Responsive Website Design: It’s The Least You Can Do
There’s no surprise here. Consumers are depending more and more on smartphones to find local services and products. With more than half of traffic coming from mobile devices, you can’t afford not to have a mobile responsive design. If your website is already responsive, you likely know the importance of catering to the mobile consumer, and at this point, you might be getting sick and tired of people telling you the reasons why you need a responsive design.
We’ve talked about the importance of having a mobile friendly website and mobile marketing strategy quite a few times in the past, so why are we returning to this subject? This week, we learned that mobile and desktop indexes will soon split. Clearly, this is another effort on Google’s behalf to improve the experience for smartphone users, which means site owners must comply.
What will you need to do?
Let’s think back to Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm update in April 2015. To avoid site demotion, you likely made your website mobile responsive (if it wasn’t already). It’s again time to roll with the punches. This change can only mean one thing: having a responsive site is no longer enough. As Google begins to prioritize mobile search over desktop, you will need to do more to get noticed.
Keep An Eye on Load Time
No one knows for sure when Google will begin to split its search index, but most online sources expect that it will likely be soon. Many SEO experts are suggesting that site owners keep an eye on load time. Why? Page load time is an extremely important ranking factor. A fast loading site both improves your ranking and provides users with the type of experience they’re looking for.
Closing
Slow load time equals high bounce rate, which can will seriously affect your website’s position. If you unsure about load time, you can test the speed of a page by entering the URL here. Pages should load in less than four seconds. Anything longer than that and you run the risk of user abandonment. We recommend speaking to your webmaster about ways to speed up your website’s load times. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Being proactive will keep you a step ahead of the gang!
Share:
