Is Your Towing Company Website Mobile-Friendly?
The local search environment has experienced dramatic shifts and updates in the past couple years and now, more than ever, it is vital to have a mobile-friendly towing company website. A mobile-friendly website is just that – a website designed with the primary function of performing well on a mobile device. Here are two important reasons to make the transition to a mobile-friendly towing site.
Live Where the Searchers Live
Plain and simple, valuable towing searches are happening on mobile devices. This isn’t new news. We’re all aware the towing industry has shifted the focus from print marketing to online marketing, as you can see here and here. Back in 2015, mobile search overtook desktop search for the first time (Source).
Aggregate data gathered from Lift Marketing Group’s clients show that 90% of pay-per-click ad spend is happening on mobile devices. While there is no hard data on the percentage of towing-related searches happening on mobile, we can safely assume that the percentages are close to that of PPC ad spending.
With such a large majority of valuable towing searches happening on mobile devices, it’s imperative for your towing company website to cater to the mobile audience.
The Mobile-First Index & Your Site
Google’s push toward the mobile-first index has been a long time coming, and mid-July we received notices that a majority of our clients’ sites were officially shifted to the mobile-first index. This means that Google indexes and ranks site based on the content of the mobile experience, and not the desktop experience as it has done historically (Source). So, if you have been thinking, “But I have a desktop site. That will get the job done,” – that’s not the case anymore.
If you only have a desktop version of your towing website, Google will index your site based on that version, but you are competing to rank against sites that are more and more becoming mobile-friendly. And those mobile-friendly sites are receiving better ranking signals than those that aren’t mobile-friendly. We know what they say about bringing a knife to a gunfight…
The Mobile-Friendly Test
Unsure if your towing company website is mobile-friendly? Head here and simply plug in your site URL and run the test. But before we wrap up, an important caveat:
A mobile-friendly site doesn’t necessarily mean it’s user-friendly. Your tow website can meet the mobile-friendly qualifications but still be a nightmare to navigate, just as effectively driving away potential customers.
In the next post, we’ll take a look at using mobile-responsive design for your towing company website. This is the most effective way to give Google what it’s looking for while simultaneously providing a user-friendly experience.
