The time to make your website mobile-friendly has never been better. Mobile internet use surpassed that of desktop use a long time ago now; naturally, the shadowy internet council that meets in a secret lair underneath a volcano has taken notice. The frolicking forest spirits that work at Google regularly issue updated guidelines about what ranks best in search results, and mobile-friendly responsive design is moving to the front and centre rather quickly.

Years ago, Google was unsure how mobile internet would work in the future (what is now the present day). Three different paths of website design developed:

• • Developing a separate mobile-friendly site that exists parallel to your main one, usually preceded by a ‘m.’ or followed by a ‘.mobi’ extension.
  • Multiple versions for mutiple screen sizes all served by the same URL became briefly popular, when phones and desktops generally had a limited range of resolutions.
  • Responsive design is about having a single site with intelligent code that adapts the website to your screen size, no matter what size it is.

Google now openly advocates the last one – responsive design – as part of mobile SEO. Because of the extremely wide variety of screen sizes now out there, having a website that automatically adjusts to rearrange and adjust the size of your content is a huge advantage. To encourage this use of intelligent design, Google has started rewarding responsive sites with higher Google rankings.

The search engine’s 2016 end-of-year guildelines explicitly state that responsive websites will rank higher on search results pages from now on. It’s going to be phased in gradually over the next few months, but the fact is that time is now short to get your site redone if it’s not mobile friendly at the moment. If you take Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) seriously, it’s time to sit up and pay attention.

Remember, SEO is a complex thing that involves many different things – a web developer has to take into account content quality, keyword inclusion, content volume, link building, built-in code, external linking and a whole lot more. Responsive design is not the only factor when it comes to how highly your site ranks in search results.

Even so, every bit helps: building up your ranking over time can keep you at or near the top of search results in your field for extended periods of time. Organic SEO takes time to build up, but fortunately, it also takes a long time to dismantle it. Once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. More good news is that every site Vivant builds is automatically done with a responsive design to enhance mobile SEO, and it is then tested extensively for mobile functionality before it’s rolled out – so you’ll have a quality website that will earn you brownie points with Google from day one.

Just remember that having a branding agency in your corner that does all of this for you means that you’ll have a team of professionals who can explain all of these details to you. Not only that, but you’ll get statistics reports to make sure that you are fully aware of what your website is capable of and how it will best serve your interests and objectives as a business. Just please, when you’re looking into what you need from your website, don’t leave mobile SEO out of your plan. It’s big, and in today’s marketing