The following is a guest post by Wendy Dessler of OutreachMama.

At this point, the wide majority of people accessing the Internet are doing so from smartphones and tablets. It’s important to have Responsive Web design in full effect on your site so it runs correctly on multiple platforms.

Otherwise you’ll miss potential traffic generating opportunities via Mobile devices and Google and the other search engines will not rank your site because it isn’t mobile friendly. Avoiding responsive web design at this point is a costly mistake for website owners far and wide.

Creating websites using responsive web design didn’t reach the height of popularity until 2012. But over the last five years, this design type is more popular than ever because it’s the perfect way to ensure your visitors on mobile devices can completely access your website, consume your great content, and visit you on the web over and over again.

If you’re ready to build a new website for your business, here’s why we feel responsive website design provides a number of fantastic SEO benefits.

Google Is Very Focused on Mobile

More than anything else, the best way to make sure your site is considered in the search engines is to impress Google. They will not be very impressed if your site is not mobile responsive. Since the big G is the largest search engine in the world, it makes sense to focus on keeping them happy.

So, if you’re focusing on growing traffic through SEO, responsive web design must be a major part of your planning. Since Google is so focused on mobile traffic at the moment, you have to give them what they want through the creation of a mobile website. Responsive web design is the fastest way to make this possible.

Your Website Should Only Have One URL

In previous years, your main website was completely different than the site you built for the mobile web. They both had a completely different URL because technology just wasn’t as advanced as it is today.

With responsive web design, website owners no longer need to build a separate site for the mobile web. Their main website can be viewed easily on mobile devices when it’s designed responsively.

Let’s look at a brief example.

Do you currently have a website filled with great content and lots of it? In the past, you’d have to migrate your content to a mobile website. This was a slow going, time-consuming, and potentially expensive process that thankfully isn’t needed any longer.

How so? If you build your website using responsive web design, you’ll be able to create a mobile friendly site with scrolling capabilities on your existing website. You will not have to migrate anything over to another platform. Your readers will be happy, your customers will be happy, and you’ll be happy because you’ll achieve even greater success now that you’re ready to blow up in the mobile search engines.

Experience a Lower Mobile Bounce Rate with Responsive Web Design

Even if your current website is the most amazing thing in the world and has pretty good rankings in the search engines for industry related keywords, you’re still going to struggle and your website will eventually crash and burn if it isn’t mobile friendly.

Guess what? Your bounce rate is going to go through the roof if people attempt to view your site on mobile devices without a mobile ready design in place. As your bounce rate continues to get worse and worse, your search engine rankings will fall accordingly since Google will not be happy with you.

Prevent this from happening by designing your site using responsive web design. It will help your company succeed beyond its wildest dreams.

We hope you’re convinced of the value of responsive web design as it pertains to search engine optimization. Please keep this in mind the next time you design or redesign your company’s website.

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