Imagine finding yourself in a website on your phone that was clearly meant for desktop; imagine all the disarrayed texts and images just thrown here and there on the screen, making you cringe to your core. What’s your next move? – Close it as soon as you can! Yes, that’s what we all do. With the advent of responsive design, mankind has eliminated unresponsive websites; with smart phones and all other devices, why wouldn’t we?
Today, we increasingly check emails, make a social media post, send files, video-call and what-not on smaller screens. With positive relation of small screen workability and its human usability, it has immensely become necessary that any and every website be tailored for devices of all shapes and sizes. So, Responsive Web Design means your website is set to lay itself on any device’s screen as if it was solely designed for that very device. The most important keyword here is user-friendly. Making your website mobile friendly is a mandatory rule of success in online space. How much friendly? Well, sky is the only limit.
However, is RWD only for comfort of users? Oh, that’s a definite no. From the website’s perspective, RWD is the best friend of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Hence, the better a website’s RWD, the higher it will rank on that search list your company dreams of day and night.
So, let’s take a look at 4 aspects of how this friendship between RWD and SEO actually works!
Google Love
Google loves responsive web design, period. That’s the reason why Google explicitly recommends responsive website design regardless of the website being mobile only and dynamic to all devices. However, data illustrates that a single dynamic website that reacts perfectly for all devices is always a better option. In other words, it’s easier for Google to recognize the site across all sorts of platforms.
And remember that nothing beats RWD when it comes to local searches in Google.
Minimum Bouncing
Let’s suppose a website has climbed up the SEO ladder using means other than responsive web design. Problem is, users will most likely bounce off of it, even after visiting the site once, because of its unresponsiveness. Now that’s just sad.
Therefore, RWD is the big hero here. Responsive websites indulge visitors into experiencing one specific online space. One more thing to remember is when a web surfer has experienced a great desktop website, it is highly unlikely for her to enjoy a stripped-down mobile version as much. Hence, complete dedication to developing a mobile friendly, responsive and dynamic website is the key to minimum bounce rate.
One URL for All
From a URL perspective, oneness is of great value. However, if there’s a dedicated URL for mobile devices versus another URL for desktop then where’s the issue? Well, think about the times when website get’s shared and posted to different social media platforms. One URL leads your shared and posted links to the same place regardless of the access device. This means the search engines recognize that website to have one divine URL anywhere and everywhere on the internet.
Minimum Loading Time
All internet users know the importance of minimum loading time. While the average load time for websites in general is 7 seconds, Google requires websites to essentially come down to a loading time of one second. In this regard, your worst enemy is an unresponsive website. On the other hand, responsive websites are way faster and smoother in loading. Moreover, RWD has evidently resulted in making mobile sites load faster than average speed.
Finally, we can conclude that RWD goes hand in hand with SEO today. I mean there is no turning back to the ancient mobile browsing experience. Hence, as a website owner, web developer or anyone creating websites, you should consider the essence of RWD and its benefits in SEO.
Responsive web designs do not necessarily have to be expensive as there are many cheap web design services that already offer a great value for your buck. So what’s the wait then? Let’s get back to our precious designing for all platforms as we realize and cherish the beauty of today’s internet and the dynamic experience it offers.
