responsive web design Archives

Responsive Web Design

You’ve probably heard the term ‘responsive web design’ before. But what is it and how does it apply to you?

If your company’s website was designed for desktop computer monitors without taking responsiveness into consideration, it doesn’t fit on a small screen. Rather than try to navigate your website on their phone, your prospective customers usually hit the back button and choose your competitor’s website.

Responsive web design prevents this loss because your website displays equally well on any size device. This can lead to substantial revenue gains.

It’s important to know that over 50% of all Internet searches are done on mobile devices, whether smartphones or tablets. Equally important is that over 80% of internet users who search a company on Google will visit the company’s website with the interest or intent to make a purchase.

What is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive web design (RWD) creates a system for a single site to react to the size of a user’s device—with one URL and one content source. A responsive website has a fluid and flexible layout which adjusts according to screen size.

The importance of responsive website design is that it offers an optimized browsing experience.

Basically, your website will look great and work well on any device – a desktop, a tablet, or a mobile phone’s browser.

With the Google algorithm update, a responsive web design increases visibility on search engines—because it is mobile-friendly. A site with an effective mobile experience will rank higher in search results than one without.

Google likes responsive websites for a number of reasons. Firstly, responsive design websites have one URL (and the same HTML) irrespective of a device, which makes it more efficient for Google to index your website. Secondly, it is much easier for users to share content that is located on one URL. Lastly, if you have a single responsive website instead of separate desktop and mobile versions, you can avoid the issue of duplicate content and, as a result, the negative impact on your search rankings.

Obviously, managing one resource will take less time and cost less. Besides, you can easily and quickly make any changes to the website through multiple devices.

In Summary

Having a mobile version of your website is a must these days. It’s no longer a nice-to-have feature, people expect it. And creating one using responsive web design is the easiest and most beneficial way to do so. It improves the user experience, it’s cheaper and easier to manage, and it can even improve your SEO.

Read more at our Small Business Resource Center

If you have questions or would like a quote on a new website, please contact us today. We’d love to talk with you to learn about your current needs and explore how we can add value to your business.

Four Web Design Mistakes That Ruin Ranking

Newbies frequently make these web design mistakes, let’s make sure YOU don’t. These well-known “black-hat” SEO tactics don’t work anymore.

1) Link Farms – Web Design Mistake #1

A link farm is a series of websites that were created solely to contain a list of free links. These links point to sites that were submitted by their owners in an attempt to gain recognition. Sometimes, the link farm is a web of sites that interlink with each other.

Google won’t put up with these web design mistakes. These websites are trying to get high search engine rankings for websites without earning those rankings through good content.

If you use link farms as a way to build PageRank (PR), you are taking a huge risk. Even if your website has great content, your website will still get penalized or banned. The search engines figure if you had good content you wouldn’t resort to tactics designed to manipulate search engine rankings.

This SEO tactic may initially bring in results… but those results tend to fade and can result in Google removing your site from their listings entirely.

You should occasionally search your domain name in the search engines to see what sites are pointing to you. If you see websites or pages that are simply long lists of links, check into getting your links removed. They are hurting your site’s PR.

2) Doorway Pages

Doorway Pages are a form of landing page that is designed solely for the search engine. Sometimes they aren’t even viewable to the human visitor. These pages use a redirect script that automatically points the visitor to another page on the website. The human visitor never even sees the doorway page. This is known as cloaking and is definitely considered an illegal practice by Google and other search engines.

A landing page is acceptable by search engines if it is in the form of an informative, well-written article. Human visitors can read and enjoy it. They are not being redirected to the website’s main pages.

3) Keyword Stuffing- Original Web Design Mistake

Also known as Keyword Spamming. One of the original illegal SEO techniques, keyword stuffing occurs when you load a webpage full of particular keywords, either in the meta tags, other script tags, or in the content itself.

This is different from optimizing the page for particular keywords because the same words are being repeated dozens or hundreds of times in no credible or informative way.

Keywords are hidden in several ways, for instance, some people will make the text the same color as the background. Search engines see it, but no human visitors can. Others will hide keywords in script tags, or use CSS to position keywords outside of your visible screen area. No human visitors can see it – but search engines can.

At first, using such techniques might sound like a good idea. However, search engines can detect whether a keyword is being used properly. They will penalize or ban your site for using any of the above techniques to stuff keywords into your site.

Oftentimes, the only way to see if a site has been stuffed with keywords is to view the source code. Visit the site in your browser, click “View” and then “Source Code.” A page of HTML will display. If the same keyword repeats hundreds of times, then the page has been stuffed. It is in violation of virtually EVERY search engine’s rules.

4) Scraper Pages or Auto-Generated Pages

Scraper pages are those comprised of search results or content automatically pulled from dozens or hundreds of websites. This is a form of plagiarism since no part of the scraper page is original content.

Such sites are used to display Google Adsense Ads or ads that pay the site owner when a visitor clicks on it. Search engines have evolved. They are now very good at banning such sites from their results. Human visitors can detect them easily as well.

Scraper sites are easy to spot … They are snippets of other webpage content, or search results, and don’t make sense.

The tactics listed here are obvious web design mistakes. They will surely get your website in trouble if you use them. The search engines are getting smarter every day. It is always better in the long run to just load up your page with good content.

Read more at our Small Business Resource Center or this article:

Responsive Website Design

Why Your Business Needs The Web

The main reason your business needs the web is to interact with potential customers. As more and more people get connected, they will expect your business to be connected as well.

They will want to know when you are open, what hotels and transport are nearby, what you charge, what cultural events you offer, and what you sell. They will expect to have a rich variety of interactions with you over the Internet.

The percentage of adult Americans online is at 63 percent, says a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That percentage is expected eventually to rise, but not as quickly as the boom years from 1995 (14%) to 2000 (46%).

Lee Rainie – director of the Pew project, stated, “the Internet is eventually going to become as important and universal a technology as telephones and televisions are now.”

Ninety-four percent of American homes today have telephones; 98 percent have TVs. “The Internet is eventually going to get to that level,” he predicts, “but it’s going to take at least 10 years – or maybe even 15 or 20.”

(full report available at www.pewinternet.org).

Soon an Internet connection will be seen as being just as essential to business as a telephone connection.

It’s essential not only for communication, but is an essential tool for doing business – banking, making sales, selling tickets, as a marketing and promotional tool, and as a way of generating new business and expanding audiences for your products.

Benefits when You Get Your Business Online

Text and graphics are displayed on a screen in a format that you are familiar with in magazines.
Add sounds and movies to make it a potent and creative ‘publishing’ medium.
Links on Web sites enable you to find other Web sites using nothing more than a mouse click. A link can be text, a graphic or a button.
A Web site can act as a gateway to other software, allowing very powerful interactions. For example, it can be associated with a database which either displays or collects information.
You can fill out forms on a Web site. Such things as shopping, reservations and banking are made possible by Web forms.

With so many advantages over traditional media, the Web is rapidly becoming indispensable to your business.

Read more at our Small Business Resource Center or read this article:

How to Research Web Hosting