You don’t need to be an internet marketing expert to know that mobile searches are on the rise. In fact, some analysts say that the number of mobile searches performed on a smartphone or tablet will surpass the ones done on traditional desktop’s by 2014!
The debate between using responsive web design or a separate mobile website is a hot topic. However, if SEO is a focal point of your online strategy then here are some reasons to consider responsive web design.
It Makes Google Happy
If you plan on seeing any SEO success, you’ve got to keep Google’s wishes in mind. Luckily, you can give your website AND your SEO a boost with a responsive web design.
How?
At the end of 2012, Google actually recommended that site owners use a responsive web design. They even went as far as to call this design “the industry best practice”! The reason it’s a best practice, is it allows Google to be more efficient when crawling, indexing and organizing your content from only one URL and HTML code.
Visitors Will Be More Likely to Stick Around.
Creating a better user-experience across multiple devices and screen sizes is one of the most appealing aspects of responsive web design. Let’s face it, there is an abundance of different mobile devices and tablets available and it’s impossible to anticipate what platform a user will access your site from. By having a responsive website that addresses these variables will help translate to a better and more consistent user-experience.
In addition, page load speed and bounce rate play a huge part in SEO. So, if your website doesn’t allow for a better user experience from a mobile device, you’re going to wind up with a lot of mobile visitors bouncing away. In the end, Google is going to assume that you don’t have valuable content to offer (after all, if you did, people wouldn’t be bouncing!), and they’re going to rank you lower than your competitors who do.
It Combines and Makes SEO Easier to Manage.
Even if you think you’ve accounted for everyone and every device by creating separate desktop and mobile versions of your website, there’s still one very important thing you probably didn’t know…….
Having a separate desktop and mobile site also requires each to have it’s own SEO campaign. That’s right twice the amount of SEO work or SEO cost to compete. However, when you go responsive, both versions are one in the same – meaning that you are not having to build SEO for 2 different url’s. This is a major key advantage a responsive website has over a separate mobile site.
In conclusion, when something is recommended by Google and your goal is to get the most out of your SEO efforts, why would you even consider doing the opposite?
