Is Desktop Website Satisfactory for Mobile SEO & Responsive Design

It is a well known fact that a lot is being accomplished by way of the smartphones and more and more websites are transforming or rather making their websites mobile friendly so that they do not lose out on this major chunk that is always on the move and yet do a great deal through their mobile devices.  Websites need to be mobile compatible and give the user a friendly experience when they browse through the website through their handheld device.  This repurposing of the existing desktop websites to suit the mobile devises is termed as responsive web design.

Now the question remains, do marketers have to treat mobile SEO separately or can they make do with responsive web design?

Through responsive web design the website that has been designed earlier is formatted to suit multiple devices and be compatible and accessible as well depending on the device from which the website is requested.  Though the technology is an old one the concept of having a single code for multiple tasks is relatively new.

Many a professionals are of the opinion that companies should be ready to reformat their desktop websites so that their website is accessible on the smartphones or the likes of the iPads or the tablet devices too. Designers create layouts basing on the device in which the websites have to figure but with this responsive web design, it is going to be the same design but the one that would be amenable into various devices.

What happens when the desktop websites are reworked to suit the mobile devices?  There is every chance that they lose out on the search engine optimization aspect and the ones that are designed with mobile SEO in purview will gain clearly over their counterparts.  These websites should be able to accommodate different types of goals of the user and hence companies should also make efforts in the direction of having websites designed especially for the mobiles so that they do not get left behind while the spiders lift and index the websites in the search results.

If it is an amendment or an adjustment that is made, then one can be assured of the fact that the content that the user gets to see is either marred partially or completely or perhaps will slow down the performance of the website too…all of this giving way to deliverance of grossly wrong content to the end user.

It therefore becomes highly imperative that companies cater to having mobile websites in addition to having desktop websites if they do not want any of their content to get marred due to these differences in the devices from which the user is accessing the information.

The interest to make do with the existing websites and get them accessed through other devices as well may have its own share of shortcomings.  However it remains a fact that getting a website atop the organic search would definitely keep it in a very good stead.

To put in a nutshell the responsive website designs are never the perfect alternative for the mobile websites as there are many goals that need to be accommodated from the user perspective.  Because the additional markups on the website will have to be suppressed if the user wants to see the same in the mobiles and this will definitely affect the speed of the site and ultimately end up in coming up with absolutely wrong content.

The user definitely has a right to better experience while browsing through his handheld device and this calls for a special mobile keyword research too.  For instance, Esurance Car Insurance and State Farm Insurance are two perfect examples that have separate content for their desktop sites and mobile sites.  But what the website owners are trying to do with responsive web design is that they are using the same content for all devices but just changing the format which in the long run will have an adverse effect on its ranking and SEO too.

The alarming part of the entire affair is that majority of the companies are under the opinion that having the responsive web design is a permanent solution wherein it actually is a temporary one.

And this kind of solution would also prove to be detrimental for the growth of mobile websites if the user is not getting what he wants.

One needs to understand that the search behavior of the users would definitely be different on the handheld devices when compared to the desktop.  So, websites that have been reformatted will definitely not answer all the requirements of the mobile users.

SEO therefore remains on the top if an internet business has to succeed and every smart marketer cannot overrule this fact.  Having a different slant for the mobiles would definitely help the mobile user find his requirements.

There are tools available for the marketers so that they could focus on getting their web pages optimized for the search engines for the mobile websites.  Smartphone simulators (i.e 10 Excellent Tools for Testing Your Site on Mobile Devices) can be used to get an idea as to how their website would look when accessed through the mobile devices or the tablets.  With the rapid advancement that technology is witnessing it becomes easy to create the QR codes and make the content amenable to the chosen platform.

Conclusion:
To sum it up all in a few words, it is an emphatic yes to mobile SEO which is a totally different marketing entity or a strategy and companies need to consider it seriously if they want to have a longer innings on the internet platform and do not want to lose out on the segment that depends heavily on their handheld devices.  Well, the desktops have been replaced by the laptops and they by the smartphones now.  So, businesses should very well equip themselves with these vicissitudes too.

About Hemant Parmar

Hemant Parmar is an eCommerce expert and a keen Magento consultant who specializes in meeting the needs of businesses in the e-commerce space. Years in the eCommerce market make him a perfect choice for sharing his expertise on eCommerce and Magento 2 development. He believes that customers need to be met no matter how challenging it might be.

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