When Faced With ‘Mobilegeddon,’ Mobile Site Design and Performance Are What Counts

There’s been quite a bit of fear in recent weeks about the ominous-sounding “Mobilegeddon” and what it could mean in terms of mobile site searchability. While the name is probably overkill, it's really just a catchy way of telling people that Google is going to be adjusting its mobile search algorithm to factor in “mobile friendly” page design. This means website managers had better design their mobile sites in as user friendly a manner as possible, or else run the risk of being dropped down in Google’s page search rankings.

A site’s mobile friendliness can be factored in a number of ways. With the ultimate goal being favorable results in Google searches conducted on mobile devices, it makes sense to abide by the criteria that Google itself has outlined:

• Avoid software that's not common on mobile devices, like Flash.
• Use text that's readable without zooming.
• Size content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom.
• Place links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped.

You’ll notice that all of these criteria are related to site design rather than performance standards such as mobile site load speed and availability. Yet back in 2010, Google stated that its algorithm would begin to factor performance into its search rankings when it came to desktop sites. Now, given the prevalence of mobile browsing, wouldn’t it make sense to assume that performance will become a factor in this arena as well?

Of course it would, yet Google is being predictably vague about the whole matter. While it's not explicitly saying that mobile site performance will factor into its revamped search rankings, Google has made it clear in the past (as part of its mobile SEO guidelines) that slow mobile sites are a “common mistake.” However, whether that’s something that Google has already factored into its mobile search algorithm or if it’s just part of the natural meritocracy of a page’s traffic is impossible to know.

What we do know is that page speed is already a factor in Google's algorithm for desktop sites, so frankly it would be surprising if it wasn’t already a factor in its mobile search rankings. However, at the end of the day, optimized mobile site design and performance are what organizations should be striving to achieve on their mobile sites anyway, regardless of whether Google is considering performance. Even if organizations just focus on site design and ignore performance, users will ultimately abandon your site when they grow frustrated with endless error pages or slow load times. Consider, for instance, how Google’s own mobile search is impacted by bandwidth issues at different times throughout the day:

Conversely, if a mobile site performs great, but the design is poor, you could be pushed to page two of the search results on Google. This fast-loading site will miss 94 percent of mobile users.

Clearly, an integrated strategy that considers both mobile site design and site performance is the way to go. Mobile-friendly design strategies like Adaptive and Responsive can have a dramatic effect on your mobile performance due to the size of the pages that are being delivered to end users. In order to maximize mobile site speed, there are a few additional things organizations should keep in mind:

• Decrease number of bytes.
• Minimize number of requests.
• Reduce third-party presence.
• Limit domain sharding to two.
• Deliver static content from a content delivery network (CDN).

And if you only have one site because you’re employing a responsive web design strategy, consider these additional steps as well:

• Lighten up page design.
• Asynchronously load third-party provider tags (non-CDN).
• Optimize infrastructure performance.
• Defer loading of JavaScript.

Ultimately, getting certified by Google as a “mobile friendly” site is important, but it’s just one part of a successful mobile business plan. Web performance is being seen more than ever as a business differentiator, so focusing on both mobile site design and performance is a sound strategy regardless of whether performance is — or eventually will be — included in Google’s search algorithms. If organizations instill a culture of performance, they’ll be better poised to tackle whatever new developments come down the pike.

Mehdi Daoudi is the co-founder and CEO of Catchpoint Systems, a web performance monitoring solution provider.