How a responsive website design affects a website search engine ranking?
The answer to this fundamental question has never been of more importance than now when the ranking of websites on search engines is hugely dependent on their structure and mode of presentation.
As a webmaster, it’s vital that you’ve a grasp of the different search engine ranking metrics and how Google search bots crawl through your website. It’s only then that you can structure your webpages appropriately. In this guide, learn how leveraging on a responsive website design impacts on how Google search bots crawl through your website.
What is responsive website design?
This is a website designing approach that responds to the needs of different internet users who employ different screen sizes to surf the web. The layout of the webpages is resized to fit into the user’s screen without affecting their viewing and interaction experience.
Mobile website versus responsive website;
To an inexperienced webmaster, there is little to separate between a normal website and a responsive one. But differences abound. Basically, a mobile website is copy of your main website that is specifically tailored for viewing on mobile devices. Such a website reformats itself to suit the screens of handheld or tablet devices.
A responsive website, on the other hand, is a designing approach aimed at making the main website easy to read on the different screen sizes. The webpages readjust on-the-fly to suit the various screen sizes. In a nutshell, a mobile website is tailored for mobile device users while responsive website design approach promotes multi-platform usability of the site.
How Google crawls through responsive websites?
All the content of a google friendly website design are contained on the same URL. This means that when a user keys in phrases related to a specific website, Google search bots will only to crawl and index a single version of your site. This saves time and reduces the time it takes to return results to a given query. Ultimately, Google favors such sites as the load time is usually lower and search more concentrated.
A responsive website also has a lower bounce rate. Consequently, Google considers such websites as credible and authoritative in the eyes of a user. It thus crawls and indexes such sites more often leading to a higher on the results pages.
Offering great experience to internet readers has become a necessity in the internet world. And there isn’t a better way to cater for the needs of your users than leveraging on a responsive web design. It attracts search bots to your website ultimately improving its visibility to the world.