Having a website that is readable on mobile devices is incredibly important these days. Not only does it help your readers enjoy your content better, it actually can improve your rankings. Google has recently announced that they will be releasing a Mobile algorithm update which will affect websites that are NOT mobile friendly. This means that if your website isn’t mobile friendly (also known as a responsive design) you have a good chance that your hard work will not be indexed in Google’s mobile search engine. With that said, let’s get into the 3 simple steps to make your website more mobile friendly.

Step 1) Check if Your Site is Mobile Friendly

Google has provided an online tool that checks if your site is responsive/mobile friendly. This can be done in a few simple steps.
  • Go to the Mobile-Friendly Test page from Google.
  • Enter your URL you wish to test and press the Analyze button
  • Google will tell you if your site is mobile friendly or not
If your results say ‘Not mobile-friendly’, there will be a list of problems that would need to be fixed. Based on the volume and complexity of errors, you can decide to move forward with step 2 or jump to step 3.

Step 2) Fix Your Errors

In some cases, the errors listed will be minor such as content or style formatting problems and can be fixed with a few simple steps. In our screenshot example below, you can see that we have a few issues.

The biggest error within those four is the Mobile viewport not set which means that this website doesn’t have a responsive design. Because of this, I would simply change the theme of the site with one that is responsive.

Step 3) Get a Responsive Theme

If the errors you end up getting are way over your head, I would suggest you look at switching to a different theme that is responsive. A responsive theme will fix any errors you may have and will instantly make your site mobile friendly. There are plenty of great free responsive themes available but my personal favourite is the eleven40 Pro Theme by StudioPress because it is super easy to use. Any affiliate niche website I build using WordPress, the eleven40 Pro is the theme I use. In conclusion, if you want to keep any existing rankings you may have, make sure you check your website right away to ensure it is mobile friendly. If your site ends up not being mobile friendly, decide if you want to spend the time fixing it or simply get a new responsive theme.
Top Recommendation
Wealthy Affiliate

This is where I learned how to get started in online business and it is the only community that I trust for honest top level training on how to make money online. I highly recommend Wealthy Affiliate for its training, tools, live support and included hosting.

Get a Free Starter Account Read the Full Review

Leave a Reply to Tony Omary Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

7 Comments

  1. Hello, Jay. I am having the problem with Google that my website is not responsive on mobile. I’ve been updating some of my pages & posts so I decide to check Google to see if that helped. But it didn’t, next I will try changing my theme to see if that works. Thank you for the valuable information!

    1. You’re welcome Peggy,

      In many cases, the result of not having a wordpress site mobile friendly is due to the theme.

      Try searching your domain name via Google on your mobile phone and if you see ‘Mobile-friendly’, then it’s good to go.

      1. Hi, Jay. My website isn’t mobile friendly and everything Google was telling me to do got my very confused. I think I will try changing my theme to see if that works. Thanks for this information, cheers!

      2. Hi Peggy. A Jay mentions, it is very important to have a resposnive website that is mobile friendly. If you like your theme so much, you might have to use a plug in. Search for WPTouch Mobile Plugin and you will get your problem sorted.

  2. Jaxxy is a handy tool, but after using it for a while, i noticed the search volumes were drastically different than those in the google keyword planner tool, or longtail pro. some would be way more, while others much less than the stats shown in gkwp or longtail, any idea how they scrape their search volume stats?