In April this year Google released its biggest ever Mobile Algorithm which shook not only the SEO world, but also the entire online universe! Businesses that didn't have a mobile friendly website soon got hit by the new Algorithm. In March we published an article called 'Mobile Apocalypse - Google's Mobile Algorithm Set for April Release Date: Are You Ready?' and it now appears that Bing are going to follow in Google's footsteps and also release a Mobile Friendly Algorithm. Continue reading this article to find out what factors Bing will look at, and if their update will have the same impact as Google's.
Unlike the Google update, Bing have released what they will be looking for. There are 4 main requirements that Bing will ask for to ensure that your site is considered 'mobile-friendly'. If your mobile site ticks all the 4 below points, then your site will be considered mobile-friendly on Bing.
- Easy Navigation
The navigation of your mobile site will be very important. Bing will look at all your navigation's on your mobile site, which includes buttons, menus and links. All your navigation links need to be well spaced out so your mobile users don't click on the wrong link and end up somewhere they don't want to be. Just always bear in mind that your mobile site needs to be designed and made with the user 100% in mind.
- Readability of the site
Your mobile site text needs to be easy to read for all users. If the user has to continuously scroll left and right, this is considered as not good, also if they have to zoom in then this will not go in your favour. Bing are looking for mobile sites that are easy to read and easy to access. Just make sure that your font is easy to read and no scrolling is needed.
- Scrolling
All mobile sites should be responsive in size to whatever device they are being viewed on. This means that the user would not need to scroll side to side and would only need to scroll up and down the page. The reason why this is so important is because if the user has to keep scrolling from left to right and right to left they will soon become annoyed, meaning that your site has not been 'friendly' to them.
- Compatibility
Your mobile site needs to be compatible with all devices. This means that you should not have anything on there that can be viewed on one device, and on the other it does not. A great example is Flash, if a user is on an Iphone they will struggle to view any Flash on the site. You just need to make sure that everything on your mobile site is viewable no matter what device or system your visitor is using. Also another note to make is that you need to make it compatible for the Bingbots to crawl your site so they can give your site the 'mobile-friendly' tag. You can do this by not blocking JavaScript or CSS.
The next big question is 'Will Bing penalise my website if it is not mobile-friendly?' and thankfully the answer for the time being in no! Bing will be making mobile friendliness a signaling factor for rankings, but at the moment relevance will continue to overpower mobile friendliness and optimisation. This is great news if your business receives a lot of its traffic from Bing, as it means it will give you a little longer to prepare and make a mobile site which ticks the above points I have mentioned. However if your business receives more traffic from Google then you need to act quick and get a mobile site made for your website!
Currently the answer to this question is unfortunately no, however Bing will be introducing a similar tool to the Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool. This will then report back to you stating if your website is mobile friendly or not. You could also talk to your website company and arrange for them to make your website mobile friendly, if you state the above points to them they can then make sure the mobile site is made correctly and will satisfy Bing.
Article by: Adam Jones