Hi my dear Divi Maniac,
as you know, Google has announced on April 21that its search algorithms will be adapted to favor “mobile friendly” sites or sites that have a good usability when navigating from mobile devices. Please read the original article here.
What does this mean?
Simple, that if you have a site not optimized for smartphones or tablets, it is time to run to fix your website, or your website will be destined to worsen.
The present and future (near) of the web is mobile
Google’s choice linked to “mobile-friendly” is justified by the fact that mobile has an increasingly important role in the world of web browsing, and moreover its growth shows no sign of diminishing.
What solutions?
If you are going to make your site “mobile-friendly” there are two main ways:
- Responsive design: you have a single site to serve both desktop and mobile devices, so the html code as well as the address of a page is the same for any device you view it, unless you have a different view depending on the size of the display .
- Mobile version of the site: there is a mobile site distinct from the desktop one, therefore both the address of the pages and the html code of the pages will be different. The system redirects to the correct version of the site based on the device used by the user.
From the technical point of view you can choose one road or the other according to the needs of the site, there is no solution that should be considered better a priori, each of the two has advantages and disadvantages.
It must be said, however, that Google recently expressed itself in favor of responsive design , so if you are undecided between the two possibilities, perhaps following this advice may not be a bad idea …
How to test your site
Finally, here is the link to a tool that helps you understand if your site is optimized for mobile devices (need to say that it is made by Google?).
Beware that passing the test does not necessarily mean having a site at the latest in terms of mobile experience, but only that Google considers your site “mobile friendly” (the criteria for the moment are not so restrictive).
From this to having a 100% optimized site (good organization of the contents, fast times to download the pages, etc.) passes … But this is another story and maybe it will be the subject of a next post.