One of the most important things you should check when choosing a website design company in Auckland is whether or not they use responsive website design. Responsive website design ensures your website works properly on mobile devices. As so many people now access websites using phones and other mobile devices, having a responsive website is essential.
What about the SEO benefits of responsive website design? There are several, with each one demonstrating just how important it is to have a responsive website.
1. Your Site Will Appear in Mobile Searches
One of the biggest benefits of having a responsive website is that it has the chance of appearing in mobile searches. Your website will still appear in Google if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, but it will only appear for users on desktop devices.
In other words, Google uses mobile-friendly design as a ranking factor.
2. Google Only Needs to Crawl One Website
You have two main options when getting a mobile-friendly website:
- Responsive website
- Separate mobile website
With a separate mobile website, you design it for mobile devices, essentially giving you two websites to manage.
There are several downsides to this approach, including the fact content differences can occur. In other words, you might have content on the desktop version of your website but not on the mobile version.
With a responsive website, on the other hand, you only have one version of your website. This version then has code which makes the website automatically resize and adjust itself according to the user’s device.
As it’s just one version, all the content will be available to both desktop and mobile users (providing your website designer sets up the website properly).
3. You Won’t Run into Duplicate Content Issues
Another downside of having separate desktop and mobile versions of your website is the risk of duplicate content, i.e. the same text on both the desktop and mobile versions.
There are technical solutions for telling Google which one it should prioritise. However, over time, it is common for this to be forgotten about, leading to the duplicate risk.
As duplicate content is a big no-no for SEO, a responsive website is better as you don’t face this risk.
4. Visitors Will Stay on Your Website Longer
Two of the signals that Google uses to evaluate your website are bounce rate and time on page:
- Bounce rate – the percentage of users who visit your website but only look at one page before leaving
- Time on page – the average length of time that visitors spend on your website
In general, a high bounce rate and low time on page are both bad for SEO.
A responsive website will load quickly, all the functions and features will work, the navigation will be designed for mobile devices, and it will be attractive and readable.
As a result, it’s less likely that visitors will bounce. In addition, as they will be able to view the content without zooming (which you need to do when viewing a desktop version of a website on a mobile device), they will probably spend longer on your site.
5. Faster Load Times on Mobile Devices
Good responsive website design involves optimising the speed of the site, particularly on mobile devices. Speed is an important factor to Google and it’s important to users, so this will benefit your SEO too.
6. Increased Shares on Social Media
Finally, social shares are important to SEO for several reasons. In simple terms, the more you get the better it is for your rankings.
Most people use social media on mobile devices, however. So, to maximise the number of shares you get, you need a responsive website so mobile users can view it properly.
Higher Rankings and More Traffic
All the above results in higher rankings for your website and more visitors. This makes responsive website design essential.
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