Responsive Web Design & SEO
Howdy ho, let's talk about responsive web design, and what it means for search engine optimization, shall we? Absolutely!
The definition of responsive web design is a template or site that shows the same HTML on the same URLs, no matter what device the web searcher is using, but displays the requested URL to fit the device the web reader is using. In other words, a mobile-friendly web site design.
Why do you even care? Because Google really emphasizes mobile nowadays, and understands that people in general are moving away from desk top devices and are using smartphones and tablets to conduct search queries.
Google recommends responsive design for a number of reasons:
- Makes it easy for people to share content from the same URL, regardless of device
- Helps with Google's ability to index the page
- Reducing possible mistakes that are made with mobile sites
Read the rest here.
I migrated to a responsive web design for this site, and even though the template designer said this was a mobile-friendly template, you cannot believe the amount of custom coding my web dev team had to do to get the site to render well across multiple mobile platforms.
Some Do's And Don'ts For SEO And Responsive Web Design
- Don't use Flash; Apple devices cannot display anything in Flash, and besides it's not SEO-friendly to begin with.
- Do reduce your images and videos with compression so they load faster
- Do cut down on the amount of content displayed for your mobile version; make the most important pages mobile-friendly.
- Do provide a link to your full desktop version, in case some of your readers really want to be punished and scroll up, down, left and right for all of your content.
- Do review your Google Analytics and see which pages are viewed the most by mobile devices (Audience -->Mobile -->Devices) to prioritize which pages you want to render well for those devices
My very SEO-savvy colleague, Scott Benson, published a great blog post on page speed load issues. It's on his Benson SEO blog - I suggest you read it to learn more about issues and fixes.
The other reason why you want to concentrate on mobile devices, particularly if your Google Analytics proves to you that people are using their portable devices to see your site is that Google more prominently ranks and features your site in mobile results with this bit of information added:
I don't know about you, but if I see this on my smart phone or tablet, I'm much more likely to click on it because I'm thinking it'll be easy to navigate and read.
Want to know more about mobile SEO and responsive web design? Our advanced SEO course shows you everything you need to know - go here to see the course agenda and register.
You can now do online SEO training with Invenio as well.
Here's another post about Google's mobile-friendly algorithm update you'll want to know about.
Until next time, keep it between the ditches day and night!
All the very best to you,
Nancy McDonald