How Mobile Website Design Is Affecting Search Engine Rankings

Concept of Mobile Friendly Websites

Ours is a mobile internet generation and currently there are billions of smartphone users across the globe. This number is rapidly increasing as we speak. Millions of people every hour use their smartphones to access the internet and retrieve the information they need. This trend of mobile web browsing is on a steep rise and every major or minor website out there whether it is social networking platform, a search engine or a website related to academic content have launched their mobile friendly website.

Now, the question arises what is a mobile friendly website and why is it so important? A mobile friendly website is a website designed and optimized for the use on smaller displays like those of mobiles and tablets. The websites we usually go through on our laptops and desktops are very big and they need large screen space and bigger display resolution to display the contents correctly. But this is not the case with mobile websites which are actually toned down versions of original websites.

A mobile friendly website does not only mean that a webpage can be displayed on the mobile screen but it must be designed in such a way that a user can easily browse through all the content and find the relevant information. They must provide easy navigation on the webpage and users do not have to struggle while searching for particular information.

Responsive Design and Its Importance

Technically, websites which are browsed through computers require larger screen space and resolution to display the content properly. Mobile phones tend to have smaller displays and lower screen resolution therefore a website accessed on a mobile must change its size and display properties accordingly. When a conventional website is converted to a mobile friendly website then the whole webpage written in HTML code is converted to what is known as responsive design.

The concept of responsive design means that a webpage should change its properties like size and resolution automatically when accessed on a smaller display of a mobile browser. Websites without mobile friendly versions can present an awful situation where a user has to scroll horizontally a long way down to read a single line of text which is no doubt a really awkward condition.

Another key factor of responsive design is that websites should load much faster and quicker on a mobile browser. Without responsive design webpage will be out of proportion and will not be displayed properly. So, responsive design is an integral part of mobile friendly websites.

Effect of Mobile Friendly Websites on Search Engine Rankings

Search engine ranking is the order in which websites are displayed related to a particular query or keyword searched by the user. Websites which are accessed more frequently by large number of people are displayed first in the search engine results. So it is safe to say that websites with huge web traffic are ranked first.

Since accessing the websites on mobile phones has become the norm these days, search engine rankings are altered significantly. Websites with mobile friendly versions see a huge boost in web traffic which in turn leads to subsequent boost in search engine rankings. Those websites who do not have mobile friendly versions struggle with low web traffic and are penalized by search engines with lower search rankings.

This drop in search engine rankings will prove severely detrimental to the businesses that depend on web traffic. A search engine giant Google has recently made it official that in future mobile friendly websites or in short mobile friendliness of a website will be a key factor in deciding the search engine rankings.