How does responsive web design affect SEO?

The 21st century is based on new technologies. Modern society uses mobile phones for any everyday needs. We focused on a landscape where a mobile platform dominates over desktops. It is understandable because modern people appreciate the mobility and try to save every minute of their time. They prefer to speak, search and solve their issues on the move.

Search engines in their term make special efforts to provide their users with the best search experience. That is why they require mobile responsiveness from all websites. In 2015 Google established its new algorithm update that moved rankings to a more mobile-focused indexing. Since that time search engine optimization landscape has changed dramatically. Website mobile responsiveness becomes an essential part of optimization and one of the significant ranking influencer. Nowadays, responsive web design primarily affects your website SEO through positive user behavior signals.

If you do not have a mobile version of your site, you lose your opportunities to attract more paying customers as well as double your revenue. Moreover, Google will never rank you high on SERP. That is why you need to concentrate your SEO efforts not only on the desktop version of your site but also on its mobile version. Implementing a responsive web design for your site requires a lot of time, efforts, energy, and skills. However, ultimately, it will be worth it.

Ways how responsive web design can contribute to your SEO

• Improve website usability

The main reason for high website bounce rate is that your site is difficult to navigate. If users have a hard time browsing through your site pages, they will most likely close it and follow one of the links of your competitors. The average time a user should spend to find what he needs is 3 seconds. If this process takes more, you need to improve your website design and internal navigation.

If your site has a responsive design, then your potential customers will much easier navigate through your web pages, and receive better experience on your website. As Google takes into account such metrics as the average time users spend on your site and the number of pages they view, you need to make sure your web design is SEO-friendly. It entails that is your site design is mobile-friendly, you will have repeat visitors and higher amount of converted users. Moreover, you will receive search engines favor which will lead to higher ranking positions.

• Page load time

Another factor that directly influences your site rankings is loading time of your web pages. The faster your pages are loading, the better experience your website visitors will get, and subsequently, the higher you will rank on SERP.

Web sources that have a responsive design usually load faster than average ones. All in all, it will lead to better user experience and higher search engine evaluation. Google shows its favor to websites that have a good page load time and rank them higher in search results. You may check your site page load time with the help of Google Website Speed Test.