Google webmaster Trends Analyst has made an announcement. There will be clear recommendations and guidelines on search engine optimization techniques for websites that are mobile optimized. Hints have been dropped that websites that cannot customize and adapt optimization for mobile in their digital marketing and web design campaigns will eventually fall in search engine rankings.

Googlebot

Google has advised that rankings for non-mobile optimized websites may drop in 2015. And also that web design should take on a responsive role as far as possible. There are few steps that can be taken when communicating by HTML that are device-specific. Around three years ago, Google introduced a mobile user agent known as Googlebot-Mobile for Smartphones. Googlebot-Mobile was meant to detect all content for mobile optimization and mobile friendly ranking. Fast forward to today. Google is now providing specific recommendations on ways to go about branding and building the websites for optimum user experience.

Elementary configurations of responsive design

There are three basic configurations web designers should give importance to when designing and development responsive websites on WordPress or others platforms. These include one URL (Uniform Resource Locator), one web content and one HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) code. And CSS media queries to specify which CSS rules apply for the browser displaying the page. Such configurations allow users to interact with a web page and also permit Google’s algorithms to allocate indexing properties to the content. Such annotations will help the discovery of the content, which is smartphone-optimized, and help the algorithms in understanding the content structure. If possible, Google recommends the responsive design approach.

Websites that are built responsive will seamlessly serve all devices with the same URL set. They will also serve the same HTML using CSS to alter the user experience for each device. CSS 3 media queries can be used to change the way pages are delivered for mobile devices.

So what’s the takehome?

In 2015, go responsive or consider taking your ball and bat and going home. Well, maybe just hitting the sidelines. With Google’s recent strong nod to responsive web design in 2015, there’s really no reason any longer to not use responsive web design. Consider responsivity the new “it” standard that is most likely here to stay.