Does your site work on mobile?
Does your blog work and look good on mobile devices? It should. Sites that don’t adapt to mobile screens suffer greatly in Google search results. Google announced mobile-first indexing in 2016, so this isn’t exactly old news.
Essentially, your site needs to be mobile responsive. If you’re not sure what that means, it just means your site automatically adapts to different size screens. This is not the same as shrinking. If all your site does is shrinks, that’s not mobile responsive. Your site theme will usually CHANGE to adapt to smaller screens so that everything remains readable, you don’t have to zoom in to read the next, navigation menus actually function, etc.
Most modern themes are designed to be mobile responsive right away, although you always want to test it to make sure. Google provides a test to see if you’re mobile-friendly.
You can also test it right in your desktop web browser if you like. For instance, both Chrome and Firefox have a tool called Inspector built-in. Simply right-click anywhere on your site and choose “Inspect” or “Inspect Element”.
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You’ll then see a little phone/tablet icon in the Inspector.
You’ll then get a mobile version of your site. You can even select different devices to see what it would look like.
Another thing to keep in mind is that this isn’t only about your site theme. Even if your theme was designed to be mobile responsive, you might have done things to your site that harmed it. Perhaps theme modifications or the addition of plug-ins. So, it is important to test it.
Also, Google wants a good mobile experience. This means getting rid of any popups, full screen takeovers or anything that makes it difficult to use on mobile. Being “mobile responsive” isn’t just a checkbox you can check off. You have to actually USE the site that way and ensure it is user friendly.
If you run any slide-in opt-in forms for list building (or popups, splash screens, etc.), make sure you exempt mobile devices. I personally use (and recommend) Thrive Leads and it makes it easy.
So, go and test your site. Make sure it looks good on mobile and you don’t have anything that gets in the way of the user when reading your content.
– David