The online tech and marketing media is awash with stories about the roll-out of Google’s mobile update which begins today. T
he change will mean those websites that Google deems mobile- friendly (easier to use on a mobile phone), will rank higher in mobile search results. But should PRs and marketers who operate on behalf of tech and other business-to-business companies really care?
After all, business people generally conduct most of their work from a laptop or possibly a tablet (some even still use those clunky desktop thingies) so this update shouldn’t have a big impact on B2B marketers, right?
Wrong. Because my experience is that in the B2B sector, especially in the tech sector where I operate, buyers often consume a lot of content during the research and decision-making process – case studies, white papers, company blogs etc. And a lot of that online research is going to be conducted when they are out of the office – while travelling, in between meetings even when a thought strikes them out of office hours (when they aren’t ‘officially’ working). So there’s a good chance they’ll be using a phone.
It’s also true that people will do their initial online research on the phone when they are out and about and have a spare moment and then go back to sites they thought were interesting, when they get back to their laptop in the office. So if you never get seen in those initial mobile searches, you’ll never get to first base!
Hence even if you work for a B2B organisation, it’s pretty important for your website to be mobile-friendly.
Google rarely gives any notice when it makes changes to its algorithm. But this time it has provided plenty of warning and wants webmasters to be well prepared for the change. Areas that Google feels are important for a good mobile friendly experience include having large text that’s visible on a small mobile screen and links that are not so close to each other that they’re difficult to navigate using your finger.
If you want know more, check out this Google blog post. There’s even a Google tool to test whether a site is mobile friendly