Largely overlooked by most in the web design trade, is Googles renewed focus upon better ranking sites that are mobile friendly. This means they are mobile-responsive, fast and well coded, to help viewing the site on small screen. The second issue of site speed is often overlooked by web designers, especially those using WordPress. These [often junior] web designers will buy a cheap $45 ‘mobile responsive’ theme, then load it up with huge image files, big sliders and suspect plugins.
To make things even worse, then run on a cheap shared or reseller host plan. The outcome is usually a disaster in terms of reliability, performance and Google ranking. It may look nice, but still annoy both Google and site visitors. Inevitably, most designers are at a lost to fix it. Sometimes they will add a popular caching plugin that promised great things, but these seldom help much, not fixing the core issues.
April 21st 2015 – Google Mobile-friendly update
From 21st April 2015, slower websites that display poorly on mobile devices will not be ranked as well by Google, who first introduced speed as a ranking parameter back in 2010.
Speed is very important today as mobile devices use slower networks, meaning site speed and compatibility with mobile phones and tablets has become key to both Google and website visitors. As proof, Google have been trialling SLOW labels in their mobile search page results, warning people of slow sites. For business websites especially, this could become an embarrassment as well as reduce their organic search traffic. So, if you want a WordPress website that’s not only mobile-responsive, but also fast, talk to us. [gravityform id=”2″ name=”Contact us” description=”false”]