Commercial Listings Website Launch

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Konrad Commercial has been a long time client with a simple commercial listings website that was originally built on Joomla. It ranked reasonably well for many years and has been the main promotional medium for the company.

Challenge

Since Google’s recent algorithm change, a website’s mobile search rankings are demoted if it does not display well on mobile devices. Konrad Commercial was not mobile-friendly. In addition, it was a bit of a bear to update and add new listings. Time to step into 2015 with a responsive WordPress website.

Solution

The move to WordPress was a step in the right direction to achieve ease of content management going forward. However, though we initially started the project intending to use a “real estate listings” plugin, it became clear that it was going to be too restrictive for our client’s needs.

With the help of the awesome Advanced Custom Fields plugin we were able to craft a custom solution using Wordpress’ default post type. The result was an easy-to-edit, flexible and responsive listings solution. A better targeted and implemented on-site keyword strategy will also help improve search engine visibility.

Result

Though it’s too early for results, the on-site SEO improvements and Twitter integration should help boost traffic to the website. The enhanced user experience for mobile will serve prospective customers, realtors, business owners and ultimately our client, well.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Ranking Signal Deadline

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In the past month I’ve been getting notifications from Google that the mobile rankings of some of my client’s websites would be affected due to their inability to display properly on mobile devices. This informative article that I discovered via MOZ’s weekly newsletter, states that as of April 21, 2015, Google will make ‘mobile-friendly’ a ranking signal. This means that if your website doesn’t display well on mobile, according to Google’s criteria, your website will rank lower on mobile search requests. With 25-50% of users on mobile devices (depending on the industry and demographic of users), this could seriously affect web traffic on a previously well-optimized website.

Google's Mobile Friendly test

Google’s ‘mobile-friendly’ test

 

Wondering how your website will fare with this algorithm update? The Google Developers site provides feedback on if you website is mobile-friendly or not. Simply type in the URL of your website and it will return a screenshot of how your site displays on a phone, along with the mobile-friendly response.

So, if your website doesn’t fare so well in the eyes of mobile-focused Google, what are your options? According to insight gleaned from the preceding articles, here they are:

1. Make some pages mobile friendly

With a limited budget, it might make sense to make the highest traffic pages on your website mobile-friendly, as a short-term solution.

2. Add a separate ‘mobile-friendly’ website

This can be achieved by plugins or template sets that are optimized for mobile. This may be a good option for high-traffic e-commerce websites but for most this is not the most effective or cost-effective solution.

3. Responsive site rebuild

If it’s been more than 3 years since the last website build, this option makes the most sense. Most companies or organizations could use a content or brand refresh within that timeframe. With the growing trend towards mobile and tablet use, a website optimized for all devices (mobile, tablet & desktop) makes the most sense from a brand, user experience and long-term budgeting perspective.

Let me know your thoughts below. If you need more information or are interested in learning more about your options, we invite you to get in touch.