This week Google announced new mobile based criteria which will affect your search result ranking for users searching from a mobile device. This makes sense, Google wants to return higher quality mobile pages to users on mobile devices. But it means if pages on your site aren't responsive or the responsive design doesn't meet Google's criteria, you may see those pages drop in the results.
Fortunately, Google has provided a tool which you can use to check your site. It will let you know what you need to improve on your site in order to avoid being penalized when these new criteria go live April 21st.
Your site may be considered mobile unfriendly if it meets any of the following criteria:
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Text is too small to read
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Links are too close together
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A mobile viewport is not set
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Content is wider than your screen
For users who are using a popular CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and more Google has made guides on how to make your site more mobile friendly. This is part of Google's guide to modern web fundamentals, which is a fairly comprehensive resource which contains Google's ideas on web design best practices.
Mobile web traffic has of course been on the rise for the last decade, and that will only continue. It's worth taking a few fairly easy steps to improve not only your site's ranking in the mobile search results, but the user experience of your mobile visitors.
