Your website has to be mobile friendly now.

It’s not an option anymore.

Google Mobile Friendly Algorithm’s main focus is on improving the web rather than penalizing bad website and SEO practices. As a business you should see this as a good thing, it’s not harsh like their Panda or Penguin Algorithms. The reason for all of these updates to the way Google’s search feature is used, is to make sure we are getting the most helpful, relevant results when we type in a search on Google. If there were no rules, the search pages would be riddled with spam and incorrect content, and even potentially harmful content, like malware and viruses. Years ago, when the internet was young, that’s kind of how it was, like the Wild West of searching. Google ever changing algorithms help us as consumers and as business owners, to have a mostly hassle-free searching experience.

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Remember years ago, when getting onto the internet was a new experience from a phone. The screens were different proportions and layouts than those of a computer monitor. Back then, no one had really thought about making another version of their website, so that mobile viewers could browse with ease, because it was so new. I remember going onto websites on my phone years ago, and having to scroll way to the left or zoom way in to be able to read anything. And forget about it, if the site had a list of links close together. Trying to press the correct link on website, viewed on a phone was frustrating because the text and links were so small, not optimized to be used with a touchscreen.

These days, that kind of website would not fly.

I know I personally would not stick around and try to navigate an antiquated website on my phone or tablet. There are too many other quality sites that I can get my information from, so I would just click off of that page and move on. Google’s Mobile Friendly Algorithm is making that choice, in a sense for us. If your website does not navigate well on a mobile device, your site will not come up on Google searches on mobile devices. Now you see why I said your website has to be mobile friendly, it’s not an option anymore.

About sixty percent of Google searches come from a mobile device, like a phone or a tablet now. With over half of your potential audience and customer base on mobile devices, regularly, you had better get in the game and optimize your website so that you can even show up at all in mobile searches.

If you have a WordPress site, you can choose a Responsive theme that will automatically optimize your site for a variety of screen sizes. If your site is in HTML, there are different tweaks that can be done to optimize, or you could even make a mobile friendly version of the website in addition to your main site.

Once you have made the necessary changes to your website, so that it can be viewed from a mobile device just as good as a computer, you can resubmit your URL to Google, so that they can crawl your new site and see about getting it back up to a higher rank on mobile searches. You can submit your URL HERE.

This article initially appeared on digitalmarketinggenie