Google has announced by the end of April 2015, they will be increasing mobile usability as a ranking factor. Bottom line; your site needs to work on mobile devices if you want people to find your site on the internet.
Here are some of the top questions you should ask about your mobile readiness of you site. (Plus a couple other quick tips at the end.)
1) Blocked External Files
If the Google is not able to get to the JavaScript, CSS, images, etc, they will have trouble indexing your site. Many webmasters will use a "robots.txt file to block these files. There are some good technical reasons to do this. From a business perspective though, you do not want this on a modern mobile design.
What to do? Ask your webmaster or design company if this is something they are aware of and have or are fixing. You can also use a free tool, "Fetch", provided by Google. Take a look at the tools features Fetch Website , mess around with the web content tool, to get an idea of how search engines are seeing your site.
2) Content That Can Not Be Read By Search Engines
Content such as flash, does not work on modern devices; or at least not that well. Also these types of content can not be read by Google. They should be updated with modern content equivalents. HTML5 allows you to still provide this type of content to your site and also let Google know what the web site is providing.
What to do? Unless you know how to do animation, you will need to contact a web developer. You are wanting content that is HTML5 compliant. You want a report, mentioned above, that this content is ranking.
3)Separate Mobile and Desktop Sites
Yes this can be this quickest and often cheaper, in the short run, fix. This can cause issues because of duplicate content; among other things. Simply put, how do the search engines know what site to rank. You have at least two. Possibly with different content and images, etc.
What to Do? Make you layout responsive. They are so many ways to do this; and responsive web design is fairly new, you should do some simple searches on adaptive and responsive design. Get the basic idea of what a responsive mobile friendly site is. Once again, sorry but will end every answer with: Contact your web company or me for help or information.
4) Bad Links On and Off Your Website
In the past webmasters discovered they could rank higher and also control the links to specific pages on a site by building links on the website to another page on the website. Essentially, give the user, and Google, only links back to the site they were on. You have been stuck in this loop most likely.
Not only is this bad for users who can not get not figure out how to get off you site; running around in circles. Search engines have updated to punish sites that only link to themselves. Call it a selfish penalty.
What to Do? You need links from your site, and other sites, to rank. That will not change. Do not build links for the pure reason of having a link. Does the link make sense? Should it link to another page off my site?
TIP: Have links that are external(links to other sites), open in a new window. User stays on your site but still gets the extra content you directed them to.
5) SSL (Security Certificate)
Have you ever seen sites that start with https://www.somesite.com instead of http://. In case you missed it the first one has an extra S "https://" . That s means the page is sending encrypted secured data. Once again commercial website users require and love security, so the search engines have given boost to sites that take this extra step.
What to Do? An SSL Certificate is just an add on for your site that must be installed. I think someone said to ask your webmaster if you do not know SSL. Otherwise, with a little research this is a fairly quick fix.
Summary:
Mobile is here and if you are not ready for it, it will cost real revenue. In the last few years people surfing the internet for online product has increased from under 20% to over 60%, in many vertical online markets. Have questions or comments? Use the contact link and leave us a note.