Responsive web design is that confusing mix of mobile web design and traditional website design — it’s really an essential modern web design strategy that puts an emphasis on creating a website that can adapt to any screen size, particularly on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Responsive web design is absolutely essential for SEO marketing and for other types of social media and search engine marketing — but why exactly is it so important when the concept of mobile web design is still such a new concept?

• When Google is determining your website’s ranking for a search term, it pays attention to your website design because it factors in the quality of your desktop and mobile websites — and yes, if you don’t have a mobile website, technically you just have a bad one, which gets factored into the algorithm. When your mobile website isn’t loading correctly and/or isn’t displaying enough important info, this negatively affects your ranking.
  

• Part of the reason why it hurts your ranking to ignore a mobile website has to do with what some people consider to be mobile web design — AKA, just shrinking down everything on your desktop website and making it small enough to fit a smartphone screen. This isn’t good for Google, because exact repetition is seen as a negative factor when web design is concerned.
  

• And of course, it’s important to note that user friendliness is key for a website design; this is where responsive web design really becomes important even if you aren’t concerned with search engine optimization, simply because mobile device visitors aren’t likely to stay on your website and make conversions if your website isn’t optimized for mobile device usage. Factors that really matter in terms of user experience include load times, readability, ease of scanning, ease of finding local contact information, navigation, and interesting content that can be shared via social media platforms. More visitors and page shares will ultimately increase your website’s ranking, so this isn’t just about getting more customers — it’s also a major factor in SEO.

Quite simply, any business with an online presence needs to know about responsive web design — regardless of the reason why it’s important, there are just too many ways that this web design technique comes into play!