Why Google prefers Responsive

| Web design

Why Google prefers Responsive

As you all know mobile is bigger than ever and mobile usage is still growing. So how should your estate agency website deal with this?

It is important that you focus on the needs of your users. If people are visiting your website from a mobile device then it is your duty to ensure they have the best experience possible.

Mobile user experience

Google’s results are based on hundreds of different factors but their results will only deliver the most relevant, established and user-friendly websites. Google try to deliver great user experience on any device and aim to deliver results that reflect this.

Google supports both mobile websites and responsive websites; however they recommend you use responsive web design as it has many more advantages over a mobile website. These are:

  • A responsive website uses a single URL across all devices. This makes it easier for users to share, interact and link to your content. A single URL also helps Google’s algorithms assign the indexing properties for the content.
  • With a responsive website no redirects are needed. If you have a mobile website, when the user accessing the site from a mobile device they will be redirected to your mobile website. This means a longer loading time which degrades the user-experience.
  • A responsive website will save you and Google resources. It means Google only has to crawl your website once to retrieve content, meaning they have more time to index more pages.

Go responsive for the best mobile experience

What is responsive design?

A responsive website is designed to automatically adjust the design, structure and layout of a website to fit the screen it is being viewed on. The website is restructured to improve the mobile user experience.

Do you need a responsive website?

61% of mobile users will not return to a website that they have had trouble viewing or using. 40% of those users will then go onto a competitor’s website that offers better usability.

If you do not optimise your website for the mobile user, then you are guaranteed to be losing traffic and sales.

Does responsive web design improve SEO?

Responsive design does have a few SEO benefits, such as reducing high bounce rates, improving user experience and it can improve site load speed. However Google hasn’t started penalising websites for not being mobile optimised, however Google has suggested that it is likely to be included in their algorithm as a ranking factor in the near future. With this in mind it should be your top priority to ensure your website is optimised for mobile.

Luke Stanley