Toward the end of February, Google announced that they plan to place increasing importance on a site’s mobile-friendliness in search results for mobile devices starting April 21st. This is great news for HubPages because Hubs are already optimized for mobile. Mobile traffic is currently on the rise and with the release of this algorithm, we expect to see it increase even more dramatically.
As you can see from this month’s data, mobile traffic to Hubs already exceeds desktop traffic. With the release of the new mobile algorithm, we expect mobile traffic to comprise at least 60% of our total traffic (and possibly as much as 70%) by the end of 2015.
The new Mobile Friendly label in mobile search results:
What this means for Hubbers:
A high percentage of the people reading your Hubs will be doing so on smartphones. It is more important than ever to double check the layout of your Hubs to make sure they look good on mobile. We recommend making all capsules full-width wherever possible because while all capsules are automatically displayed full-width on mobile, the capsules may not display in the order you intended. Making them full-width means your capsules will always display exactly the way you want them to and offer a consistent experience for mobile and desktop users.
We understand that there may be reasons why you are unable to make all capsules full-width. For example, if your Hub includes photos that become blurry or pixelated when expanded to full-width size, it’s better to leave them half-width until you can replace them with better quality photos. However, it’s important that you check the Mobile Preview option for each Hub that contains half-width capsules to make sure the capsules will appear in the right order on smartphones.
To see the Mobile Preview of a Hub, simply edit that Hub and choose the “Preview” option at the top of the HubTool:
Then make sure the Mobile Preview tab is selected:
This preview shows your Hub exactly as it will look to users on smartphones. Take a quick look at the entire Hub to be sure half-width capsules appear in the correct order. If they do not, you may have to tweak your Hub’s layout to ensure that all the capsules display correctly on mobile.
I know this is potentially a lot of work for Hubbers with tens and hundreds of Hubs, but more and more people are using search engines from their mobile devices, and it’s critical that we as online writers prepare our content for the search traffic of the future.