https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd9MIMdmZHk

As they often do, Google gives hints before it turns the search world upside down. The above video is from Bloomberg Business and is an interview with Jason Spero, at that time head of global mobile sales and strategies at Google Inc. The thing that strikes me so interesting about the video is that it is from 2012. For those that may be in the dark, Google has publicly announced that they are bringing about a kind of “Mobilegeddon” come April 21st of this year (2015). This is catching many people off-guard as they do not have their websites Mobile optimized and responsive and will therefore bring about the wrath of Google. But the video above demonstrates Google’s emphasis on mobile a hardy three years ago. We shouldn’t be caught off-guard when Google starts to say – “Hey, this is important…”. But none-the-less, one still needs to determine if their website is ready for the mobile changes, and to take a step back, what are the mobile changes.

Mobile Changes Coming to Google April 21st

Google has seen the increase of mobile usage and search and has realized for some time that many website are not optimized to display on mobile devices properly. In a effort to provide the best results to their users. Google has made a “Google-god” choice. It is going to change the algorithm of mobile search to include an expanded use of mobile-friendliness ranking signals. They state that ” This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. “. This is huge. Google is actually telling us that search results are going to be significantly impacted. And for those that don’t know, often times, Google kind of sneaks these changes in, but this one apparently will make such an impact and be so important that they did want to tell the world.

So what does all of this mean? Google realizes that in order for people on mobile devices to have the best user experience, they need to able to find search results that will appear and perform correctly on their mobile device. For those that don’t know, often times pages are either scaled down to a very tiny version of themselves or worse yet, often broken when viewed on mobile devices. Either experience is less than ideal in Google’s eyes and therefore they’ve called for webmasters to get it right or get out of the rankings for mobile!

What To Do To Get Mobile Ready

In an upcoming episode, we’ll be looking at the specific changes that need to be made and the tools to be able to check if your site is mobile optimized. But for now, this is a fair warning to webmasters everywhere. Even though it’s three years in the making – Be Prepared For Mobilegeddon (dunt, dunt, dunt – you can so hear the scary music in the background). If you want to take the safe and honestly more efficient method than trying to figure it out on your own, hire an agency that specializes in helping local business with SEO and mobile marketing. A Utah SEO company like http://barkingfrogseo.com/is an ideal choice. They’ve worked with companies for years, helping them get more customers through their doors by using online channels. Whether local SEO, PPC, or mobile marketing they’ve kept on the cutting edge of Internet Marketing and could easily help you get your website mobile responsive and optimized.

Stay on the lookout for an upcoming post on what specific changes you need to make to your website in order for it to rank well in Mobilegeddon…..