If you know anything about SEO, you will know that updates to the Google rankings algorithms over the past few years have led to an increased focus on mobile-friendly content. A huge percentage of the world’s internet users now browse from smartphones and other mobile devices, which means that it’s important to make sure that your website is accessible to them.
The best way to do this is by creating a mobile responsive website which is versatile and able to adapt to different devices. In short, SEO and mobile responsiveness are closely linked, because websites which aren’t optimised for mobile browsers tend to be penalised by the search engines.
With this in mind, I’ve covered a few of the most important questions people have about mobile optimisation and SEO.
What Is Responsive Design?
Basically, mobile responsive websites are those which are built with responsive CSS code that allows them to adapt to different devices with different sizes. A responsive website will look different on different devices, but the idea is that it should be attractive and easy to use, no matter how it’s viewed.
Fortunately, most website builder and WordPress templates nowadays come with built-in mobile responsiveness, which means that it’s not something you will have to worry about unless you have an old website.
If you do have an old site which isn’t optimized for mobile devices, it’s extremely important to update it. Otherwise your chances of achieving a good search engine ranking are poor, and you will have a lot of trouble engaging with visitors browsing on a mobile device.
How Is Responsive Design Related To SEO?
In short, responsive design will improve both your website’s performance and the user experience, which are both very important SEO ranking factors. This means that well designed responsive websites will naturally achieve a better search engine ranking.
Responsive sites are more usable – Basically, a website which renders differently on different devices is always going to be easy to navigate and use. This means that people will be likely to stick around and browse your content, rather than leaving your site after a few minutes.
Responsive sites tend to load fast – If your responsive website is built well, it should have a low page load speed. It has long been known that fast load speeds are closely related to good search engine rankings, and you should strive to be improving your website’s speed all the time.
Responsive websites are easier to manage – Some people go down the road of creating separate websites for the mobile and desktop versions of their website. Although this is possible, you will have issues with duplicate content and having to use two separate URLs – which can severely impact your rankings.
Final Word
Ultimately, responsive mobile design and SEO are closely related. Almost all high ranking websites use responsive design techniques – and for good reason. If your website doesn’t already include mobile responsive features, I’d recommend performing some maintenance and get them included as soon as you can.
You will be happy that you did!
