We live in a mobile-first era as consumers globally are becoming attached to their smartphones and tablets. With that, businesses need a responsive website design to get the most traffic engagement as well as make the user experience better.
SEO services throughout the world are pressing on the fact that without a responsive design, a website’s performance will affect poorly in Google’s SERP. If you are still unsure of the importance of responsive web design in the website’s SEO, here are the top five reasons.
Improving site usability
Site usability refers to the fact that how easily someone can navigate your website. According to Google, the ‘time on page’ is a crucial indicator of a site’s relevancy.
Surveys show that 53% of mobile users will bounce off a page if it doesn’t load within three seconds.
In a highly competitive environment like this, fast loading responsive site will increase traffic and usability of your website. If you carefully look at the analytics, around 50% of new customers will visit your website for a product/ service rather than downloading the app (if you have one).
A responsive website helps to optimise your webpage for mobile users with much easier access and navigation systems. This results in a better user experience which leads to boosting the ‘time on page’ factor.
Lesser bounce rate
Google pays very close attention to user behaviour, specifically the entry and exit points on a website. For instance, a customer wants to purchase a product from your site. He opens your website and starts browsing. But even after spending two to three minutes, he is unable to add the product to the cart. He gives up and finds another site (most probably your competitor) to get what he wants.
For Google, this whole experience counts as unsatisfactory behaviour. The short time span on your website is a signal that your website is irrelevant to the customer. After a few similar incidents, Google will make a negative adjustment in its ranking.
While it is true that content is most important to get proper rank in search results but if the content isn’t optimised correctly for all devices, it doesn’t help with the ranking either.
A relevant and responsive web page with fast speed is the answer to get a good search ranking.
Increased page speed
As discussed before, loading speed is a quite known ranking factor for websites. Responsive website design can make the pages more optimised, and that helps to load the sites as fast as possible.
It is essential to know that Google algorithm updates align with the changing user behaviour. An increased mobile usage refers to an entire paradigm shift in how Google’s bot searches and displays the results in SERPs.
A responsive web page design will help to rearrange the layout and content of your website to provide a smooth user experience for any device.
Lesser chance of duplicate content
Creating separate web pages for different devices means you are generating duplicate content for the website. That means there will be the same content but different URLs. For SEO, this situation is a disaster as search engines absolutely discourage duplicate content.
Due to this issue, bots will be unable to differentiate which version should be indexed or which one should be ranked first. This will severely affect your search rankings. Even if you separate the linking, bots can get confused one which version should all the links be absorbed.
A responsive design will help you to eliminate all these problems as a responsive website has a single URL for all devices.
Enhance social media sharing
Social media doesn’t have a direct impact on SEO. But social media is the most important tool to increase your consumer base. The larger the audience, the more traffic, and engagement. By leveraging website traffic, social media sure plays an integral part in sites’ ranking.
Responsive web design makes it convenient for customers to access your website from any device. This helps people to share the site frequently among their social groups through various social media channels.
A website that isn’t optimised for different devices is challenging for people to navigate. Now you aren’t going to open WhatsApp every time from desktop to share an e-commerce website with your friend, right? The site has to be e-commerce responsive to be able to get more shares from smartphones. Poorly designed social media buttons or buttons designed explicitly for desktops can make navigation and share awkward for people.
It’s time to step up
If you haven’t made your website responsive, it is time to hire a digital marketing agency like KOL Ltd. Their team of experts will develop a responsive website and an efficient SEO strategy to ensure your website sits on the top of every SERP search!
