One of the most dramatic trends in internet use over the last few years has been the vast increase in number of people who access the net via mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones, with some estimates suggesting that as many as two-thirds of the adult population of developed nations such as the UK or the United States own one or more such devices. All of which means that if you own a website it is essential to ensure that it is optimises for mobile search, failing which you could end up losing out on substantial amounts of traffic to your site, with all that entails.
There are a few different ways to address this issue. You could choose to have a separate site for people who using their desktop PC and another site for people browsing via a mobile device. However, this is probably not the ideal means of dealing with this issue.
With this solution, visitors to your site are forwarded to the most relevant version of the site. However, arguably the best way to ensure that your web property is visible across the full spectrum of devices is to create it using responsive design, meaning that you have a single site for all visitors, no matter how they reach your site in the first place. This is probably also the best solution if you are concerned about how to save money on your web budget.
This way, all your valued content can be seen by visitors by means of a single URL and search engines need only crawl one site to access your information.
Responsive web design is ideal for browsers using their smartphones, but it’s vital to make sure that your web property is tested across as broad a range of tablets and other devices as you can, since there are so many options out there, with a variety of different screen sizes and/or resolutions
Apart from making it easier for visitors to access your content, responsive web design may also have a hidden benefit when it comes to how your site ranks in the SERPS. The whole idea behind using responsive web design is to try to make sure that visitors to your site appreciate the best possible user experience, and in view of the fact that Google has stressed the significance they attach to the whole user experience, there may be an argument to suggest that that using responsive design could result in improved rankings as well.




