Are You Configured Correctly For Smart Phone Searches?

In one of the Google’s official blog posts, Google has highlighted the issues pertaining to misconfiguration of websites for smart phone searches or for mobile searches. All of us know that mobile search is one of the fastest growing segments of the internet user trends and this segment will only likely to grow more. You will have to therefore make sure that your website is correctly configured to serve these users. Google has announced that it will be making number of ranking changes that affect the sites that are not configured correctly for smart phone users. You are therefore required to double check whether your website is rendering correctly for the desktop users as well as for the mobile users.

Let us take a quick look at some of the factors highlighted by Google. The first mistake Google has identified with regard to smart phone configuration of websites is the faulty redirects. If all the pages of your desktop site is going to redirect mobile gadget users to the homepage of your mobile site it is a considered faulty redirect. When mobile phone users access any particular page of your website, your desktop site should direct them to the respective page of your mobile website so that your viewers do not have to struggle through the navigation process.

Google suggests that you redirect the pages to its equivalent mobile page. Individual redirect is the simple way to go about creating smart phone friendly websites. You will have to make sure that your smart phone friendly pages are not error pages. If the user tries to access your website, using mobile phones through a desktop website and an equivalent page should be available in a different URL then rather than sending the users to a 404 page, you should send the users to the equivalent mobile page. This ultimately saves the user from unnecessary distress.

When you are redirecting your visitors to your mobile pages, it is not enough that only the pages are correctly redirected but the users should be able to access all the content in the page fully without any problem. For example, if you have embedded a video in your website it is important that you check your videos to see that they are accessible and that it is working correctly. Your videos should be playable in mobile devices.

You will have to test the entire site with mobile devices. When you are testing your website, make sure that you test it in all the platforms and not just with Android. Only when you test all the pages you will be able to identify the issues that your visitors are likely to face and have them corrected before your users get to see them. Google has started giving very high importance to mobile site configuration. You will have to make sure that your website is matching Google’s requirements on mobile site configuration. Get your website tested right away in mobile devices.

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