More Mobile Traffic

The first and possibly the most significant result of responsive web design is the expanded mobile traffic. Mobile browsing has been developing steadily for years now and in 2016, according to an October report, managed to surpass desktop browsing with 51.3 percent lead. This means that the mobile phones have become a main focus point for various developers out there and mobile optimization has become the industry standard. So, by utilizing responsive web design on your website, you open the doors for the majority of web users nowadays, which clearly improves your SEO score.

Faster Web Page Loading

Speaking of mobile browsing, the speed has recently become a major SEO ranking factor with Google.

With the introduction of mobile-first theory, Google announced that webpage loading speed will become an important part of SEO starting from July 2018.

Although the outcomes won't be as clear from the begin, investing in faster web pages early on is a good way of preparing for the future.

So, where does responsive design fit in? Loading a full website on a smaller screen is not only ineffective and frustrating for the user, it’s also extremely slow. Responsive design condenses the pages, making them smaller and, therefore, easier to load.

Now, the question of speed is somewhat problematic. A few people argue that accelerated mobile pages (AMPs) are a better choice than responsive design because they're a lot quicker. However, AMPs have a couple of drawbacks, the greatest one being that they only work with static content, so RWD might still be a safer choice for now.

Lower Bounce Rate

Obviously, website visits mean nothing if the bounce rate is incredibly high – this means that a great number of visitors that go to your site leave promptly because of the poor overall experience. A lot of professional SEO agencies suggest responsive web design as a means of lowering the bounce rate and, therefore improving your position.

Remember, however, that bounce rate is a somewhat unreliable factor since it relies upon the kind of site you have. For example, according to Conversion XL, service sites get up to 30 percent bounce rate, content sites from 40-60%, while blogs can have up to 90 percent. One user even addressed the unreliability of it all with an example of his site that contains mostly images and the bounce rate is amazingly high since individuals see the picture they need and leave.

Positive UX

It should come as no surprise to you that user experience affects SEO quite a lot. After all, who are you making the website for if you don’t put the focus on the people themselves? Users need to be able to see the full content on any screen and navigate it successfully. As Cody Arsenault from Key CDN points out – it’s all about those first impressions. You don't need your visitors to struggle with zooming, looking over or whatever else regardless of their preferred browsing device.

In case you don’t feel that UX is that important for a successful website, take a look at this article by Forbes that cites a study saying that a good user interface can expand your conversion rates from anywhere around 200 up to 400%. So, it pays off thinking about the well-being of your visitors.

No Duplicate Content

Finally, one of the advantages that is obvious from the very definition of responsive website design is that it prevents the possibility of Google seeing duplicate content on your website and penalizing you for it. When you make two separate versions of your site (one for desktop and one for mobile browsing), Google can consider it to be two sites with the same content. Responsive design gives you a chance to utilize only one location that corresponds to all of the sizes.

Seeing how you have just one connection for every one of the variants of your site, link-building becomes much simpler and, therefore, your SEO rank goes up simpler.

Conclusion

In the end, everything comes down to helping the users get a better experience utilizing your site which, in turn, definitely improves your SEO score. The beauty of responsive website design lies in its simplicity and time-saving tendencies which still makes it a somewhat better choice than the alternatives, for now. However, the world of web design is constantly changing and maybe we'll get the opportunity to see a superior concept sometime in the future.