There is much debate today on whether website owners should choose to
have a separate mobile website or to make their current website
responsive. A responsive website will change and adapt depending on the
screen size/resolution of the device the site is being viewed from.
Responsive web design has had a lot of press recently, and it is
definitely here to stay. Device screen sizes are constantly changing and
in order to adapt to these changes a responsive website will do a
better job than a stand alone mobile site.
Along with being better for different devices, having a responsive website also has a lot of SEO benefits…
Better Local Rankings
Many businesses will target local keywords in order to obtain new
business. Many people are now using their mobile devices in order to
perform local business searches. Yelp reported a while ago that around
40 percent of searches came from their mobile app. If your website is
responsive and includes certain SEO pointers and parameters, Google will
now favour your website over other non-responsive sites.
You Don’t Have To Repeat Your SEO Efforts
There is no doubt that SEO is both expensive and time consuming.
Having a separate mobile site means that all of your SEO and social
media efforts for your main website do not apply to the mobile version.
Because a responsive website is a single website, you do not have to
repeat SEO for each individual site, saving you time and money.
Avoid Duplicate Content
If you know about SEO, you will know that Google does not like
duplicate content and will penalise websites using duplicate content.
Many webmasters who create separate mobile websites will just copy the
content from their main website, not realising that they are actually
jeopardising their search engine rankings for both their main website
and mobile site. Having a responsive site incorporates both, so no need
to duplicate your content.
Easier Link Building
As you may have guessed by the previous points, having a separate
mobile site in most cases means doubling up on the work. This also
applies to link building. All the links you have built for your main
website will not apply to the mobile version. So having a responsive
site means that you do not have to build links for two separate
websites.
Google Will Love You More
Google is still obviously the search engine market leader. This
unfortunately means that we have to follow their lead. So if they say
something is good, we have to comply.
“Google recommends webmasters follow the industry best practice of
using responsive web design, namely serving the same HTML for all
devices and using only CSS media queries to decide the rendering on each
device.”
Google has recently stated that they are now placing a lot of weight
on user experience. This includes social sharing, the average time spent
on a site and the bounce rate. So if your website is responsive, it
obviously provides a good user experience, especially for mobile users.
This will therefore help with your search engine rankings.
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