3 Reasons the Mobile Web is Overblown for Promo Products

Google released a new algorithm that punishes your site if it isn't mobile-friendly. Sure, a mobile site is a smart idea and you should have one. However, it is not urgent for most of you. Here are three reasons the hype is not going to match up the reality for most promotional products companies (as well as a few other companies).

1. Your site is already inadequate

Rather than focus on mobile, focus on your overall site. If your site is not very good today, "mobile enabling it" is not worthwhile. Statistics I've seen from many industry sites tell me that 90 percent of your traffic to your site comes from a desktop computer or tablet today, so focus on the 90 percent. (To be clear, Google counts tablets as mobile along with phones, but many sites operate well on a tablet despite not being mobile-friendly.)

2. Your SEO rank is already low

If your SEO (search engine optimization) rank is low, being mobile-friendly isn't going to help much. Having a better site overall will improve your SEO more than a mobile site will. In fact, even Google admits this: "While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal—so even if a page with high-quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query."

Millions of pages and hundreds of books talk about how to make your site more SEO friendly but the bottom line is: "Do your customers like using your site?" And if the answer is yes, it is likely going to be ranked well for SEO.

3. Your customers rarely search on mobile devices