Does Responsive Web Design (RWD) affect Ranking Factor?

Is Responsive Design A Ranking Factor?  What are the SEO benefits of going responsive? You will learn how responsive web design can help a s...

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Is Responsive Design A Ranking Factor?  What are the SEO benefits of going responsive? You will learn how responsive web design can help a site to shine in the SERPs?

Responsive web design also known as RWD which is latest trend of website design. After introducing Responsive web design almost 90% of website owner concentrate on their site design and layout and converted to responsive design.  At the beginning new user though that this is just a latest trend of a design and we have to switch to that trend. But ultimately many of us don’t know why Responsive Web Design (RWD) is necessary?

As a website designer and user why we should focus on design and layout? I think almost all of us already know.  A good layout and design can easily attract visitors. And a good user friendly layout helps to keep engage visitor’s longer time. As a result we can reduce our bounce rate from our Blog. But this factors work best before introducing Responsive Web Design (RWD), however by with Good design and layout you won’t be able to grab much attention of readers. Because your site must adopt the responsive design to make it readers and device friendly.

After booming up of Smartphone and Tablet uses now more than 60% of readers are visiting site through those devices. And very lower number of users and readers using Desktop and Laptop for going through online. Because through Smartphone and Tablet readers can easily visit any site and get their relative information. 

But if your site don’t support Smart devices then what will happen? Obviously a visitor will get away and switch to another site. And in future they will try to avoid your site and will visit another Mobile responsive site. Because a mobile responsive site can be readable easily from any smart device.

What Google Wants?

There is no doubt that Google is a giant in market and their search engine is richer than any other search engine. A user can easily get quality and related search result in a flash after making a search query. And majority of organic traffic and search traffic you will receive from Google search engine. So whenever you going to design your site then you must focus on Google’s guidelines.

If you make any search query from your Smartphone deice then you would see a small text of search result that Mobile-friendly that means, search engine preferring Mobile friendly sites. 

Google also acknowledged multiple times that responsive design is their preferred mobile configuration. But many webmaster speculate that responsive sites might get a rankings boost. But is it true or false? We have to make a deep research.

1. Google’s “Mobilegeddon” update

After Google’s “Mobilegeddon” update we are now confirmed that mobile configuration of a site is biggest part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Digital Marketing (DM). Because most of the Google searches are now taking place on various mobile devices.

So for becoming a successful webmaster we must configure our site for mobile. Google’s “Mobilegeddon” updates reveal the hidden truth that no more sites will get preference which is not mobile friendly.  A website’s ranking factors depending on their visitors, unique and high quality content, design and layout. So if your site is not mobile friendly then how is it possible to get higher on search result? Eventually you will not receive significant visitors from search engine. As  a result your Rank will be lower on search engine.

2. Mobile Configurations

We are now confirmed that for making our site successful we must have mobile configured site. But for here has another issue, that is we can choose three configuration to make our sites mobile friendly.

• Responsive Design
• Adaptive Design
• Separate Mobile Site

3. Responsive Design

We simply understand by responsive design that our website will be support on any kinds of device. Responsive Web Design approach uses fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images and changeable CSS style rules to deliver different user experiences to desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile devices. While on responsive design we must maintain the same HTML and URL structure. The site shrinks or grows according to device.

4. Adaptive Design

This design is bit like responsive design but it serves to different devices using the same URL structure, but first it detects the device and generates a different version of the site’s HTML appropriate for that device. The main feature of adaptive designed site that has multiple versions of HTML which serves through common URLs.

5. Separate Mobile Site

Separate mobile site referred to as mDot (“m.”). This mobile configuration delivers different HTML on separate URLs depending on the device detected. It will change the URL according to the devices. Such as for desktop site it will serve URL through the www subdomain and for the mobile-friendly site’s pages located on the “m.” subdomain. You will see this type of site for Facebook, Google AdSense etc and now majority of the online Retailer currently use Separate Mobile Site.

There are another thing we can understand that Mobile site is getting preference and we have different choices for designing our mobile device with Responsive Web Design, Dynamic Serving and Separate URL sections. And those things also affect the Mobile SEO of a site.

In, August 18, 2015 Google’s John Mueller shared on his Google+ post that Google recommends responsive:

A good way to make it [a site] work in both worlds [mobile & desktop] would be to have a site that uses responsive web-design techniques to adjust to the size of the user’s device/settings.

Conclusion

So we can conclude that for Mobile SEO and better ranking on Mobile devices we must redesign our site. But it is clear to use that Google prefers responsive design but it doesn’t affect the SEO ranking factor directly. However to make our site success out site must be make mobile friendly.

Is Responsive Design A Ranking Factor?

However it doesn’t give a Green signal that mobile friendly site always got higher rank on search engine. If we find any evidence about that then mobile responsive designed site will bring higher rank or it affect ranking factor then we will share with you. But ultimately we can say mobile-friendly site able to grab attention of visitors and they can easily visit site on any devices.