If your roofing website is not mobile-optimized, help is on the way!

Good news, roofing contractors - Google is launching a new service called GOMO to make your website optimized for mobile phone devices on-demand! Currently, access to this site is password restricted, but the header image shows a smartphone with the caption "Mobilize your site now." This is definitely a new initiative (on September 1, 2011 Google registered the domains howtogomo.com, howtogomo.net and howtogomo.org).

Mobile advertisements are a big revenue stream for Google, who offers a wide range of free tools to help you mobilize your website. Google has found that businesses are lagging behind on mobile content compared to consumers, and GOMO seems to be directed at solving that problem.  Google currently offers a limited service called Google Mobile Optimizer for crudely converting Web pages to stripped-down, temporary mobile views, but they have a vested interest in building a more impressive, durable mobile site converter which I suspect is GOMO. Google also offers a free mobile website builder for building mobile sites from scratch using a range of templates.

In addition to these free services for mobilizing sites, Google is incentivizing good mobile content with its ad programs and punishing sites that aren't mobile-friendly. Google is rearranging its AdWords program to reward mobile-optimized sites and adding +1 buttons to mobile ads.

The take-away message here is... get a mobile-friendly version of your website up-and-running ASAP if you want to be found online.

If you would like to discuss mobile websites or would like help getting your website mobile-friendly, please email Chris@RoofPal.com.