Is there an SEO disadvantage to using responsive design instead of separate mobile URLs?



Does a site leveraging responsive design “lose” any SEO benefit compared to a more traditional m. site?
John E, New York

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21 thoughts on “Is there an SEO disadvantage to using responsive design instead of separate mobile URLs?”

  1. A sense of irony in the fact responsive design was created to cater for tablets and mobiles, and nowadays tablets and mobiles rescale websites so well it's making responsive design redundant.

  2. If you are looking to obtain additional sales for your product, i suggest using speed rank seo to obtain more targeted traffic from search engines like yahoo. Just google it.

  3. yes. Besides I want to mention that I use youtube to drive traffic to my site since i am a video marketer. this particular video is very informative for me thanks! you can visit my channel on youtube to learn more information regarding the exact methods you can use to increase traffic to your site

  4. SEO is considered important for improving the business website. The responsive design of the website is good for SEO, because if the design is a website is responsive that will increase the usability. The website design must be adjusted according to the screen, and also have the mobile compatibility.

  5. It seems like responsive design could hurt in SEO if the mobile experience weren't great. Sometimes, a certain site design just doesn't work, even if the page elements scale down. Of course, sites that don't handle their mobile sites properly (for instance, sites that revert to the home page when someone clicks a deep link from search) face the same risk of higher bounce rate, lower ToS, etc. The reminders about rel=canonical and inadvertently splitting page rank are really helpful. 

  6. What about using 2 CSS files? One for 'screen' and one for 'handheld'. The CSS file for handheld would be lighter (so better for mobiles); and one big CSS with responsive structure for both would be heavier. What do you think of it? Thank you.

  7. website dengan responsive design tidak akan menderita dalam performa SEO nya, karena inti dari responsive design adalah agar pengalaman pengguna pada website tetap konsisten antara browser desktop maupun mobile. Thanks Matt Cutts 

  8. Indeed, from the SEO point of view, responsive design is quite more advantageous than arriving with a mobile dot version. In other words, having a single versatile site is better than the split solution – seems like a simple ratio yet a very tough design challenge during this evolutionary phase.

  9. Responsive web site is the future of web while m.website.com is a thing of past now. The latter one only adds tons of work for #webdeveloper .  Responsive web has a clear cut advantage of a single URL for both mobile and desktop version and hence the #linkjuice does not get divided between two URLs if canonical tag has not been used. Responsive web is good from development as well as #seo point of  view.

  10. Google has been hinting at the fact that seperate sites for mobile aren't the way to go for a while now.  responsive design IMO makes the most sense for SEO and UX in general.

  11. Really far from the question ! Matt : On all your Videos, Why you always have my City (Fes) Behind You on the Map 🙂 If you would like to Visit you will be more than Welcome 😉

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