What is a Responsive Website? and Why You Should Care?

By | March 25, 2015

Convert Websites to Responsive Design to Remain Competitive

Technology moves quickly, and what worked for Irving business owners in the past doesn’t necessarily work now. If your company’s webpage doesn’t use responsive web design, you may be losing potential visitors or hurting your online rankings. Changing a web page to responsive design can be a huge undertaking, so it is best to consult with a professional SEO expert for help with converting. You will find that responsive web design helps your company and its search engine optimization in a number of ways.

What is Responsive Web Design?

In the past, companies had to provide two versions of their website to cater to both desktop and mobile users. This can cause a lot of confusion and difficulty, especially if a mobile user is mistakenly directed to a desktop site. Some pages offer links to the other version of the page, but website visitors don’t always notice these and may try to interact with a page that is not optimized for their device. In addition, mobile sites generally do not offer the same variety or quantity of content that desktop versions do. Mobile Websites are often poorly organized or hard to read, as well. Maintaining two distinct webpages can be difficult for any company.

With responsive web design, however, you will only need one version of your site. The web site will respond properly to whatever device it is accessed from, whether it be a desktop computer, mobile phone or tablet. All of your content will be visible, formatted and properly proportioned for the screen on which it is being viewed. This will make it much easier for mobile users to read and access your content, and it will save you from the many difficulties of maintaining two versions of your webpage. Responsive web design has grown in popularity as the use of mobile devices has significantly increased in recent years. Search engines like Google have publically stated that they prefer for webpages to be responsively designed, and doing so can help improve your company’s SEO efforts and online visibility.

How Will Responsive Design Help My Company’s SEO Efforts?

There are a number of reasons why undergoing a website redesign to responsive design will help improve your company’s search engine optimization work. In addition to being more helpful for content and maintenance purposes, responsive web design will also provide the following SEO benefits:

  • Your webpage’s content won’t exist in two places. Having duplicate content online can be challenging to maintain and interfere with your rankings. People may arrive on the wrong version of your site or fail to understand the difference between the two. If your webpage is optimized for responsive design, it will be much easier to manage your content and ensure that visitors find the correct information.
  • You will have an easier time with link-building. A major part of search engine optimization is building links, and having a responsive design webpage will help you with this. Instead of two separate web page links, one for desktop and one for mobile, your company will only have one distinct link. This makes it much easier for you to spread your company’s name and web page online, and it will help to boost your overall online visibility.
  • It helps keep your search engine rankings high. Having the wrong type of page available can hurt your rankings. Google notices how long users stay on webpages that result from a search. Your page may be very highly ranked by Google and other search engines, but this can easily change. If a lot of mobile users quickly go back to their search results because your page is only desktop-friendly and not responsive, Google will notice and think that your page is not appropriate for the search term, after all. This can cause your search engine rankings to drop significantly, even if your page is exactly what searchers are looking for. After all, if potential clients can’t see your page’s content properly, what good is it? In addition, someone might find information on your desktop webpage that is unavailable on the mobile version. This will only annoy visitors and cause them to look elsewhere for services that they need. By making sure that the user experience on your webpage is high, you will help keep your page near the top of search engine rankings.
  • Your company will look more modern and impressive to visitors. By understanding the need for responsive web design and providing it to your web page’s visitors, you will show potential clients that you stay ahead of trends in technology and care enough to stay modern and updated. People want to work with local businesses that are professional and tech-savvy, so providing a sleek, responsive design for your webpage will get noticed and appreciated by potential clients. In addition, they will be more likely to share the link to your webpage with friends or business associates if it is impressive and responsive.
  • It looks better! Responsive design means that your web page will look attractive, properly formatted and be easy to use on any type of device. People are generally more willing to stay longer on Mobile Websites that look better, are well organized and are clearly readable. Don’t discount the value of an attractive design during your search engine optimization attempts.

Don’t lose potential web page visitors or clients with a poorly-optimized web page. Choosing responsive websites is the best way to ensure that webpages look attractive and provide an excellent user experience on any type of device, mobile or otherwise. Many of the top SEO and web design companies even offer responsive updates to WordPress themes! Consult with a professional digital media company today to discuss changing your webpage to responsive design.

Category: SEO