NEW YORK—April 21. That’s the date Google’s mobile-friendliness update will roll out. What does this mean for your practice? It means that Google will start using mobile-friendly compliance as a ranking factor in smartphone search and that for any OD out there that doesn’t have a mobile friendly website, it is time to act or risk the consequences.
Drop in Ranking
While we don’t know exactly how much site rankings will be affected by this update, non-mobile friendly websites will suffer some drop in rankings. If the update results in your website being pushed out of the top 10 for keyword searches, this will seriously affect your practice’s traffic. A June 2013 study by Chitika showed that 9 out of 10 searchers don't go beyond Google's first page of organic search results and a more recent study by Caphyon from 2014 found that pages two and three of the search results only get 5.59 percent of clicks.
Mobile Usage on the Rise for Optometry Websites
According to our EyeCarePro PowerData results from over 1,000 optometry practice websites last month, mobile traffic accounts for 34.73 perent of all traffic, with tablets taking another 7 percent ...that’s a lot! This means web users are using mobile to find local optometrists at a high rate (approaching 50 percent) and if you don’t have a mobile site, your traffic results will suffer. Another interesting finding, yet not relevant to this point, is that Apple has 60 percent of that traffic on their devices.
Responsive designs adapt their layout to the device that you are viewing from and are therefore mobile-friendly. We’re working with clients to offer either pure mobile sites (for all new sites 2015 and beyond) or to help them with updates for responsive design sites.