These days, almost everyone has a smartphone, tablet, or another mobile device. Plus, the internet is now the most used communication, entertainment, and business platform, making digital marketing necessary for all businesses.
With over 60% of online searches now coming from mobile devices, mobile website traffic has become more critical than desktop traffic. As such, to be successful in today’s highly competitive digital marketplace, you need to adopt a responsive web design.

What is a Responsive Website?

A responsive website allows your website design to adapt to the size of the user’s screen. So, visitors could be viewing your site on any device without noticing any significant differences in your site’s general appearance.

The Importance of Responsive Web Design

You want your end-user to have a superior customer experience when they visit your website, regardless of the device they’re using. Below are some of the benefits of choosing a responsive website design.

Improved User Experience

Whether a visitor is viewing your website on a desktop, tablet, mobile phone, or laptop, a responsive design will ensure an outstanding experience and increase customer reach on all devices.

Search Engine Rankings

Search engines use plenty of information to rank websites, but they consider mobile-friendly design one critical factor. And where your company appears in search rankings can affect your business’s visibility and success.

Easier Management

Instead of building separate websites for mobile devices and desktops, a responsive design makes things easier to manage and cost-effective. For instance, site managers can complete all updates at once rather than update several sites separately.

Competitive Edge

Responsive web design allows you to create exceptional customer experiences and gives you a competitive advantage over your competitors—especially if they don’t have a mobile-friendly website.

Responsive Web Design – What is it & Why you need it

Elements of a great website design include high-quality content writing,  responsive design, engaging images, layouts, and many more. A responsive design should automatically adjust without requiring custom-made solutions for each device or screen size. However, responsive design is more than automatically resizable images and adjustable screen resolutions. Here are some ways to make a responsive design website:

• Fluid Grid: sizes the elements of your site proportionally, making it easy for your web design elements to respond to the screen’s size
• Flexible Text & Images: adjust within a website’s layout automatically
• Media Queries: allow for multiple layouts of a web design that uses the same coded webpage
• User Testing: whatever form it takes, getting feedback from users is priceless (but some sites will charge a small fee)
• The Browser and Device Testing: make sure the layout is compatible with as many physical devices and browsers as possible
• Pre-Designed Layouts: all you’ll have to do is update the content, branding, and colors to match your needs—if you need expert help, contact us at Digital Engage.

The Future of Responsive Design for Mobile

Search engines, as well as devices, are changing by the day. Mobile phones are getting larger, and foldable smart devices are starting to gain traction. While Google’s algorithm regarding responsive design doesn’t affect tablets just yet, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the curve and aim for a website structure that can accommodate whatever devices the future holds.

Is My Website Ready for Mobile?

Making your website mobile-friendly is necessary and part of the SEO strategy, as Google already uses mobile-friendliness as a search engine ranking signal and punishes websites that aren’t optimized for mobile. Google drives 96% of mobile search traffic, so having a mobile-friendly website increases visitors to your site. Ultimately, it affects your site traffic, conversions, and overall success.

Responsive Design Best Practices

There is no cookie-cutter approach to designing a mobile-friendly website. However, there are a few tips that will help to make your website more appealing to end-users. Here are a few things to bear in mind:

• Optimize for speed
• Use a responsive web design framework
• Test and improve your site
• Simplify interactions and navigation

Digital Engage is a digital marketing and web design company based in Tennessee. Our professional team has expertise in services like website design and development, wordpress web design, WooCommerce, shopify web design, wix services and others. You should choose us because we provide professional consultation, value our clients, have a track record of success, and are always available to provide you with the most professional services. Call us today to learn more about our services.

According to an estimate in a 2017 Review Trackers’ study, more than 35% of all search traffic is local. That said, optimizing your site for local SEO is the key to driving users to your site. This is a crucial marketing strategy, especially for smaller regional businesses or companies that want to drive traffic to multiple locations.

Optimizing for local SEO helps you compete more effectively against established brands that have been in the industry for ages. Here are eight simple steps on how to improve local SEO for your business.

Optimize for Google My Business

Google My Business is one of the best tools for getting your business in front of local customers searching for your products and services. By creating a Google My Business account and filling your listing, your local business will appear on Google Search local results, Google Maps, and Google Search Knowledge Panel. This makes it easy for customers to find your address, business hours, photos, and other information.

Optimize Website Content for Local Keywords

You want to optimize your website for keywords that are relevant to your local customers. Once you’ve done keyword research and have a list of local keywords you’d like to target, infuse them into your web content, headers, meta descriptions, title tags, and other SEO elements to boost visibility.
If you’re not sure which keywords to target, we at Digital Engage understand the ins and outs of keyword research. We’ll help you target the right keywords to improve your local SEO.

Optimize Your Website for Mobile

Closely connected to the practical importance of local SEO is the rising use of mobile devices. Your local customer could be in the neighborhood and using their smartphone to look for a company like yours. Paying particular attention to mobile-friendly web design, for example, improves your local search rankings.

Create Local Content

Creating local content is a great way to grab a local customer’s attention. Consider setting up location-specific webpages or writing blog posts about local events and activities. Creating local content can help you gain authority for areas you’re targeting. For example, if you own a car dealership in Miami, you can write an article with maintenance tips or other location-specific advice for car owners in Miami.

Optimize for Voice Search

Thanks to the prevalence of voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa, voice search is gaining popularity. Businesses need to leverage this and optimize their content into more conversational tones. The trick is to make information readily available as more people will be seeking answers or solutions to a problem when using voice search.

Get High-Quality Relevant Links

High-quality, relevant links from other websites provide ample opportunities to boost your local SEO. They factor in Google’s local ranking algorithm because they indicate your legitimacy and authority in a particular field. An excellent first step is to get your business listed in online directories.

Leveraging your offline relationships is also another way to go. For example, you can talk to other businesses or partnerships about linking to your website. Publishing high-quality content is also beneficial, as others will want to link to your website.

Get Regular Reviews from Happy Customers

Online reviews are essential in today’s world of stars and ratings. According to various studies, many people value positive third-party opinions as much as personal recommendations. Be sure to encourage your customers to leave positive reviews.

Use Location Pages

If you’re serving customers in different locations, leverage location pages by optimizing them to target those specific areas. Include details specific to each location, such as photos, individualized descriptions, contact information, etc. on each of the respective pages. This will ensure that local search results are relevant to local customers.

The Importance of Local SEO

Some ways to improve your local SEO include optimizing your website for local keywords, building citations, getting reviews, using local directories to list your business, and many more. Following the tips mentioned above will help increase your business’s visibility to local customers and your bottom line. However, optimizing your web presence for local searches can be challenging, especially without technical expertise. Not to mention, you never know when Google will update your algorithm, so it’s crucial to stay up to date on the most recent developments.

Digital Engage is a digital marketing and web design company based in Tennessee. Our professional team has expertise in services like website design and development Drupal Development Services, Joomla Services, Hubspot, Prestashop and others. You should choose us because we provide professional consultation, value our clients, have a track record of success, and are always available to provide you with the most professional services. Call us today to learn more about our services.