SEO Benefits of Responsive Web Design

You know that a website is a critical part of your business, but it is only helpful if prospects are actually finding it through a search engine like Google. Google’s algorithms are constantly changing to ensure the content in the search results is relevant to the search terms that the user has entered, making it difficult to keep your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts up-to-date. Regardless, a mobile responsive website is a key component that factors into a website holding the first position in search results.

A mobile-friendly website is a necessity, now that the majority of time consumers spend online is via mobile devices. In fact, 71% of total digital minutes in the United States originate from mobile devices. Search engines take mobile responsiveness into high consideration when determining search result rankings, since consumers are spending more than 15 hours a week researching on their smartphones, and 48% of consumers start their research on search engines.

Having a mobile responsive website gives you a significant boost in search engine ranking, but it’s also something that every business needs in order to stay relevant and useful to prospects and customers. If a website is not mobile-responsive, users may become frustrated and move on to your competitor’s mobile-friendly site.

Most website templates are designed to be mobile responsive; if you don’t start with this type of template, you will struggle to make the necessary adjustments to optimize your site for mobile. Keep in mind that sites that are built with a mobile responsive template may still need minor CSS additions to hide or display elements on certain screen sizes. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to ensure your website displays correctly on mobile devices. If your online storefront is stuck in 2014, it’s time to build a mobile responsive website.

Although changes from Google necessitate constant monitoring of your SEO strategy, maintaining a mobile responsive website will always help keep your website at the top of the results page.