Part of being successful in today’s advanced digital technology world is being able to update your marketing strategy along with the advancement of new platforms. It was 8 years ago that Morgan Stanley, one of the most renowned Fortune 500 companies, predicted a rise in popularity of ‘Mobile Web’ compared to ‘Desktop PCs’ would be coming by 2014. That of course was spot on, and we all now know the broader and more overarching value in keeping a website responsive and mobile friendly.
Here at 4GoodHosting, we’ve established ourselves as a top Canadian web hosting provide, and part of what’s given us that opportunity is the way we strive to be as informative as possible with anything from which our customers stand to benefit. We host a large number of e-commerce and business websites. While we haven’t had to convince these folks of the value of having ‘responsive’ websites, we have had to provide more clarification of just what that involves.
We’re happy to do so here as well, with hopes that it adds value to what is already very affordable Canadian web hosting!
Mobile’s Mega Relevancy
Anyone’s who’s not considering mobile web traffic in their analytic data is likely losing significant revenue. While mobile web technology hasn’t entirely overtaken desktop, it’s quickly on its way to doing so. Be explicitly aware via which devices these new customers are entering your website and embrace how responsive web design will benefit your online marketing strategy.
Defining Responsive Web Design
Here’s a straightforward and sufficiently non-technical explanation - Responsive web design is one where the page loads and then operates with full functionality, whether you access the website URL with a desktop browser or a mobile browser. Site fixtures will rescale, as the page size will be taken into account.
It’s important to understand that there are no separate version of mobile sites or tablet or desktop versions with responsive web design. The website is oriented for maximum flexibility, opening as it should with any respective device. The benefit of this in simple terms? Visitors enjoy optimal readability on all their favorite digital devices.
And when it comes to the construction of the site, responsive web design means that your whole website remains the same at the root, with the minor exception of CSS code changing in response to the specific type of browser.
User-friendly content management systems like WordPress are quite helpful for responsive web design. Many have already helped themselves to one of the many ready-to-go designed templates that are optimized for responsive website design, and that saves time and money. Content is still king and the discoverability of content is one of the foremost success metrics that these individual are pleased to see for themselves.
But responsive web designs biggest boost for Canadian web hosting clients? That’d be improved SEO, and in a big way .
Found, Retained, Engaged
By our count, responsive website design has 9 specific appeal points for anyone who’d like better SEO (which, of course, is pretty much everyone set up along the information superhighway)
- Google Recommendation : Google recommended responsive web design is already common with mobile / traffic / PC, focusing on web and mobile users equally. Google also favours mobile-friendly website for mobile search, and you’ll be better positioned for higher keyword rankings in mobile search.
- Usability : Google’s aim is to deliver the best and most relevant results for their visitors for any specific search term. Google will make note of immediate return to their SERPs, considering no useful or relevant information on the website. In such instances ‘bounce rates’ (the number of visitors who leave a website immediately or prematurely) increase and your ranking will almost certainly drop.Whereas with responsive design, visitors will be inclined and able to read and share all the content they want in whatever format they prefer.
- Duplicate Content: A website that is not responsive and has duplicate or similar URLs for the desktop, tablet, and mobile versions is more at risk of being latched onto by Google’s Panda algorithm because there is only one URL for the webpage for all digital devices.
- URL Structure: Responsive websites have common files/folder for all digital device options. This makes it easy for Google to index the webpages as there is uniformity between them in URL structure. As far as the user experience is concern, this design works best with all devices and your boost in SEO is a reflection of Google’s greater trust as a result.
- Mobile Search Ranking: As smartphone begin to race away as the preferred web browsing device these days, a responsive website that caters to their specifics very thoroughly gets big thumbs up from Google. Not to say desktop and tablet suitability isn’t important too, but it’s decidedly less. Good responsive website design will serve all 3 of them relatively equally though, so you shouldn’t need be concerned.
- Link Earning: Responsive web design sees back links being common between mobile and desktop versions, meaning the link building values do not diminish if crossing between a desktop URL and mobile URL because – quite plainly – that’s not happening.
- Local Search Benefits: Nearly everyone searches on mobile web browsers when out and about and looking to make a purchase or visit an establishment. When your responsive website is available for them you get better mobile traffic and the rankings that go along with it.
- Reduced Page Load Speed: Page load speed is a big deal for Google when it weighs how highly you should be ranked. That people tend to be impatient needs no explanation, and with a responsive website design you are MUCH less likely to have would-be visitors / customers refusing to put up with slow load times. Responsive web design will have CSS media queries that work equally well on the different devices, helping to reduce load times.
- Awesome User Experience / Social Boost: Responsive web design allows visitors to read and share website content with any digital device. Anyone can see the same shared content on social media via their chosen digital device with almost same loading speed. This in turn increases the likelihood of you being ‘liked’, ‘shared, etc. etc. on social media. And that, of course, is a HUGE boost to your online marketing efforts.
Want to learn more, or ready to have a professional get your website up to speed with being ‘responsive’? Get in touch with our SEO Experts and we’ll point you in the right direction. Wishing you all well as you aim ever higher with your business and its online component!
