Today, increasing numbers of visitors to company websites are choosing to access them via devices such as smartphones and tablets in contrast to desktop computers.

Naturally, users expect to be able to browse web pages just as effectively on their mobile device as they did on their desktop computers.

Creating a highly responsive website, fully optimized to ensure access via mobile phones and tablets as well as desktop resolutions is a key consideration for all businesses whatever their size or sector.

As technology evolves, the latest screen resolutions offer exciting possibilities for web design.

Media queries are the means by which it is possible to deliver different styles to different devices. The aim is to ensure that users have the best possible experience of your company’s website.

CSS3 media queries allow gathering of data about a visitors device, which in turn is employed to apply relevant CSS styles. This allows for adjustment of layouts to perfectly match the width and spec of the device employed to access the web. Creating highly responsive web design requires a shift in perspective. As changes in screen resolution impact on the world of web design, smartphones and tablets provide new ways to utilize the very latest techniques.

Rescaling and image resolution are key considerations in mobile responsive web design, with the focus on presenting a company’s online presence in a way that is both practical and highly adaptive to the method employed by a user to access it.

Technologies such as fluid grids can have an important role to play in responsive design technology too.

If you are keen to find out more about how to ensure that your business’ website is fully mobile responsive, why not contact us today to find out more about all we have to offer you? We look forward to hearing from you.

Kerry McPhail

Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of focusing on particular keywords – the phrases users type into search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing – then using these to attract unique visitors to your website. This in turn helps you to generate new business.

Today, vast numbers of customers are accessing websites using their mobiles, net books and tablets, using a wide range of browsers.

Mobile searches have increased exponentially in recent years and Google have introduced a Smartphone Googlebot as a direct result.

When it comes to ensuring that visitors to your website enjoy the best possible experience of your company, intelligent responsive web design has never been more important.

Ensuring that your business website is able adjust and adapt instantly to meet user needs, by offering a responsive website that automatically changes to fit the device it is being read on is essential in today’s highly competitive business world.

So have you considered how best to make the most of mobile search engine optimization, to ensure that your organization is able to compete effectively in the market place?

Remember, it is important to ensure that your mobile search presence actively drives customer traffic towards your business, increasing opportunities to engage with potential clients, while raising your online profile.

It is interesting to note that the keywords used for search purposes by a mobile audience may differ from the specific keywords already in use on your desktop site.

We therefore highly recommend researching your closest competitors sites, together with a careful analysis as to how certain keywords inform mobile searches as a precursor to creating a great mobile SEO campaign strategy.

A mobile site architecture that targets certain specific keywords then optimizes them on internal pages is ideal.

Google needs to crawl pages assets, such as images, CSS and Javascript, in order to recognize that a site is using a responsive web design approach.

Using the ‘m’ subdomain for your mobile site keeps the URL structure short and user-friendly and enables filtering of subdomain traffic.

Tightly defining your target audience, then creating mobile content that is highly relevant to their specific needs will assist greatly when it comes to conducting a truly successful mobile SEO campaign.

Here at Tidy Design we love to assist all our customers in achieving the best possible search results for their sites. So if you aspire to achieve great Mobile SEO why not contact us today to find out more? We would love to hear from you!

Kerry McPhail

Looking for a free twitter bird PNG then check this out! Today I created a tidy twitter bird over lunch, another awesome freebie for our Tidy Blog readers!

Download PNG

Please note this twitter bird graphic can be used on commercial or non-commercial projects, all we ask in return is not to re-sell or distribute our work via any third party sites. If you are going to use this free twitter bird PNG as part of a website or project, please be a tidy dude and link back to this page… Thanks for the support, thanks for stopping by!

After just twenty minutes in Photoshop we have today created a FREE ribbon PSD! Enjoy three tidy ribbon banners for commercial and non-commercial projects!

Download PSD

Please note; it is not cool to re-sell or distribute this FREE ribbon PSD via any third party sites. If you like our work, be awesome and link to us via your website, blog, Google+ or twitter page… Until our next outburst of creative freebies, keep it tidy folks!

Looking for a FREE heart PSD? We love to celebrate special occasions and it is our pleasure to present you with this great St Valentine’s Day freebie – a tidy love heart!

Download PSD

Perfect for any Valentine’s Day projects you have in mind, we do hope you will enjoy using it! This heart PSD is FREE for you to use on commercial or non-commercial projects, all we ask in return is not to re-sell or distribute our work via any third party sites… Like it? Be awesome and link back to this page… Enjoy!

Tidy Design are seeking a new Web Developer (ideally with a good knowledge of PHP) to join our highly talented, friendly team, based in Old Portsmouth.

Are you seeking to use your design and programming skills within a varied and exciting working environment? We offer a huge variety and scope of work, giving you a real chance to develop your career.

We are proud of our expansive client portfolio and keen to offer a great opportunity to the right candidate.

We are looking for applicants with knowledge and skills in the following areas: PHP, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Photoshop and open source CMS systems such as WordPress.

If this is you – and you have a genuine passion for web design and web application development, we would love to hear from you.

Please send your CV and cover letter to rosie@tidydesign.com

Looking for a mobile friendly website then why not consider RWD (Responsive Web Design). It is pretty awesome how it all works; you can transform the design and layout of your site depending on which device is viewing it!

With an office in Old Portsmouth and a team of web developers eager to help, why not contact Tidy Design today to discuss your site requirements. Don’t panic if you already have a website, why not send us a link and we will price up making it responsive AKA mobile friendly for you!

Have you been ever notified via Webmaster tools of manual spam action, based on ‘unnatural links’ coming to / from your website? This message is received when there is evidence of paid links, link exchanges or other link schemes that directly contravene Google’s quality guidelines.

Google’s Disavow tool is a means of remedying unnatural links coming from your site. It enables you to disavow links to your site, while addressing any issues at root level arising from unnatural links pointing to your website. By protecting your site’s appearance and keeping it free of spammy links, you ensure that all your users enjoy a good experience of your site.

Links give a sense of which web pages are relevant to users and are a great signifier in determining rankings. Being able to remedy link penalties and enable sites to recover their online visibility requires a clear understanding of exactly how Google’s Disavow Tool works.

Always bear in mind that if your link is not editorial then it effectively constitutes advertising. Google will not wish to count advertorial links. Indeed links which have been bought or obviously manipulated will not be helpful to you in any case.

Disavow can be a highly effective tool to use if your site has links with commercial anchor text. Writing a good reconsideration request and sending all relevant data demonstrates your own good will towards resolving the situation. It may be up to four weeks following penalties being revoked before any rankings come back to you, due in part to increasing numbers of reconsideration requests.

The most important tip is to keep refreshing your link data, keep your disavow file updated and to submit reconsideration requests accordingly…  Ok, there’s still a lot we don’t know, and Google is refining the tool and process as they go!

So, following two failed re-consideration requests (having not used the Disavow tool), we are now evaluating 6000+ links and compiling a Disavow report for a new Tidy Design client! Sadly this company is a victim of some blackhat SEO and dodgy link building, lets hope we can get SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) back on track soon… We will keep you posted on our progress.

Recently there has been a move away from traditional anchor text based links towards social signals, linkage and a clear focus on relevance and associations key to earning successful links. Here at Tidy Design, we firmly believe in creating great content that offers real value to users – and using this as a basis for earning links.

The importance of connecting interested customers with your business is what good marketing is all about. Links have their use as a medium to gain visibility online, but the bigger picture remains that of building awareness – getting people talking about what you do and the products and services your company has to offer.

Recently, the introduction of semantic search engine developments have led to changes in the way in which existing keyword strategies are employed in SEO work.

Semantics changes the way that search engines work, enabling Google to map associations between content to deliver more effective results to users. Key to this process of course is creating understanding around the type of content that the user intends searching for on your site.

Creating an association between why a user is searching for content and the information they are seeking enables Google to improve search engine results, offering suitable offers and guides alongside these.

The importance of clean data cannot be overestimated. The Penguin algorithm was introduced to help clear up spam links to aid clarity.

Search engines effectively reward those working in alignment with the new system, so relevance becomes increasingly important when it comes to creating good search results. Understanding of this factor enables you to market to your advantage.

In computing and comparing the relevance of different links in relation to the likeliness that they will be clicked on, font size, position and colour are all taken into account, in addition to the co-occurrence of words and phrases.

To enable Google to understand the meaning of words, it will look at pages that mention the same phrase to view what else is mentioned and build up word associations in context to assign authority to links as relevant.

Utilising Social Media such as Twitter can be a great way to reach people with your blog posts and fresh content, enabling you to specifically reach a certain target audience.

Kerry McPhail

Since returning back to work in the New Year, the team at Tidy Design in Portsmouth have been busy with several mobile website designs AKA responsive updates.

Personally I see 2013 being a big year for responsive website design with companies catering more and more for clients on a mobile web. Mobile phones and tablet devices have transformed the World we live. When it comes to future proofing your business, there are many advantages of a mobile website. Here are just three:

Firstly you have usability to consider, a mobile site will work, function and look better on a mobile than your everyday website. Google is also not stupid; I would put money on future SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) being heavily influenced by this mobile customer experience.

Secondly there is data and download speed to consider, people don’t want to wait minutes for a website image to load when a mobile friendly image could load in seconds.

Finally we have customer interaction with websites on a mobile device, unique click-to-call or mapping functions could be used to encourage customer engagement. Done correctly a mobile website should help convert visitors into enquiries…

Ok, I hope the above has provided some food for thought. If you are looking to update your existing website, bolting on a mobile friendly version for people viewing it on a mobile device then please do get in touch.