How important is Responsive Design for SEO?
User responsive design is one of the hottest topics nowadays and definitely a big deal for your rankings in Google. Google likes and favors responsive designed websites. Many web professionals feel and believe that responsive design is definitely changing the way internet looks, feels, as well as works. Responsive design has a number of advantages over traditional design websites. First, responsive design is much easier to maintain. Second, responsive design doesn’t have the same canonical URL issues and at the same time you don’t have to worry about ranking issues. Third, you do not need to bother with site redirection. So, having all of these special features gives responsive design its advantaged position in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Let us have a look at these reasons why responsive design is so well accepted in SEO sphere:
1. Search engines favor user responsive designs: Seach engines, like Google, always favor sites that opt for user responsive designs and practices because the user experience is always first and foremost in importance. The main reasons behind this special affair are that responsive designed sites have no canonical URL issues, no duplicate URL problems, and no redirect problems all of which are very important considerations in SEO. So, responsive design is definitely helpful for SEO and is cherished by Google because it benefits the end user.
2. Great Experience for Mobile Users: Responsive websites definitely deliver the best site quality experience for mobile users because the content is specifically formatted for delivery to that device. Responsive design sites are also easier to maintain. So having a site that gets adapted to a device can automatically save time and present the same content everywhere. Therefore, it is definitely important and vital for SEO. Nowadays, more and more users are accessing mobile devices. With the introduction of mobile devices, people have become more accustomed to access the sites information while they are on the go. So, the better the end user experience is, the greater your SEO results will be.
3. Responsive sites get better Indexing: Today it is absolutely true that responsive websites are receiving better search engine indexing and are also ranking higher in search results. Much of the credit for this trend goes to Google algorithmic updates which have been giving favor to responsive design criteria.
4. No such issues of Content Duplication: Responsive Design is all about optimizing website content by trimming excess data that is not needed by the end user. The delicate balance for designers, however, to insure that only the fat is trimmed without cutting away any required content. So, in order to retain a site’s SEO value, the content must be relevant and all relevant content should be pushed towards the top of the page so that it can be quickly noticed by your readers. To retain maximum SEO value, the content should be pushed above the fold for both mobile and desktop versions. In fact, search engines carefully evaluate where content is placed. Hence, position is part of a pages SEO score.
In summary, the SEO value of a responsive design is reliant upon the user’s experience. So, many SEO companies are opting for this design strategy and now include mobile URL's to help improve the user experience. After all, having a simple yet useful approach is all part of the responsive design paradym.
About Author: Aditi Datta is a Professional SEO strategist who works in a leading SEO Company in India. She also helped her site to grab the top-most position for some of the competitive keywords in the search engines through her research in the field of SEO.