How Understanding RWD, W3C, & CSS Can Help Your Ranking on Search Engines

Modern web design is supposed to take into account a wide range of factors on the front and back end. Developers might sometimes struggle to come up with a solution that is fully compatible with all major browsers and other programs that run online. In recent years, responsive web design (RWD) has dictated the general evolution of the internet in a positive way. RWD essentially optimizes domains for mobile and desktop operating systems. A single website is supposed to load smoothly on devices that have different types of display sizes and screen resolutions.

Contemporary web development should integrate Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in accordance with the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These sheets are simple documents that have to be uploaded to hosts and servers. A few lines of a CSS file could control the layout and appearance of hundreds of pages on a given domain. The document includes relatively basic commands that precisely define the behavior of HTML, which is the primary language on the back end of a website.

Using a basic grid layout is highly recommend for RWD implementation according to the W3C guidelines. For instance, it's possible to split the general interface of a page into six boxes that have rectangular shapes. The aspect ratios and other visual parameters of these shapes will automatically adjust in response to the device that a viewer uses to scan the content. CSS syntax does not have to include lengthy commands and tags as in other high-level programming languages, such as PHP and Java. HTML is less scientific compared to most object-oriented scripts on the web.

A domain that's responsive is likely to have high rankings on the world's top search engines, including Google and Bing. After all, the ultimate goal of a webmaster is to display content to a broad audience on a global scale. It's important for developers to overcome the barriers and challenges of old web browsers that are getting phased out quickly. Responsive websites need to have backward compatibility with some operating systems and programs that still account for a significant percentage of the mobile and desktop markets.