Mobile-friendly technology is becoming more vital. By not having mobile capabilities, your website’s ranking decreases. More than half of internet traffic comes from mobile devices. As of today, none of the major search engines actually directly penalize you for not including mobile capabilities, but that seem soon to change. There are also many ways you get penalized if your site is accessed from a mobile device, which in turn imparts a bad user experience.

How You Lose Ranking without Mobile Capabilities

Google is likely to include penalizations in the near future for companies failing to launch mobile websites. They already practice the following:

• Google uses bots to scan sites as if they were a smartphone to see how user-friendly the site is.

• Their company has recently begun publicizing that if websites want to stay on Google, they need to switch to responsive design.

• New Google Analytics tools allow marketers access to more specific mobile traffic data.

• Loading speed is very heavily penalized by Google, so a mobile phone loading too much data will hurt your ranking.

The Benefits of Mobile SEO

At the very end of last year, Google revealed a new search feature: websites that give great mobile experiences include a tiny “mobile friendly” icon. This announces to readers that if they visit the site, they are more likely to find what they want without hassle. Google’s new distinction trains people to perform mobile searches through them.

Mobile sites are more-often bookmarked because users want to type less into their browsers. A higher chance of being bookmarked means more repeat traffic; another criteria for rank in search engines.

As your mobile ranking rises, your sales will increase. More click-throughs and more sales translates directly to better ranking across all your keywords. Get your responsive design as soon as possible to keep from falling behind!