Responsive Web Design: The New Frontier in Online Business 2015

If you are currently not on responsive web design you are losing big time.  With responsive design, your website simply adapts itself to whatever device it is being viewed on.  If on a PC it fits the large screen perfectly and on a mobile device, such as your phone, iPad or Tablet, it fits that smaller screen perfectly as well. The idea is to make the viewing experience the absolute best it can be making it easy for visitors to your website to navigate easily with little to no need to pan, resize or scroll.  It also makes for easy reading which means that visitors are most likely to stay on your site longer.

Image courtesy of 2nix at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s safe to say that just about everyone with a computer or phone has access to the internet.  In fact, statistics show that most people enjoy reading magazines and newspapers online among other things.  Having a resposive website means that anyone looking to find your company online can easily switch from a desktop or laptop to a mobile device without losing the experience they were enjoying on the larger screen.  Let’s take for instance, a busy businessman who needs to look you up in transit from one business meeting to the other.  A great viewing experience of your site will give a much better impression of your company than if he had a difficult time scrolling, panning and resizing just to read what you have on your site.

So why is responsive web design working so well? There are several reasons:

• It is very flexible.  You do not have to build a regular site and then build a mobile site.  You build just the one website and it works like magic on every other device.  This is a great benefit because you only have to maintain the one site which can be viewed on thousands of screens, all different sizes, seamlessly, for a better user experience.

• Another reason why responsive web design is doing so well today is that it does not need much adjustment or maintenance in order to work with other browsers that may be coming up in the future  . 

• With responsive website, you can also get a response on time, location of the person and whether or not they have read the particular article or viewed the said website. For more informationa about resposive website design, you can read it more from Huffington Post about, "The Importance of Responsive Design for New Websites", by Eric Fischgrund.

Any smart business person will note the exponential growth of Smartphone’s and mobile devices in the last 5 or so years.  In fact, it is said that by the year 2015, desktop internet traffic will be overtaken by mobile traffic.  Getting yourself strategically placed for this mobile takeover is essential for future success and having a responsive website is just the beginning.

Whereas, many business owners have focused on getting their desktop experience to the height of perfection, it has been found that most people tend to have an enhanced view of those brands that give them a great mobile experience.  You can use wordpress ThriveThemes Content Builder to make the creation of your responsive web design much easier. 

Who Says Guest Blogging is Dead? Guest Blogging is not Dead

This is the first time I have updated my blog since May of 2013. Well, it’s time for me to share what I have learned with you guys!Before I jump into the main topic, why “Guest Blogging is not dead” ! I will explain first why this issue has been widespread to many of us SEO’s. It is indeed pretty alarming to us, that’s why I decided to write this article to clear it out that there’s no need to panic!

I think most of us knows that Matt Cutts stated on his twitter account in his latest blog post regarding, "The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO."

Matt Cutts stated the decay and fall of guest blogging.

It was surprising that Matt Cutts stated this on his blog:

Okay, I'm calling it: if you're using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it's become a more and more spammy practice, and if you're doing a lot of guest blogging then you're hanging out with really bad company.

It was actually a warning to us SEO’s that we need to think beyond guest blogging as an SEO link building method because many online marketers nowadays are opting to guest blog posting as their number 1 link building method. They don't mind that they are producing low quality articles or duplicate content, posted to unrelated and low authority sites, just for the sake of link building, to improve their Google rankings that could lead their website penalized by Google.

Warning! Stop Guest Spamming! :D

He also added: It seems like most people are getting the spirit of what I was trying to say, but I’ll add a bit more context. I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future.  

The Downfall of the Large Guest Blogging Network

In the recent blog post of Barry Schwartz from SearchEngineLand regarding, “Google’sMatt Cutts: We’ve Taken Action On A Large Guest Blog Network”.

As Matt Cutts previous blog post warned the SEO community that, “guest blogging is dead” in the previous statement above. He actually took down the largest guest blogging network (MyBlogGuest.com). But he did not specify which network was hit by the update.

He warned us but you did not follow! LOL!

Here’s the screenshot of  what Matt Cutts says on his Tweeter Account:

Matt Cutts took down a large guest blog network.

Think Beyond SEO Link Building

 

Matt Cutts was clear enough with his statements that we should not abuse Guest Blogging as an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy instead, we need to focus more on creating blogs for guest posts as a means of:

• Branding
• Increase your relevant traffic
• Build credibility in a specific niche
• Exposure to new audience
• Authorship
• Community Building

You can check more about guest blogging with purpose here.

Come to think of it! When you write write yor own article for guest blog posting campaign, just don’t think of it as an SEO link building method, just think beyond SEO as what I have mentioned above, and what Matt Cutts really want us to do when it comes to guest blogging. 

The 6 purposes of guest blogging (above mentioned), are the true meaning of Guest Posting not link building, for your information. 

Therefore, if we simply follow the the rules of guest blogging, then you have no reasons to worry about because I’m sure you will be successful with you marketing campaign as well as, improve your website and brand reputation.

If you enjoyed reading my post please feel free to leave a comment below…

Read About Why Search Engine Optimization Is Easier Than You Think!

Search engine optimization is a powerful way you can use the Internet to enhance your business's reputation. It may seem complex, but SEO is actually simple to implement, as long as you do it in manageable portions. This article will outline a few simple ways you can get started on or enhance your SEO optimization tactics.

Driving Traffic to Your Website

To drive more traffic to your website, you should start a blog about a theme or topic related to your site. This type of blog can position you as a thought leader in your industry, leading to greater audience engagement and more visitors interested in visiting your main website.

To optimize search engine results, never change or retire a page without a 301 redirect. A 404 (page not found) is the absolutely worst case scenario a server can deliver. A 301 redirect tells the search engine the new URL and transfers that into the search position. Learning how to do a 301 redirect is simple and will keep your search engine results optimal.

Build an Exceptional Website

Before you do any SEO to get your website onto the first page of search results, ask yourself honestly whether your website really is one of the best 5 websites in the world on your chosen topic. If you can't answer that question positively with confidence, then work on improving your website.

Give each photo you add to your pages a unique and relevant name. If you do not, then you are throwing away a huge opportunity for SEO. Search engines crawl images and if they see further proof of the page's validity it will help with the page rank. Be sure to fill in alt tags also.

Achieve more success in online marketing by registering with Yahoo!. Yahoo! is one of the most popular search engines on the internet. Although it is a pricey membership (it costs about 300 dollars a year), it is well worth it if you want that extra boost in your search result presence.

Businesses are becoming more and more aware of the value of search optimization and the value of maximizing traffic to their web site. One tip that may be helpful to you is to ensure that your website is one of the top sites in the specific area. The content should be unique and provide value, thus driving more traffic to your site. By doing this, your business will continue to grow and prosper as more and more consumers seek out your website.

Unfortunately, there are some great technical aspects of websites that can hurt your search engine optimization. For instance, you should avoid Flash plug-ins if you can allow it. Flash uses images, and search engines only read a site's text to determine its relevance. Even if you have great text content within Flash, most search engines won't be able to detect it.

Your meta description should make an impact and demand a call for action from the searcher. Use words and phrases that get people to respond in a motivated way. Incorporate phone numbers or specific sales dialogue that create a buying atmosphere before they even click through. Keep it short and to the point at 155 characters.

The importance of linking out can not be overstated. Creating a resource page that carries weighted links to related sites that are rich with keywords and phrases carry extra weight with search engines. Make the extra effort to garner these resource links to increase the weight and improve the ranking.

Finding the Right Keywords for Your Website

Using the appropriate keywords in the right places is absolutely vital. These keywords should be placed in strategic spots where web crawlers take their data from. Examples of places from where web crawlers gather data are the titles, URLs, image names, and page headers. There are many more but this is where you should concentrate the bulk of your efforts.

When putting in keywords, make sure that you put in some variations of those important words. Diversifying your keywords is a great help to the overall search engine optimization of a site.




This can be done as simply as using synonyms and plurals of your main keywords. This way people who are searching for similar terms will be more likely to find your page as a result.

The best way to optimize your site for search engnes is to make it great. If your site shows up on the first page of a search engine's ranking, that means it is one of the best 10 in the world on that topic. If your site isn't one of the best 10 in the world, improve it until it is.

For the best results in search engine optimization, be sure to use only the highest quality of content. It doesn't matter how many great keywords you have in an article if the article is dull, trite, or simply badly written. Search engine bots are not going to buy your product or service, people are. If your article can't impress people your search engine rankings won't matter.

Make your page friendly to search engines. Do some research on search engine optimization and incorporate some of the easier tips and tricks into your site. The higher ranked your page the better. Make sure you include keywords in your posts and in your titles. This will make your site easier to find for a search engine crawler.

For better search engine optimization, make use of the h1 tag. Use the h1 tag in your title, and make sure the title is somehow contained in the text. The h1 tag helps you focus directly on keywords. Also, make use of the h2 and h3 tags for more streamlined optimization.

As you can see, search engine optimization doesn't need to be complicated. In fact, it is one of the easiest, most straightforward ways to propel the image of your business on the Internet. Your web presence lends your business authority and credibility, so be sure not to skimp on this essential part of advertising.

P.S. Please feel free to leave a comment below if you enjoyed reading my blog. Thanks!