels logical. Google, for example, sends out automated site explorers called “spiders” that read all the content on your site, click every link on a page and then try to understand what your website is all about.
Using this information it then assigns you keywords that relate to your site, and also ranks how trustworthy it is based on other websites that link to yours. So for a school, if you’re linked to from the gov.uk site the “spider” knows you’re trustworthy, as to get a link from gov.uk requires that you be a government trusted source, something Google knows it can rely on. The same goes for having your URL be “schoolname.sch.uk” as only schools can have the “.sch.uk” domain.
But now Google have changed the rules. One of the things the “spiders” now look for is how readable and easy your site is to use on mobiles, and if it’s it’s difficult to navigate the “spiders” will tell Google to lower your placement when people are searching. Seeing how the majority of the internet is found by people searching on Google, if your site isn’t ready for Mobilegeddon you might have a crisis on your hands.
Fortunately, Webanywhere can help schools. Our website designer School Jotter allows you to design responsive websites easily, meaning that you can read the website on any device. It adapts to the screen size, making font bigger and buttons easier to press. Essentially, if you’re using a School Jotter website, your site is can easily be made Mobilegeddon proof.
If you want to know if your site is responsive there’s a really simple test: just resize your browser window. If the website starts to move and adapt to the window good news, you’re using a responsive site, and your search engine result will remain high. If not, give Webanywhere a call at 0113 3200 750 and speak to one of our account managers, or email us at education@webanywhere.co.uk to find out how we can help you make your website stay on the first page of Google. Use the keyword “GOOGLE” before the end of May and get 10% off.
