Is Responsive Web Design a Google Ranking Factor?

Within a few years, we've seen several Google ranking factors.

And at some point, you must have wondered:

How well does one SEO tip work over the other or is it even effective especially in 2017?

To further break it down,

Is responsive web design responsible for good Google ranking?

Yes, it is!

According to a Google report, billions of searches are made in a day using smartphones than on computers.

Here's the deal:

The responsiveness of different versions of your website can either rank your site high on Google, improve its rank steadily or push it farther away from top pages.

Why is that?

In a Google update in 2015, the responsiveness of a site is a huge ranking factor and a responsive design is Google’s recommended design pattern.

But then,

What exactly is a responsive website or is mine not responsive as it is?

A website is said to be responsive when its pages can be viewed conveniently on several devices. Devices such as PCs, smartphones and tablets .

On a responsive site, its pages restructure to the best view depending on the device it is viewed from, thereby making it friendly for every user irrespective of the device used in accessing the site.

Most webmasters have an easy to use and navigate web version of their website, but not many have a responsive view on mobile.

 A website cannot be said to be responsive if it takes as much time to load its mobile pages as it takes to view its web pages.

If it also takes mobile users twice as much time as it would take desktop users to access content on the site due to their smaller screen, then the said site is not responsive.

Here's what it looks like:

You're using a Blogger or Wordpress template that still displays the zoom view on the site's mobile view? then you do not have a responsive website.

With an increasing number of people using smartphones and tablets to browse in 2017, it is very important that you have a web design that is responsive on any platform.

By the way, why do i need a responsive site?

Importance of Responsive Web Design 2017

Here are the reasons why you need a responsive website in 2017.

Before we proceed:

Let's pretend you're already ranking on Google for your optimized keywords, but what happens to a user that lands on your site and has difficulty in navigating through its pages.

I'll tell you what:

They'll most certainly leave faster than they arrived not unless your site is the only one they can find that particular content on; which isn't likely.

This impacts negativity on your site by increasing its bounce rate and trust Google bots to rat you out,

"Hey, this guy's blog doesn't have great content afterall, We might as well place it on Page 2 of our search engine results pages".

Now you see how that turns round to bite you in the ass?

Other than responsive web design we also have an adaptive and separate mobile site design.

An adaptive design uses the same URL but a different HTML version to display a particular site on different devices.

On the otherhand,

A seperate mobile site uses a different URL and an HTML version to display the site on different devices. Its URL usually has the structure, mDot site.

But why does Google place more emphasis on a responsive web design leaving those two guys hanging?

Stay with me:

A responsive web design is Google's preference for the following reasons:

• It doesn't waste Google resources where Google bots have to go back and forth to load different versions of the same site and also index different versions of a particular site.
• It gives enhanced user experience with its easy to navigate interfaces on the same site.
• There is minimal SEO difficulties like bad redirects.

Still uncertain if your site is responsive or not?

Before we proceed,

Use the Google Pagespeed Insight tool to evaluate your site.

The result of the test will help you determine if you have a website that's partly responsive and requires little work to make its pages more user and search engine friendly, or a website that needs serious attention.

After discovering your pagespeed score, how then can you improve the responsiveness of your website? The guidelines below will help improve the responsiveness of your site.

How to Make an Existing Website Responsive

To build a responsive website requires and is not limited to the following:

1. Page speed: 

Believe it or not,

A fast page is one that can load within one second.

Ya right! Like that's possible.

Well, you can strive to make yours load around that given time even if its not exactly 1 second.

How's that?

Use minified scripts and compress your post images by

• Compressing images using compressor.io and compressnow.com
• Compressing Scripts using refresh-sf.com

For users of the Blogger platform,

• Use the original sizes of images uploaded instead of automatically resizing by choosing small, large, extra large sizes.

• Upload your images to one source like blogger's image storage called Picasa. When your page's images are stored on different platforms, then it'll take more time to visit each resource and get them.

These will improve your page loading speed significantly.

2. Bounce rate: 

A faster site and one that is easier to navigate will definitely have a lower bounce rate.

What am i getting at?

Reduce your site's bounce rate.

The first step:

You can easily do this by using related content widget and popular post widget across different views of your site.

Secondly,

Employ internal linking of related post to give your visitors a simple way to go through several pages on the site easily.

Keep in mind that your bounce rate will be unaffected if your site's content is loaded with crap because visitors will always leave.

You might want to skip this step😉

The bottom line,

Coupled with these widgets listed above, your content matters as well to reduce your site's bounce rate.

Most dissatisfied visitors will not go through another page on a site whose landing page didn't have much to offer.

3. Blocked CSS or JavaScript. 

You must allow Google bots to view JavaScript and CSS files on your site by uploading it into the site's template itself instead of an external storage or third party site.

If your site has several blocked CSS, the google pagespeed tool will point it out to you showing the exact Javascript URL whose resource is blocked.

How can i resolve this?

For users of blogger platforms, to unblock Javascript

• Copy the URL of the Javascript

For Example:

https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js

• Then Goto your blogger template
• Use Ctrl + F keys to search for the URL
• When found, add defer='defer' to that line of code. The image below shows you where exactly it should be inputted.

• Save your template.

The defer tag you just added ensures that the script only loads after all the page content has loaded.

Another Option you can implement is,

• Copy the Javascript URL
• Input the URL in a web browser and search for it.
• You will see a bunch of codes for that Javascript or CSS, copy it.

In your template,

• Search for the Javascript URL you copied from the pagespeed tool,
• Use refresh-sf.com compression tool to remove comments and excessive spacing from your code.
• Replace the Javascript URL with the entire code you copied when the url was accessed.

You can also do the same for your css files and encase them within the <style> </style> tags.


In conclusion:

Google prioritizes websites with responsive designs because it wants its users to have a good reading experience hence, you should always choose a mobile friendly template for your site in order to avoid a drop in your rankings.

But then,

Although Google is giving preference to websites that are responsive, those that use AMP pages that loads faster than a responsive design get even a higher level of preference. This means that an AMP page will load even faster than a page using responsive design.


About the Author:

Grace Joseph is a blogger at techlass.com where she shares her ideas on SEO, mobile phones reviews and, blogging tips and tricks. You ca visit her site to connect with her.