Responsive Design, positive for SEO
Responsive design means an adaptable web design, and more specifically refers to the design and web development technique used to adapt the same design to multiple devices (Desktop, tablet, smartphone). In addition it can have a single URL using CSS3.
How this technique is developed is quite simple, as it consists of dividing the content into independent blocks, which can be sorted and located depending on the device and screen resolution used.
The new trend in web design takes into account the strong increase in the number of users surfing the Internet through mobile devices. The new web design proposals need to be supported in various kinds of tablets and smartphones, and this can be achieved by using Responsive Design.
What about all the Web sites designed before this new trend? Do they need to be adapted? The answer is in the access statistics, and specifically in the most used screen resolutions. By checking the percentage of rebounds and the mean time per page, you can find out if the user is having a good or bad experience with their device in your web-site.
There is another important factor that will help you to decide whether to change your web site to a Responsive Design technique: SEO. Let’s review the following points:
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All versions are under the same URL.
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There is only one web, and one analysis.
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Only one content, no duplicates.
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Less cost. One design, one development, one SEO
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Web optimised for Smartphones and tablets.
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The web site can be used by any device.
In order to make the change to a Responsive Design, we must take into consideration the following steps:
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To start with the smallest resolution and then move to the bigger ones.
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To make the development compatible with any web browser, web and mobile.
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Optimising images becomes an unavoidable task.
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The same content in each version. Any resolution has the same relevance.
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At any moment the user must be able to go to the complete version of the web-site.
But not everything is positive, there are still some negative considerations:
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Mobile versions with an endless content. As it is the same content for any device, sometimes it is too long for the smartphones.
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The images change their size, but not their weight.
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There is some extra unnecessary HTML and CSS code, which means a longer loading time.
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Extra work. The development of the first versions of Responsive Design, are costly in time and money, but future updates will be more simple.