More about SEO for adaptive web design

More about SEO for adaptive web design

Element from the SEO optimization or important factor for the number of people visiting a website?

We are becoming more and more mobile – nowadays it is an undisputed fact and not just a future tendency. For the web developer this fact alone leads to the acceptance of a second fact: The SEO optimization for mobile versions of websites has long ago been transformed into a separate direction for optimization and has turned into one of the most important factors for the online business.

If you still don’t have a mobile version, you are already lagging behind from the modern trends. Even if your website is accessible via a tablet, smartphone or any other mobile device, but it is not user-friendly for Google, the search engine will not rank it well. You competition will be better ranked if they have mobile versions of their websites. What matters at the end is how accessible and user-friendly your website is – this is the number one issue to take into account out of the 10 basic principles of Google.

There are 3 simple rules anyone should remember if he desires to have a mobile version of his website:

Be mobile

Your website must have a mobile version. This is a very important and basic need. Maybe you think that all this is logical and you don’t need to be reminded of it. In this case I will point out to you that we don’t talk about the mobile version of the past. Then what are we talking about? We are talking about the old practice of creating 2 separate websites – a standard one for desktop devices and a mobile one for mobile devices, the second one residing in its own subdomain.

Is this done in the right way? Let’s say it with simple words: It is better to do it this way than not do it at all? Despite all this, last year Google officially announced its standing in regard to the mobile versions of webpages: this is the future of websites – to be adapted to all kinds of devices – from notebooks to smartphones. The further you get, the better your content will be ranked in the search engine. Besides, you will not only be ranked well but your website will also be adapted for the mobile user. From this rule we can derive the next one.

Be adaptive

The adaptive web design is the most modern term at present. One of the reasons it is so popular lies in the fact that Google constantly talks about the adaptive websites, and how much they are against pages for mobile devices residing in a subdomain. In their recommendation for the development of websites optimized for smartphones, the following is very clearly stated:

“Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device. This is Google's recommended configuration.”

The term adaptive web design speaks for itself – websites that use it, automatically adapt to all kinds of devices (mobile devices included), without losing their ease of navigation. The content, the graphics, the elements of the navigation, the size of the font – all this is being rearranged depending on the visitor’s screen.

Consider all this. The owners of all kinds of devices love to surf the web, and they will feel comfortable on your webpage. It is over with the unpleasant scrolling for the purpose of visualizing a single picture or the unnecessary mouse clicks to enlarge the font size. What is more, the websites with adaptive web design are easy to maintain. You will not be required to update each separate version – for desktop, tablet or smartphone devices. It is enough to update one of them, and you will be able to observe the changes on the rest.

Consider the visitor first

The latest studies concerning the activity of users when searching the web with mobile devices discovered the following:

  • Each third search generated from a mobile device relates to local goods and services;
  • 61% of all mobile visitors use the phone number they have stumbled upon on a webpage for contact, and 59% of them go directly to the office of the company from the address they obtain;
  • 79% of all smartphone users search the web for extra information concerning goods after a TV advertisement or an advertisement in a publication. And yet 79% of the websites of large advertising companies are not yet adapted for mobile devices.

It is not necessary to have great knowledge about marketing to be able to derive the correct meaning of these indicators: the future belongs to the online marketing for mobile devices. Even presently, the results from Google’s SERP for websites lacking mobile versions are given no priority. Think about how many clients you lose at present.

The industry of mobile devices is developing at a very fast pace, and every day more and more webmasters open their eyes for the advantages it offers. Adapt your website for these mobile devices and you will be able to attract far more clients.