If your website is powered by WordPress (and I'm talking about using WordPress on your own website or URL, not having a blog hosted on WordPress.com) then it should be possible to make it mobile-friendly without needing a huge amount of work to your existing site template.
As of late April 2015, Google announced an algorithm update which means, if your website is not 'mobile-friendly' according to Google's definition, it will be penalised in the search results for searches conducted via a mobile device.
(It's important to be clear about this - only searches carried out on a mobile device will be affected, but in almost all cases it's still worth making sure your site is viewed as mobile-friendly by Google.)
Unless your website has a responsive design or a specific mobile template, it's very likely that it will fail the test - but simply updating it to be mobile-friendly can give you an edge over your competition in mobile search results for this very reason.
As I said above, there should be no need for extensive redesign work - I am by no means a professional web designer, but I can make your WordPress site mobile-friendly all the same, from an SEO perspective.
How do I do this?
I can install an official WordPress plug-in which will allow you to switch on a mobile-friendly site template just by ticking a box in your settings page.
This is the fastest and easiest way to get a non-mobile-friendly WordPress site to be mobile-friendly, and even if you plan to get a fully responsive website designed later, it's still a quick way to make sure you don't lose any more of your SEO value than you already have done.
In order to install and activate the plugin, I'll need admin access to your WordPress installation; many of my clients already give me a login so I can upload SEO content directly to their site, so there's no need to feel awkward about it, I know my way around WordPress and what's safe to touch.
To install the plugin I may need to update your WordPress installation, but this is very quickly and easily done just by clicking the prompt at the top of your admin screen.
What will it do?
Google look for a few specific things that could make your website difficult to view on a mobile device - links too close together, text too small, and so on.
Activating a mobile-friendly template means your website will detect visits from mobile devices, and show those visitors a stripped-down version of your site.
It will still include navigation to all of the main pages of your site, your main homepage content, and a link to view the full desktop version of your site too, so you're not making it impossible for people to find any of your pages - in fact, you're making it much easier for them to read the information on a small screen.
The mobile-friendly template is a standard WordPress one and is typical of most mobile sites of this kind; I'm not offering a web design service here and I won't be able to edit the template, but as a low-cost option or as a stop-gap until your fully responsive website template is ready, this is a fast and cheap method.
(To put it into some context, the method I'm offering here is the approach I have used on my own WordPress sites, and I'm perfectly happy with the results.)
How much will it cost?
I'm offering to:
- update your WordPress installation (if required)
- install the relevant plugin
- activate the mobile-friendly template
- confirm that your site is mobile-friendly
I can provide you with before and after results from Google's own mobile-friendly testing tool to show that the process has been successful, and show you how Google now sees your site on mobile devices.
Where we encounter any problems - unusual server configurations that prevent the plugin from working - I can offer a certain amount of troubleshooting to try to get it to activate correctly (if you've ever done anything like this with WordPress before, you'll know it can take a little bit of persuading sometimes) and if it's clear that it won't work for any reason, obviously I won't charge for the work done or the time taken.
If you have a standalone WordPress site and you need it to be mobile-friendly, this is the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to achieve that - if all goes well, the whole process can be completed in a matter of minutes, although I'm allowing extra time in each case for before and after testing, troubleshooting and any other delays.
For everything I'm charging a flat fee of £100 - by comparison, I've heard of some website owners being quoted over £1,300 for a responsive site template, so this is very much a cheaper option! And if I can't successfully complete the update on your site for any reason, there's no charge, so hopefully no risk.
Interested?
All enquiries are welcome, doesn't matter if you're a company, a sole trader, a sponsored blogger etc, the Mobilegeddon algorithm update potentially affects everybody so now is the time to act and make sure your site is mobile-friendly.
I simply need administrator access to your WordPress dashboard, and you should be aware that:
- any updates are carried out at your own risk, I will follow the normal update process as outlined above, but if anything goes wrong for reasons outside of my control, I'm not promising limitless resources to put it right!
- this is a one-time procedure to make your WordPress site mobile-friendly, I'm not offering ongoing tech support or any future updates if Google's algorithms change again, or a bespoke mobile site template.
That being said, I genuinely believe this is the easiest and best option for small businesses etc who just need to quickly make WordPress mobile-friendly to avoid losing out on any SEO value you've built up over the years.
