Most businesses have a website these days. And they’re designed to work just as well on a tablet, smartphone, or desktop. It’s a necessary step when you want to be competitive in a niche market.

The good part is you don’t have to build a website for each platform. All you need is a responsive website. It detects the device you accessed it from and changes or adjusts certain functions to provide the best experience possible.

We’ll tell you more about the 12 major benefits of a responsive web design in this article.

​What is a Responsive Website?

A responsive website consists of a web design that adapts to the dimensions of your visitors’ screen. Your goal is to optimize content for your visitors’ devices. Provide them with the best experience, no matter the device they use.

Responsive web design detects the type and size of the screen used to access it, and it responds by adjusting itself. In other words, the visitor doesn’t have to scroll, minimize, maximize, pinch, zoom or pan to be comfortable on your website.

Responsive web design eliminates the need for a separate mobile website. So, instead of creating two websites, one for large screens and one for mobile screens, you can focus on an optimized platform that scales depending on screen size.

Responsive web pages attract mobile and desktop users alike. That’s why it’s important to be viewable everywhere. You can never know where your viewers are coming from.

Last but not least, Google announced that mobile-friendly websites would rank higher in search algorithms. All the more reason to look for a good website development company New York has to offer, if you live in New York and you want a professional company to help you build a responsive website.

​Benefits of Responsive Web Design

There are numerous benefits to responsive web design. It can obviously impact your performance, SEO, user experience and other things that can help your business grow.

Here are the 12 benefits to having a responsive website.

​Attract a Wider Audience

When viewers feel comfortable, they’ll stay, no matter where they come from. And you have a better chance of them taking an action that’s profitable for your business.

Your visitors come from a variety of devices and screen sizes. It’s important that they feel welcomed. A responsive design accommodates users on mobile, tablet and desktops. So, your business has more reach simply because it adapts to all devices.

​Responsive Website – Drive More Mobile Traffic

In order to catch and keep mobile visitors on your website, you need a responsive web design. When images, text or navigation don’t look good on a smaller screen, visitors tend to leave. They may even go to your competition.

According to SimilarWeb, over 50% of traffic to big websites in the USA in 2015 came from mobile screens. Therefore, it’s important for today’s visitors to have responsive websites that scale to the size of the screen.

The viewer shouldn’t see distorted images or have a hard time finding the menu on their phone. A responsive design helps not only with mobile visitors but also with development costs.

​Ease in Developing the Website

A single responsive website is less costly than multiple sites for different platforms. And it takes less time to build one, too.

Because it takes less time and fewer resources to make one fluid website, you save money. The initial investment can seem higher than creating two separate websites, of course, but maintenance and other expenses are more manageable.

​Lower Maintenance Needs and Costs

Multiple websites for different devices require changes made specifically to each and every one of them. But one responsive website – one that works on all platforms – needs only one set of changes.

Your staff won’t have to split their time between more projects. Instead, they can focus more on other tasks, such as customer service, marketing strategy or content development, among others.

​Improved User Experience

A responsive website keeps visitors and improves their experience. Of course, one of the most important aspects of checking the quality of your website is to take into account the time your visitors spend on your site.

If they stay there longer, your website offers the better user experience. If they can’t find the menu or they have to zoom and pinch repeatedly, they can lose their patience and leave.

When your website scales and responds well on any screen size, visitors have no issue browsing around. As a result, their experience will be better, more positive, so they will stay around longer.

In turn, it can lead to them recommending you to other possible visitors and clients for your business.

​Faster Response Rates

A responsive website is a site that loads fast on any device. Most importantly, on tablets and smartphones. When a page loads faster, it has a direct impact on the time visitors spend on your website.

As shown in some studies, visitors tend to leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. The longer a visitor needs to wait for the website to load, the more frustrated he becomes.

When a website is more responsive and loads fast, it can see better conversion rates because visitors stay longer and are more inclined to spend their time and money there.

​Responsive Website – Low Bounce Rates

The bounce rate represents a percentage of visitors who leave after seeing just one website page. With a friendly interface and a responsive website that doesn’t happen as often.

Visitors greeted with a fast and well-thought-out website stay longer, explore more pages and read more. They can respond favorably to your CTAs or even spend their money on your products and services.

​High Conversion Rates

As mentioned before, the more time someone spends on a website, the more inclined they can be to take action. With a responsive website, visitors spend more time on pages and have a better experience. You can build trust with them by giving them a professional, user-friendly interface.

That leads to better conversion rates, too. Conversion can mean signing up for a newsletter, filling out a form, booking a call, making a purchase or subscribing.

After all, conversions made from mobile are up 64% compared to desktop rates. More and more people spend time on smaller screens. Considering, it’s not hard to understand why a responsive website is much needed for a business.

​No Content Penalties

When you create one website for desktop and another for mobile, you’re basically working twice on the same content. Duplicate content can damage your reach because of search engine algorithms.

Although search engines are growing smarter and smarter by the day, they still have a hard time understanding which web version is more relevant.

When a mobile website and a desktop version have the same content, they can be seen as duplicates. So, they will both show up lower in searches because engines won’t know which version is more relevant.

If you’re lucky enough to have two versions of your website that rank well, you’ll spend more on SEO and marketing strategies. And you’ll invest more in original content.

Build a great responsive website instead. You’ll avoid all of the problems mentioned above.

​Improved SEO

Responsive web design is slowly becoming just as important as quality content when it comes to SEO. Many businesses use Search engine optimization to rank higher in Google’s search rankings. The higher you are on the list, the better the chance someone will click on your URL.

Google announced in 2015 that it would take into consideration mobile-optimized websites when ranking a website.

If a website is mobile user-friendly, it ranks higher in searches. And a boost in search engine results means more clicks to your website from any device.

​Increase in Social Sharing

Visitors who are happy with what they see can share their experience more. Responsive web design can facilitate sharing through social media buttons.

Even those navigating your website on mobile can press a button or share a link. Shares increase your visibility and credibility. In turn, you get more traffic and, possibly, more conversions.

Social sharing can improve your search engine ranking as well, because search engines quickly notice online engagement.

​Better Backlinking

A responsive website is helpful when building backlinks.

Backlinks are used to show search engines when other online publications or websites consider your website a genuine source of information. They are an important part of SEO strategy.

When your website isn’t responsive, other websites will not be eager to link to you. Instead, they’ll be more inclined to link to websites with a good user experience. That makes them look good, too.

​Conclusion

As already stated, there are numerous benefits to implementing a responsive website for your business. If your site isn’t up-to-date yet, you can start by planning a redesign with responsiveness in mind.

Recent developments in responsive website design have focused on smaller screens. But it’s also important to keep in mind users prefer larger displays.

Everyone should have the same user experience on the same website in the end. And it’s easier when you work on a responsive website with the right web development team.

Christopher is a digital marketing specialist at Digital Strategy One and a freelance blogger. He is focused on new web tech trends and digital voice distribution across different channels. In his free time Christopher plays drums and Magic: the Gathering.

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Having a SEO strategy is a must nowadays, when people are looking for products and services online. Developing your effective SEO strategy is not easy, because the online medium is always changing and reinventing itself. But with a strong set of rules in mind, you can make your own highly effective SEO strategy.

Effective SEO Strategy – Start with a SEO Map

Before you dive into the huge pool of SEO elements you need to have a clear map of what you want. Create a mind map of your strategy, which should contain your projects’ phases, objectives and team. Once you have these elements in place, link them to the central project plan. Then you can start dividing and conquering each individual element. For example, your objectives can be divided into smaller objectives and so on. The further away from the central plan, the more specific your map elements will become. There is a reason it is called mind map: it will help you create a plan and manage to think about it in all details, without being overwhelmed.

Create a Plan on Paper

An SEO strategy is a plan, which needs to be put down on paper, so you can assign tasks and track their status. The more in-depth your plan, the more things you will need to manage, so it’s a great idea to find a task manager tool and create your SEO strategy with the help of seo enterprise tools. Make sure every person involved in the project can understand the plan and know which task is assigned to whom, the timeline of the tasks and if they are recurring or not.

Effective SEO Strategy – The 3 Qs of Understanding Your Company

No matter if you are the owner of the company or you are an outsourced specialist, you need to understand the company you are making the SEO strategy for. To help you do this you have to be able to answer three main questions:

1. What makes the company unique?
2. Explain the company’s vision?
3. What are the weakest points of the company?

Get to Know Your Audience

Before you even start planning a SEO strategy you have to know your audience in detail. Use surveys, talk to them, gather as many information as you can, so you can know exactly what your customers’ needs are and what they want. Depending on how familiar they are with the industry, the level of their education and their views on digital marketing, your audience is going to respond to specific elements. The more specific your SEO strategy is, the better for your company.

Effective SEO Strategy – Set Goals and Track their Status

A successful SEO strategy has precise goals, which focus on specific elements. Your goals should involve more than increasing the profit, so you need to choose which metrics you need for your strategy. An SEO strategy does more than just increasing the profit and has long-term effects on your business. This means your metrics need to reflect all these, from rankings to authority links.

Every business can benefit from a good SEO strategy, so embrace these five steps and create your own effective strategy, making it part of your business management.

What’s your effective SEO strategy? What elements would you add?

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Regularly Updating Your Site

Fresh content is the secret to your site’s success. Now is the time to study and alter the layout, shape, and page content of your website. Is the site meeting your expectations? Is the site enticing visitors? Do you have a regular routine of updating your sites content? Do you blog?

[tweet “Much like searching for cars, the redesigned site is dependent upon your objectives and needs.”]
Once you have punch list organized, its time to find the right web design firm. The company should study your existing site and aid in designing new elements that are visually appealing. Next, share with your designer any major changes that have or are occurring in your company. Whether the site is for private use or for a small business, getting a professional looking site is very important in the current fast paced world of online searching.

Ideas, Formulas and Shortcuts for Website Redesign

Your next assignment is to search for five websites in your industry that you really like. Make note for your redesigner elements you love. “I like the header on this site, the rotator on that site. The footer on this site is very appealing.” Finally, look outside your industry, find five more websites you love in general. Contribute all these sites in your website redesign discussions going forward.

The Dirty Facts on Website Redesign

In the event you’re knowledgeable in the ways of website hosting, content updates and website security, you might not need a professional. BUT, before you decide to do your redesign yourself, consider the cost in time. Is it worth your time? Can you redesign quicker than a professional who does it ever day? Are you up to speed on the latest SEO tricks and silo?

Website design has developed into a craft all its own. Yes, there are platforms and tools out there to do your redesign yourself. However, we recommend you should involve a professional. That is the hidden truth on website redesign…exposed.

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Like we discussed in Meaty Meaningful Metadata SEO, you will need to fill out in your category all the Titles, Slugs, Descriptions and Keywords including all the field in the Yoast SEO tool. Many bloggers do a fairly good job on SEOing their post, but fail to do the same good work on their categories.

Tips for Common Catchy Categories for Slick Searchable SEO

It is important that you organize your posts into catchy categories that are logical and meaningful. Gone are the days of short one word categories like “writing,” “life,” or “tips.”

• Categories should be 2-5 words long, catchy, and purposeful.
• Make sure your category names match the associated permalinks.
• Do not create a category until you have at least five post to fill it.
• Your blog needs to have at least 5-10 categories but no more than 20.
• Each post should be associated with one category, if you need more, use them as tags.

[tweet “Website Tip: Make sure your categories are SEO’d as well as you would your post pages.”]

Organizing your post into categories and taking the time to SEO the category page. This effort improves your ranking in search engines. Small tweak bring you to great peaks and I want your website or blog to have slick searchable SEO!

Image courtesy of Gualberto107 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What tips do you have on your categories? What naming convention do you use?

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Yoast Helps Create Meaty Meaningful MetaData

While WordPress comes standard with boxes for your Title Tag, Meta Descriptions and Meta Keywords, I still highly recommend you add an SEO plugin to aid in your SEO. After using several, I highly recommend Joost De Valk and his team at Yoast. Download and install the Yoast SEO Plugin.

With Yoast installed, it is time to start using the plugin inside your post for meaty meaningful metadata. Write your next post or page.

• Create a meaningful title,
• Add in some H2 sub-titles, and
• Repeat your keyword phrase in a sentence or two in your writing.

Then scroll down and fill out some entries in Yoast. See below.

1. Type in your Focus Keyword

How do you want your post or page found on Google? That phrase or keywords need to be your Focus keyword on Yoast. In the previous post on the subject, I typed, “slick searchable seo”. For this post, I typed, “meaty meaningful metadata”.

2. Edit and Change Your Permalink, If Necessary

Although not completely obvious, you can edit the permalink directly. Take your cursor and place it over the permalink and edit it to match your title and/or your focus keywords you setup in Step 1.

3. Edit and Change Your Meta Description

Again, this took me a while to find but you can take your cursor and type over or add in a meta description. You will want to include your focus keyword usually in the first sentence. Yoast highlights the words to make it easier to recognize. Personally, I always start with my name, my twitter feed and then a description of the post that includes the focus keyword and the title.

[tweet “Yoast is a great plugin to improve your slick searchable SEO.”]

4. Study Your Yoast SEO Content Analysis

Using a simple red light, green light system, look at the notes in the Content Analysis to see that the majority of the lights are green. Your goal is to get as many of these recommendation green as possible.

5. Check that Your Post or Page Gets a Final Green Light

If you have filled out and done all of the above correctly, you should receive a Content green light. You may have to update or save the page or post for it to take effect. Your goal by using this tool is to make sure all of your content has green lights.

Taking the time to use a plugin like Yoast, or add meaty meaningful metadata into your page or post will cause your page to receive better results from SEO. Continue to use these ideas for both new content as well as going back and filling out old. Doing so will give you slick searchable SEO. (See how I worked in the focus keywords again. LOL)

Image courtesy of tiverylucky at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What additional tips would you recommend for making your site found easily through SEO?

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How to SEO a Picture for Your Website

1. Rename the Picture to Match Your Title. So you bought your appropriate picture from your favorite photo club (mine is DollarPhotoClub.com), resized it and saved it to your hard-drive. Now it’s time to rename it to your exact post or page title. For example in this post, my featured image is called How-to-SEO-a-Picture-for-Your-Website.jpg.

2. Right Click Image & Fill Out the Details. SEO begins on your hard-drive right after you saved the file with a good title name. Next from your File Manager, right click the image, go to the “Details” tab and fill in all the blanks using your title.

3. SEO the Title, Meta Description, & Meta Keywords in WordPress. After you upload the image, you again take the time to fill out all the tags, meta descriptions and meta keywords inside of WordPress. If you are using tools such as Yoast, you also fill out the SEO for those tools as well. Remember to redirect your image back to your WordPress permalink as well.

This seems like a lot of work and details and it actually is. But the sure fact that most bloggers and web designers do not take this much time for a single image, puts you ahead of the curve. Images are an important addition to good content, but they are equally important to having good content indexed by search engines such as Google.

Go forth and add pictures to your website, and report back what happens!

What tips do you have for SEO? How do you SEO your images?

Image courtesy of Dollar Photo Club.

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Log out of all Google products.

Make sure that you are logged out of all Google services before you do a search on yourself. If you use Google Chrome then make sure that you are logged out and if you use gmail make sure that you are signed out of that, too. YouTube, Google Drive, Google Plus (g+), all of them. Ignoring this total infringement on their trademark, we call them Googlies. In a nutshell, log out of your Googlies, or it skews the search on your own keywords.

Why? When you are logged in to Google, it will show you things that are relevant to you and there is nothing more relevant than your name and your business, right? This is the same reason that when you Google “Kroger store” it will give you the list of ones close to you and not one five states away. Google is pervasive – sometimes it’s convenient that way, and other times, it can just get your SEO hopes up.

A few first-page tips:

#1: Use Google Plus

Sharing Blog posts or web page links on Google Plus provides a lot of link juice and is a tremendous first step for getting either on the first page of Google or much closer to the first page. So each time that you release a new blog post or update a page on your website, make sure that a standard part of your release process is to share a link / update on g+.

#2: Submit a Sitemap

Make sure that you have submitted a sitemap of your website to Google and Bing. This alerts Google that there is an update to page content on your website. Why wait on the spyders to figure it out when this will help bolster your ranking faster? If your website was built utilizing WordPress then you can install a sitemap plugin and it will do this for you automatically, once it is all set up. However, it is not too difficult to do it manually either. Go to this link: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and follow the instructions.

#3: Keep it Fresh & Keep it Real

Google cares about you. Well, that you are you and not a bot or autoresponder. Google wants to see more human in the html now more than ever. Google now cares more about relevant content than it does keywords. As a matter of fact, while keywords are crucial so that people know how to find you, keyword “stuffing” (overuse) will get you knocked off the map. It is vital that you provide content for your potential visitors that will matter to them. So keep the content fresh and keep it real.

Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Do you have any SEO tricks that you would like to share? Please share your experience below. I look forward to hearing from you.

The post Are you on the first page of Google? first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.

1. Meaty Meaningful Meta Data for Slick Searchable SEO

With a WordPress website or blog it is more important than ever that you fill out all of the Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Meta Keywords, and any and all SEO Settings within your pages and posts. I’ll go into more details in the next post with recommended plugins and examples of what to write in your meta data areas. For now, don’t leave ANY of these meta data areas blank. Take the time to fill them out with MEATY meaningful descriptions. It is a key to get found.

2. Common Catchy Categories for Slick Searchable SEO

With blogging, it is important that you organize your posts into catchy categories that are logical and meaningful. Gone are the days of short one word categories like “writing,” “life,” or “tips.” Categories should be 2-5 words long, catchy, and purposeful. Do not create a category until you have at least five post to fill it. Your blog needs to have at least 5-10 categories but no more than 20. Each post should be associated with one category, if you need more, use them as tags.

3. Pretty Permalink Pages for Slick Searchable SEO

Your website and blog must use good permalinks. Don’t take the WordPress default that creates pages for you like p=204. Instead switch your permalink settings to include the category and the title name. Study the permalink carefully using only keyword searchable words. For example, this post is permalinked as “/seo-website/five-free-tips-seo-wordpress/”. The “seo-website” is the category, and “five-free-tips-seo-wordpress” is a good permalink. We’ll talk more details about this in future posts.

4. Interesting Intelligent Images Named Neatly & Nicely for Slick Searchable SEO

One of the easiest way to have your pages and posted found via SEO, is to take the time and add meta tags to the images embedded into your post. The name of your images, the meta description, and meta tags on your images are paramount. Having at least one image on each page or posts helps as well.

5. Standard Structured Silos for Slick Searchable SEO

This is the newest and perhaps the hardest concept to understand. The silo structure concept is having meaningful pages under each main topic from the home page, or in blogging having meaningful posts under each category. Furthermore, in blogging it is necessary to release three to five blogs as a series under one category without changing categories. Again, I will go into very specific details in upcoming posts.

Image courtesy of Creativedoxfoto at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What additional tips would you recommend for making your site found easily through SEO?

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