The search giant’s latest algorithm update is predicted to demote all websites lacking mobile friendly design and signals including those owned by law firms and solo attorneys.
Google announces that starting April 21, they will be implementing a stricter usage of the mobile-friendliness signal to weed out websites that are not showing properly in the browsers of mobile devices.
In the official statement that they released in their blog post (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html), they specifically emphasized that this update will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide. It will also have a significant impact in their search results. The good news though is, this would help users find more relevant and higher quality search results that are specifically optimized for their mobile devices.
According to a Dallas based lawyer marketing firm, OneSEOCompany.com, this latest algorithm update is expected to affect all websites including those owned by law firms and solo attorneys. If their websites are not yet optimized for mobile users, then now is the high time to revamp them and treat Google’s announcement as a very serious warning.
Qamar Zaman, CEO of OneSEOCompany.com, advises law firms and solo attorneys to heed Google’s warning and make use of the available time to optimize their websites for mobile users. This is to avoid any kinds of penalties they will possibly incur if their web pages are still not designed for mobile devices after April 21.
“Law firm websites that are still not mobile friendly after the mentioned date can lose a lot of traffic and would also lose their search rankings. Worst case is, by not making their websites mobile-friendly, they are letting their competitors steal the traffic and clicks that are supposed to be theirs.” Zaman added.
Zaman and his lawyer marketing company are not the only ones expressing this sentiment. In a recent article published on Business2Community.com (http://www.business2community.com/seo/google-introduce-penalty-websites-mobile-friendly-01193149), experts have also been saying the same.
“As of April 21st, if your website neglects to provide users with a mobile-friendly design you will be penalised by having your site’s SEO ranking lowered on Google, and, in association, companies that have optimised their site for mobile users will be rewarded by having their ranking improved. Google have already deployed ‘mobile-friendly’ labels to indicate which companies have optimized their website, aimed to encourage users towards a more positive search journey.”
Now that everything is clear, the next thing that need to be done is to start implementing the mobile optimization strategies. Google actually has given a few steps (https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/get-started/?utm_source=wmc-blog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=mobile-friendly) to guide law firms and solo attorneys on how to make their websites mobile-friendly. They highly recommended the following tools to help website owners determine how much mobile optimization they need.
- If you want to test a few pages, you can use the Mobile-Friendly Test.
- If you have a site, you can use your Webmaster Tools account to get a full list of mobile usability issues across your site using the Mobile Usability Report.
On the other hand, in Qamar Zaman’s article published last year, he actually wrote in detail the mistakes most law firm websites are doing when it comes to optimizing them for mobile users.
“Having an unplayable content happens when viewers see your attorney site in search results and when they try to click your site’s link; they can’t view your contents since the plugin is not supported by their used mobile. This can leave your potential clients to click the back button and find other lawyer sites. What you can do to avoid this mistake is to check on your own phone if your site is compatible with it and if your contents like the images and videos are viewable in your mobile. You can also choose to write the summaries or the transcripts for your law related videos so that in case viewers can’t see your video, they can still read and know the content.”
Zaman also mentioned the importance of allowing Googlebot to crawl the images, Javascript, and CSS content to fully optimize a law firm’s website.
“Other common mistake is the blocked content for mobile configuration. You need to make sure that Googlebot can crawl your law firm site including its images, Javascript , and CSS content. Also, keep in mind to avoid cloaking and you can do this by showing similar version of your site to both Google and the users. Make sure you are treating Googlebot like regular user.”
With all these warnings and advices, Zaman and his team, are quite confident that their clients are well-prepared with this latest algorithm update from Google. And, for all those who are still confused on what is the next step to take, Zaman encourages them to call his lawyer marketing firm at 972.437.8942, or they can visit their official website – www.oneseocompany.com
