From a user’s viewpoint, having a mobile-friendly website is a must. Consumers are increasingly visiting your website from a range of diverse smartphones, tablets, and other devices—and it simply makes sense to accommodate this rising group of visitors.

Imyself couldn’t agreemore. And centred on a recent statement from Google, having a mobile-friendly website will rapidly become even more critical in today’s digital advertisingscene.

Conferring to a recent column published on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

In simple language: if you want to be classified highly on Google, you can’t afford to have a website that is not mobile-friendly.

The definition of a mobile-friendly website

Google recognises three different kinds of mobile websites: responsive web design, dynamic serving, and distinct URLs. Each of these variantmethodsimpacts your site’s URL structure and HTML in a different manner, but they all attempt to achieve an ideal user-experience for mobile traffic.

Google doesn’t support one format over the other, as long as the pages and assets are reachable to their Google bots. Google does, nonetheless, recommend taking a responsive web design methodology to your website (Backbone suggests responsive websites as well).

Here’s some more data about each kind:

Responsive Web Design

This method will display the same HTML code across all browsers and devices. With a responsive website, the same content is presentedin a different way—and in an idealarrangement—reliant on the screen/window dimensions.

Dynamic Serving

Established on what the server knows about a user’s browser, this alternative will show a changed version of the site (with altered HTML) to the visitor while maintaining the same URL arrangement.

Separate URLs

Finally, having distinct URLs means having one for mobile and one for desktop browsers. This systemidentifies when a user visits from a mobile device and will direct that user to the mobile-specific website.

Is your website Mobile-friendly?

Not certain where your website stands? Fortunately, Google has provided a new feature in its Webmaster Tools that measures your website’s mobile usability.

Added earlier in this year, you can access the “Mobile Usability” function in Webmaster Tools under Search Traffic > Mobile Usability. This will evaluate your site and deliver a comprehensive look at any problems, which pages these problems are found on, and the choice to learn more and get pointers on how to dealwith these glitches.

If you don’t have admission to your Google Webmaster Tools, Google has provided a basic Mobile-Friendly Test that tests and examines your website for how well it shows on smartphones and tablets.

If your site isn’t considered mobile-friendly by this test, it’ll tell you some details why and recommendations for upgrading. While this method isn’t as detailed as the version found in Google Webmaster Tools, it can help as a quick glance into the mobile-friendliness of your site.