Why Google loves responsive design ?

Responsive Design IS SEO friendly And Future Proof

In early June the official Google blog came out with a definitive stance on recommendations for smartphone optimized websites.

What's most important is that of all the suggested options Google identified one type of website as the preferred solution:
Sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device. This is Google’s recommended configuration.

In other words what this means that to ensure your website is optimised in the best way for mobiles and for search engine spiders, responsive web design is the best way to go. The above link also provides a very good description of what a responsive site is, but it doesn’t go in to the precise reasons as to why it makes Google so happy.

We are attempting to state briefly why Google prefers Responsive Sites and also reasons why the visitors to your website will enjoy it. After all, a new website design that pleases search engines but which turns people away from your site (or vice versa as major traffic comes from search engines) is of no use.

Responsive sites attract more links to key pages

If any website only has one URL for each page then the links attracted to those pages will be higher than if the same page was at multiple URLs. Likewise if a separate mobile website sits at a different subdomain then the power of those links would be weakened. It's all about internal links, linkbacks. Consider for example on IGN website one could link to:

Mobile - http://m.uk.ign.com/articles/2012/06/07/e3-2012-ghost-recon-still-coming-to-wii-u

Desktop -http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/06/07/e3-2012-ghost-recon-still-coming-to-wii-u

IGN sidesteps this by using a canonical tag that links the mobile version to the desktop version, but this by no means as neat and as effective as a responsive design (and looks awful if people view the wrong one) besides being more expensive to build and maintain as compared to responsive site which doesn;t need multiple designs to handle.

Responsive sites can be shared more easily

It's frustrating and waste of time navigating on a website if one has to pinch and zoom to read content as that adds to sea sickening sideways scroll. Another layer of waste of time is added by providing a link to desktop version of site if there's a mobile content with almost no content to showcase.

Responsive sites can be spidered

As an alternative to Responsive site one could build an App that offers same content. Problem with App however is two fold:

• It's expensive to build, maintain and deploy particularly if all platforms are to be catered to.
• Apps content can never be spidered by search engines so would offer no benefit to the main website.

A responsive website still shrinks down nicely to a mobile screen like an app, and all of the content you see is also available to search engines. In addition to easier indexing, a responsive website has to be crawled less as a set of URLs need only be accessed once for the content. It’s the same as if you have duplicate content or canonical issues on a normal website.

As Google states:

We wouldn't need to crawl a page with the different Googlebot user agents to retrieve and index all the content.

If Google is happy, then your rankings will be.

Responsive sites work on multiple devices or basically is "Future Proof"

A lot of sites that claim to be mobile friendly are simply set to resize based on a number of pre-set devices. So if Apple make their iPhone 5 a larger size, then the developer has to go in and create a new variation. It’s messy and not a future proof strategy.

Truly responsive design will scale based on the size of the window. So with the following Responsive websites that we did you can check on any device and it will work flawless manner. We are doing more projects based on responsive design and if you need to discuss your project contact us.

• Domestic Violence Crisis Center Connecticut
• The Indian Association of Physiotherapists
• Esperanza CT
• Vrunda Consultancy Services
• Scorpio CMS (This website)

Any developer could release a new device tomorrow and the site would scale. It gives a great deal of freedom and makes a site far more future proof than set rules.

Responsive sites keep readers happy

No zoom, No Pinch To Zoom and No side-scroll for navigating across the site or reading content obviously is one way top make a visitor happy. Responsive design eliminates all these annoying factors and thus keep the visitors happy.

How do you get started?

Our expertise in doing responsive websites based on custom content management system is demonstrated by way of live websites. In case you need to start a new project or want to migrate your existing setup to Responsive design please contact us from Request A Quote section of this site.