Beginner’s Guide to Responsive Web Design

Building up a website before was far easier than today. Most companies who established theirs was simply satisfied to set a new medium up where they can post typical facts about their company and the products they offer. End of story. However, nobody appears to tell these companies that the story has a continuation of its own. Modern times bring modern challenges. Now, it all seems that the industry of web design is also shaping itself to adapt on the demanding and discriminating taste of the general public—especially now that the dawn of mobile handsets being used for mobile surfing is finally reaching its zenith.

The internet has provided us the information we seek by just a click of the hand, literally. Gone are the old days where one simply had to put all the information in a single website and have the people, the visitors, sort it out on their selves. Today, it is the other way around. Company websites are now facing bigger problems by attracting visitors, luring them to stay longer, and of course, sealing business with them. This has caused the battleground for web design to shift the focus from simply a fact-giving website to a visually- and virtually-satisfying medium. It means maximizing the viewing experience of websites viewed on a desktop computers or laptops but also supplying to other devices like Android phones or iPad. And oh, it also means easing visitors the trouble of internal troubles like page load among many others.

To date, the latest trend in the website industry is the RWD or responsive web design. This innovation is particularly aimed at making websites perfectly viewable on any screen including mobile handsets without continually stretching and zooming its content. Responsive web design values the “quality over quantity” philosophy. Because most mobile users are being limited when they access your site, contents like images are being squeezed to meet the limitation of the handset. By using RWD, images are no longer cropped but instead scaled to to help images load quickly without destroying its resolution.

Luckily, RWD are also being offered in some Philippines web design companies despite being new and having coined the term only last 2010.

Blogging Means Business!

                      Blogging in search-engine optimization does really help the business regardless of the business’ set up. Because blogs normally tread to a more personal note, it is more understandable and reader-friendly than reading some texts with highfaluting words. The main reason that it so important in today’s business is that it enables the blogger to write and reach out to the readers encouraging them to read more and often. In other words, blogging makes online communication more humanistic with the involvement of today’s technology.

                Important as it is, blogging nowadays follows a more intricate system than ever. Of course, as the blogger and the writer, you want people to notice your write-ups and interact with them as they read along. This task, however, proves to be too strenuous. There are competitions, keywords and the psychological proximity to be considered as to what people will understand after you’ve posted that written material. Is the topic relevant? It is beneficial to the reader Am I going to make sense if I say this and that? Woo! Talk about getting noticed online. Disregard the idea that this mentality is nothing than an ego trip to satisfy blogger’s attention needs. No. It goes beyond that. It goes beyond the psychological and societal aspect of life. And since we’re talking about business, having more readers attached to your text means more prospect clients. See?

                Blogging isn’t really complicated as everyone thinks. One does not need to earn a graduate degree on literature or creative writing. Blogging is currently complicated because of the algorithm the Google uses to rank pages. Since this algorithm is unknown to the public, bloggers have to do continuous testing and trial and errors hoping that to land on higher page ranks.

                That idea alone is only about half of the entire process that the blog has to undergo. While you’re still continuing to decode the algorithm that Google uses, the least that you can do for now is secure everything internally. This means that you must publish relevant posts. It must be unique and relatable. Besides, business is people. People would notice you and your blog if you happen to write things that interests them.

                Also, do not put too many links on your post. Aside from distractions, too many links are clatter to look at. Limit it to a minimum and include those that are really important. For example, I can link you to another site that discusses the importance of blogging on online business.

                Also, make sure that the web design of the business you’re linking to is also good, if not decent. We may not want to appear to be too judgmental but a good and professional looking web design can go a long way. Nobody wants to read an interesting blog only to end up browsing sloppy looking web sites. If you are worried about the expense, maybe you consider a Philippines web design without sacrificing the quality.

What are Search Engines Anyway?

In internet marketing, search engines are extremely powerful in the business. The drastic shift of trend, from conventional to online, will help those who jumped right through it to advertise and establish reputations as early as they have started. However, the age of online, though is a young industry that started only in the 1990s, is billion dollar industry and works in a very complicated way.

Take for example Google. When you type on the search bar the words “Samsung galaxy,” the search engine will of course provide you the main website of Samsung as its top list (it does!). This is because search engines work on a system of algorithms that rank each websites according to its keywords. The words “Samsung galaxy” provides such a specific clue for search engines to locate what the user appears to be searching. Remove the word “Samsung” and Google will bring you broader lists with the word “galaxy” on it—topped by the astrological term, galaxy.

How Google does this, you ask? It’s simple and complicated.

First, you need to understand the web is really made up of “web” that’s linked to another websites, which will connect to the next website and so on and so on. Through the links forged in this intricate system, search engines will try to read billions of billions of interconnected documents just to give the best possible result that you seek. Without going over so much on its exact details, this system, as I’ve said, follows a specific set of algorithm rules that aren’t available to the public. The algorithm will be deciphered to constant analysis and trial and errors in order certain websites to reach the top list every time a Searcher types in his/her queries in the, search engines.

Now, there are different kinds of search-engines existing, not just Google. Here are some of the examples:

1. Crawler-based

Crawler-based search engines use software programs to categories each website that hits the web. They create their own listing by using a software program to “crawl” and index them accordingly. Examples are Google and Ask.com

1. Directories

Directories depend on human editors to help them categorize a site. These editors will manually check the website and rank based on whatever information provided by the website. This includes Yahoo Directory and LookSmart

1. Hybrid

Hybrid search-engines are those who can perform both crawler-based and directories at the same time, like Google and Yahoo.