Good, not great…
It has been nearly 3 years since Google started penalizing websites that are not mobile friendly. At the start of this change, more than 8 in 10 M&A websites had no mobile functionality. Fast forward a few years and many firms have complied with Google’s no longer new requirements – in fact, almost 50% of the M&A websites we track are not mobile friendly.
This is a huge improvement but it still leaves 1 in 2 websites non-compliant. When your website is not mobile friendly, and in some cases simply built on dated technology, Google penalizes the site by ‘sandboxing’ it. Poke around our other blog entries and you will see deeper dives into what this is and how to tell if you have been sandboxed. For now, know that this Google imposed penalty is still the number 1 inhibitor of search result improvement in the M&A space.
The struggle is real.
Here is how negatively impactful not having a mobile site is – our team no longer will work with new clients that do not meet this minimum standard opting to either build clients a new website first or make a referral to another firm. This is done because sites that are being penalized simply are too hard to generate SEO results for. Sure, we can clean up your site, help with content creation and more, but this is an exercise in putting good money after bad – to the point of being so difficult that we simply turn away the business.
What you should do…
If your site is in good standing and you have not started on your own search improvement efforts, you can move forward confidently. If not, you should consider either pausing whatever SEO efforts you have live or turn your attention (and budget) towards fixing the source of the problem – your website.
If you are considering a new website please contact us. In the coming weeks we will be launching our own new website along with rolling out some exciting news about new CMS options including our new capabilities in Web Flow. Learn more about how we can start improving your search results and lead flow at the source by building your next website by visiting www.mergerlabs.com.
