Responsive themes and SEO?

[thegrons]

Are responsive themes the way of the future for every industry? I am curious because I am flipping a few sites to responsive but there must be millions of sites that will never make the transition and if the search engines give priority to a theme's responsiveness, then this seems to be a huge SEO factor. Does anyone know if Yahoo and Google are going to give priority to websites being responsive by industry or is this across the boards? Also does anyone know how soon it will affect a certain industry?

[Jake]

I suspect the search engines may only give responsive themes preferential ranking as a result of observed user reaction to the site in lower bounce rates and higher traffic, andnot based on the design, if by nature a site gets little mobile traffic or has an artistic design that requires a specific presentation layout, a fluid layout may not be appropriate.

[Adi]

There are several advantages of having responsive theme. Two that comes to mind is -

Convenience - The mobile users would feel much more convenient to browse your website and not bounce off. This would help lower your bounce rate and increase audience engagement - the two metrics that are considered in SEO

Better Link-Juice - Since you are not having a separate subdomain or a folder that handles mobile traffic through redirection; you are not splitting the link-juice.

From ROI point of view (that is what a SEO wants) - you stand a better chance of selling something through a better device-optimized site.

[SEO Hamster]

Responsive themes are good for the users who use mobile devices. Other than that, I haven't seen a drop or increase in rankings because of using responsive themes (I have over 200+ sites). I would recommend just doing the things you have been doing to increase your rankings such as good quality content, social media, good relevant backlinking, etc.

[eddie]

I think perhaps you're approaching this from the wrong perspective. Mobile/tablet, etc usage is increasing and this will continue - so, having a responsive site is good for users. This should be reason enough to go responsive.
As others have said, a responsive site may reduce page load speeds and reduce bounce rates - these are good for SEO.