The current wide use of tablets, mobile phones, and laptops, as well as the traditional PCs means that responsive website design is highly essential in modern web design. It’s the only way you can make sure your website will be mobile-compatible and accessed wherever users are and at any time of the day or night.
Simply put, responsive web design is the automatic re-formatting of the web page so that it adjusts itself to whatever kind of screen a user is viewing your website on. In other words, the site is responsive to the device that’s accessing it. It’s the largest and most interesting development within web development industry, since it is making websites much more “intelligent” in terms of how they present themselves to viewers. This in turn means that your site is in a much better position to attract the viewers since it has been designed with the viewers in mind.
In terms of search engine optimisation, mixing SEO with responsive web design is a must. It’s the foundation of how to make sure that your site is found and seen by everybody who could possibly be looking for what you’re selling.
For example, Google loves responsive sites. Google recommends responsive web design as the most ideal way to target mobile audience. Furthermore, they’ve developed their search engines to be mobile responsive as well. So, it tends to reason that if your website is mobile friendly, your ranking will be boosted since your site is attractive and responsive to the way people use the internet currently.
Research online will reveal that there is still some debate about whether there should be more than one website to accommodate the mobile and non-mobile users. It would be wise to read as much as you possibly can about this and go for the option that suit you best. There is absolutely no doubt that mobile web is here to stay, so from that point of view, it’s clear that each and every website needs to incorporate some responsive website design on its pages.
A landing page that’s for mobile website that redirects users to the mobile site is the best idea. You might have seen this on websites yourself when you’re given the choice to opt for the mobile site or the browser version of the same. This is a very simple process, and most users really appreciate the choice.
Nevertheless, it also helps to note that this can be done internally using links and redirects. It’s not advisable to use two websites and two URLs. This would only work to dilute your visits and divide your search engine results, hence making your job to be twice as hard since you’d have to optimise and work on two websites to achieve two rankings. It’s much better to have just one website, one URL, and use responsive website design to help make your website as accessible and mobile friendly as you possibly can.
As far as search engine optimisation is concerned, you’ll also be better off with just one website as opposed to having two websites. Your content won’t need to be replicated and all your backlinks and natural activities will be indexed under the one main URL. This actually does make much more sense. Your search engine ranking is affected by the author rank, the website authority, the page rank, and the level of commitment from natural traffic. Now imagine if you were to divide all that between two websites. It isn’t easy to maintain a high ranking on the two websites all the time.
If you wish to know more about responsive website design, then you should speak to a professional who understands the needs of the mobile age, and one who will help build you a mobile friendly website that will also be welcoming to laptop and tradition PC users. It’s better for your ranking, your bounce rate, and for the social shares, as well as all aspects of search engine optimisation.
This will make your site more interesting to modern users and that’s surely a good thing. So, if you’re still asking yourself if search engine optimisation is affected by responsive website design, the answer is, yes it somehow is. Hopefully the above information will make you understand why mixing SEO with responsive web design is the best thing you can do to your website.