Matt Cutts Warns of Potential Issues for Non-Mobile Websites

The Digital Essentials, Part 3

Developing a robust digital strategy is both a challenge and an opportunity. Part 3 of the Digital Essentials guide series explores five of the essential technology-driven experiences customers expect, which you may be missing or not fully utilizing.

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This morning I was lucky enough to attend PubCon’s keynote speaker, Matt Cutts. Cutts is the head of Google’s web spam team. He is the guy who makes changes to the Google engine and algorithm working to provide quality and relevant websites to its searchers.
If your organization has a website, you are well aware how important it is to rank well in Google as it drives a large portion of your traffic.
Cutts did a great job going over changes we have seen in the last year as well as preparing us for changes we can expect to see. The most important of these (to me) was mobile.

To say it briefly: Cutts let the PubCon attendees know that if we are working with websites that are not mobile-friendly (i.e. written in flash, non-responsive, slow load time, etc.) they can expect to be taken out of mobile device SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
 

What does this mean for you? If your website is not mobile-friendly, and you are getting any traffic from search engines, you need to start considering updating your website to be mobile friendly in an actionable way.
Of course, do not start considering your mobile strategy simply because we are aware Google has the potential to “penalize” websites that are not. Consider it because Google is letting us know that it is what users want and need.
What I mean by this is if your target market is searching for something on their phone or tablet, and finding your website will help them; ensure not only that you are appearing in front of them but that you are giving them a good experience by having your website work well on their device.