New Google Updates Coming 21st April - You have been warned!

Google rarely is so public when it makes changes but from the 21st of April your website needs to be “mobile friendly”.

If you don’t do this then you risk getting penalised in the Google rankings.

You can check this by looking at your website on a Smartphone, does its appearance change or does it just look like  a small version of your normal website? Very often Google will tell you by adding a snippet at the start of your main search snippet when viewed on a mobile device as you can see in this picture.

With more and more of us using our phones increasingly to search when we’re on the move or when its convenient Google wants to make sure that the websites it brings back are easy to use and a good experience for the user.

For most people using  a content management system like WordPress, this is often built in automatically if you’ve paid for a template – normally called a premium theme.

If your website sits on a bespoke system then you may need to go back to your website designer and ask them to make your website “mobile responsive”. All this means is that your website knows what device it’s being viewed on and changes accordingly.

Another big one to be aware of is to have a Cookie Warning on your website. The Cookie directive came in a while back (here’s a post we wrote a while back http://www.needmoreclicks.com/got-a-website-read-this-eu-cookie-directive)  and there’s still an amazing number of websites that don’t have one. Again download a plugin such as this one if you’re using WordPress or speak to your web designer.