Everywhere you look to find out more about SEO, Danville, you find the word “responsive.” It is an important aspect of web design, and one that has been continuing to grow in importance since mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones have become more and more popular. On top of that, Google implemented a new algorithm this year that gives precedence in the rankings to sites that are mobile-friendly.

There are several tools that can be used in order to find out if your site is appropriately responsive, including Google’s Chrome plugin called Responsive Web Design Tester. However, it is possible to determine whether or not your site is responsive even without these tools. Some of the things to look for include:

• Logo: does it resize properly? If it gets blurry, cut off, or otherwise messed up, that will need to be fixed.
• Icons: are they clear? If they look great on the desktop, but fuzzy on a mobile screen, then adjustments will need to be made.
• Calling: can your customers call by tapping the phone? When so many people are using mobile devices to find out where to obtain a product or service, it makes their experience so much more pleasant to be able to just tap to call.
• Images: are they fluid? If your images do not scale properly, you can end up with the mobile site impossible view or navigate due to images in the way, or push things off the screen. Fixed positioning of images can be a problem on mobile devices.
• Orientation: does the site adjust for horizontal and vertical? While many people use their mobile devices in a vertical orientation, the site should adjust when the device is turned. Simply shrinking and growing to fill the screen is not the best way to handle screen size changes, and is not true responsiveness.
• Bandwidth: how much do you use? While most desktop users have unlimited, once you switch to a mobile device, it is necessary to remember that data is not always unlimited, and site owners should be respectful of how much of a customer’s data allotment is being used by accessing the site. Also, using fewer data results in the site loading more quickly, which users like.
• Touch: is it hard to find the touchpoints? Because fingers are larger than cursors, it is important to be sure that your links are easy to tap with a finger on a mobile device.

Yes, it matters. It matters because the search engines are looking for it, and ranking is affected accordingly, and it matters because if users do not have a pleasant experience on the mobile site, it can affect the business. SEO for Danville businesses should include efforts to make sites responsive.