It’s no secret that mobile is increasingly becoming the top choice for internet access among users. In fact, there are over 24.2 million mobile phone internet users in Australia itself.
With the increasing mobile internet usability and accessibility, having a mobile responsive website has become important for businesses more than ever.
Not only does a mobile-friendly website improve user experience, but it also avoids some pitfalls that may affect your Google rankings.
In this blog, we’ll explore the top responsive web design benefits. We will also dig deeper into the importance of responsive web design for SEO.
What is Responsive Web Design?
As the top responsive web design Melbourne company explains, it is nothing but optimising websites to fit the screen of devices on which it’s being viewed.
The goal of a responsive design is to make a website visible and functional on any device, such as mobile, desktops, and tablets.
Responsive websites adapt to the screen size and provide an excellent user experience (UX). Considering the increasing mobile usage, businesses should not overlook the importance of developing responsive websites, or they will miss out on a huge opportunity to acquire customers.
Responsive Web Design Benefits for SEO
Did you know leveraging SEO and responsive web design together can improve your website’s performance in search rankings? And that’s not it! There are numerous other benefits of responsive sites for SEO.
Let’s know them in detail one by one.
1. Improved Google search rankings
As you may know, Google has always favoured user-friendly web designs. And it has recently moved towards a mobile-first approach.
The search engine giant aims to offer valuable and accessible content to users. Hence, Google’s mobile-first indexing and responsive design became an essential ranking factor, meaning it prioritises websites for top SERP rankings that are both mobile-friendly and SEO-friendly.
So, to achieve higher search rankings, you must optimise your website according to Google’s mobile-first approach and adopt responsive designs for all your existing and new sites.
2. Improved usability
Another benefit of a mobile-friendly SEO strategy is increased usability. The amount of time users spend on your page clearly indicates whether your content matches the search intent of your users. It also indicates whether they have had a positive experience on your site.
Why? That’s because users are less likely to stick around if they aren’t satisfied with your website experience or content.
When you optimise your website for mobile-friendly and user-friendly designs, it makes your site more accessible and easier to navigate. It enables users to access and navigate your website on any device they want. Moreover, excellent usability encourages users to return to your site whenever they need a relevant product or service.
So, with responsive web design, you can make your users stay longer on your site, encourage them to return often and even turn them into paying customers or subscribers.
3. Better user experience
Responsive web design is vital for creating a positive user experience. Imagine your users accessing your website on their smartphones, which isn’t optimised for their devices.
No matter how valuable and compelling your content is, your users will get annoyed if they find navigating your site on their preferred device difficult.
Hence, responsive web design helps optimise sites for mobile search and improve their design and functionality, thereby providing a consistent user experience across all devices.
And since Google is concerned majorly with keeping users happy, it is likely to reward you with a higher ranking in search results if you deliver a user-focused experience.
4. Faster page loading
In the mobile-centric world, having a responsive design is essential for a successful SEO strategy. In 2018, Google launched its “ Speed Update” to emphasise mobile page speed optimisation for better SEO rankings. This indicates that Google considers mobile website speed a crucial ranking factor.
A mobile responsive design enables businesses to reconsider their site layout and improve their page loading speed. On the other hand, a website that is not optimised for mobile will take longer to load on a mobile device, causing you to loose traffic and user trust.
5. Increased Website Traffic
Sources reveal that over 50% of mobile users will likely use a brand’s website for browsing or shopping to avoid downloading an app. In such a case, when users are able to access your website on any device, there is a high chance they will return in the future.
Moreover, new users searching for related keywords on mobile are likely to be attracted by your responsive website. Hence, having a responsive website can drive you more traffic, boosting your search rankings.
6. Avoid Duplicate Content
According to Google, “Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.”
If your site has duplicate content, search engines like Google will try to determine the most relevant result (of URLs with duplicate content ) to a particular search query. However, there’s a chance they’ll get it wrong.
In such a case, your target audience either won’t see or engage with your content, affecting the user experience.
But when prioritising the responsiveness of your site, you will need to pay attention to your website’s content and overall UX.
The best practices of responsive design emphasise creating a single, mobile-responsive version of your site, preventing duplicate URLs across the two versions.
7. Increased Social Sharing
While social sharing isn’t a ranking factor, it plays an important role in your overall SEO strategy. Responsive web design means a positive user experience in terms of content, functionality and speed.
Hence, when users like your website and its content, they are likely to share it with others on social media. Further, responsive web design allows you to share your content easily across all social platforms. This uncovers a great opportunity for growing your online audience and improving visibility.
Conclusion
Considering the above responsive web design benefits, we hope you will adopt a mobile-first SEO approach for all your current and new websites. Since SEO is both about search engines and users, creating a user-friendly website for SEO success is worth it.
