by Onyia Ifeluwa | Sep 13, 2017 | Technology, Web Design
Information Retrieval Skills and Its Accompanied Benefits For Information Seekers
Information retrieval should become part of schools curriculum as the number of information sought online, and level of information explosion keeps rising. Meaning some people with low technical skills of retrieving information could be having difficulty retrieving information that is acceptable and perfect for their information needs.
So, what is Information retrieval? The definition below is derived from Wikipedia’s definition on Information retrieval.
“Information retrieval (IR) is the activity of obtaining information resources relevant to an information need from a collection of information resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other content-based indexing. Information retrieval is the science of searching for information in a document, searching for documents themselves, and also searching for metadata that describe data, and for databases of texts, images or sounds.”
An information retrieval process begins when a user enters a query into the system. Queries are formal statements of information needs, for example search strings in web search engines. In information retrieval a query does not uniquely identify a single object in the collection. Instead, several objects may match the query, perhaps with different degrees of relevancy.
An object is an entity that is represented by information in a content collection or database. User queries are matched against the database information. However, as opposed to classical SQL queries of a database, in information retrieval the results returned may or may not match the query, so results are typically ranked. This ranking of results is a key difference of information retrieval searching compared to database searching
The evaluation of an information retrieval system is the process of assessing how well a system meets the information needs of its users. Traditional evaluation metrics, designed for Boolean retrieval or top-k retrieval, include precision and recall. Many more measures for evaluating the performance of information retrieval systems have also been proposed. In general, measurement considers a collection of documents to be searched and a search query. All common measures described here assume a ground truth notion of relevancy: every document is known to be either relevant or non-relevant to a particular query. In practice, queries may be ill-posed and there may be different shades of relevancy.
Virtually all modern evaluation metrics (e.g., mean average precision, discounted cumulative gain) are designed for ranked retrieval without any explicit rank cutoff, taking into account the relative order of the documents retrieved by the search engines and giving more weight to documents returned at higher ranks.
You would agree that information is useless when it is not meeting an information need, making it irrelevant. Hence, knowing how to retrieve information in this day and time is important, if it is to be seen relevant. And reason I join the numbers of experts arguing that information retrieval should be emphasized on.
What do you think as well?
by Yomi Ashiru | Sep 12, 2017 | Business, Web Design
WHY YOU NEED GOOD WEB DEVELOPMENT
As a business owner, it is imperative to have an excellent and functional website. It is perhaps, one of the best assets you can have to boost sales and stay ahead of the competition. Good web development has become a must have for almost all business owners and online marketers to gain sustainability. While having a website is important, spending too much on a website design and development that isn’t easy to access or navigate is like fetching water in a basket because with your website as the heart of your online existence, your visitors will lose interest if it isn’t accessible and easy to use and subsequently, your sales can decrease. We’ve brought you some of the reasons you need good web development.
Your website is like a shop display window. Keep it clean and always open. It should be built in such a way that Google and other search engines can drive traffic your way. Also, having a website that works on all devices makes it easier and convenient for visitors and potential customers to access your website on their computers, phones and tablets. This saves you money and effort as you no longer need to provide an exclusive mobile website.
Having a good website development helps you cut cost as one single site fulfills your needs and eliminates putting your site on multiple versions. Isn’t that just dandy?
A creative, user-friendly and fast loading website is more attractive to website visitors and customers than an overburdened, graphics loaded site. People are busy and not very patient with a slow web page. They lose interest quickly. This is why you need good web development. If your web page is responsive and user-friendly, it will boost your traffic and eventually generate more sales.
I must not forget to add this: there is a cost associated with having a good website, how? It simply means getting reliable and efficient hand create and manage your website. I often hear people lament on the poor state of their websites, and how unreliable it is becoming, and it is saddening to know some people place their websites and business in jeopardy because they are only concerned about cheap services with poor quality. There are many affordable website that could be develop, but you need make sure you find yourself an efficient and reliable handler.
There you have it. Having a good web development makes you accessible, boosts your website traffic and eventually, have you grinning to the bank.
by Yomi Ashiru | Jul 29, 2016 | SEO, Web Design
I have noticed that in Nigeria many business and business owners believe that web design and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a one-time thing. Meaning that, one just designs the web site, add the relevant keywords, and then just forget about it. Job done. Ehh! Wrong, for the uninitiated, SEO strategy is an ongoing project that must constantly be redesigned, tweaked and fixed to meet changing circumstances of your business or new trends and development on the internet.
SEO website design is not like painting a house, which can be done once every 10 years. Instead, it is like vacuuming or laundry; it must be done on a regular basis to prevent problems.
For this reason, many SEO experts that specialize in website design, charge a monthly retainer fee. This fee can include all the services that must be performed on a regular basis, such as checking competitor’s sites, changing keywords, and refreshing web pages, updating coding standards, browser compliance, and tracking metrics or analyzing performance. In some cases complete redesigns are necessary, like implementing a new responsive design from a former design.
However, randomly performing these tasks will not give the results you want. Website updates and other tasks must be scheduled on a regular basis with attention to best practices in SEO web design. Standards are available that help you know when to perform certain tasks and optimize web site performance, no matter who is doing your SEO.
Developing an Update Procedure for Your Website
Create a list of tasks to be done, and the frequency with which these tasks should be performed, Armed with a well-planned schedule, everyone will be included in the decision-making process about how to achieve top SEO results. Developing a “style guide” can help everyone involved in your SEO process understand your goals and what you have already done toward building strong SEO. Some things that should be included in this list are:
- File naming. The naming conventions used for new website pages, image files, audio and video files and all other types of content should be clearly defined and checked on a regular basis. File names should describe the contents and ideally will include specific keywords.
- Structure of Directory. The directory structure of your website can make it easy or difficult for search engine bots to find you. A well-defined silo structure, which uses top-level themes and builds downwards, is often the best choice for websites.
- Redirects. Best SEO practices indicate that the ideal number for redirects is 301. Redirect codes should always take into account your SEO strategy; failure to consider this in redirection planning could lead to less-than-optimal results. Routinely, webmasters or SEO experts should also remove pages that are no longer working or are no longer needed.
- Creating Links. The exact procedure for identifying links and keywords should be written out so that everyone understands the process. Guidelines for linking should be established before the linking activities begin.
- Adding New Pages. When adding a new page, experts often have several important questions that they need to answer before embarking on the task. That list such include questions like: What keywords are we using for this page? What is the purpose or goal of this page? What silo does this page support? The page should be designed with the answers to these questions in mind.
Style guides can make ongoing website development and SEO a clear and straightforward process for new coders and programmers adapting to your needs for expansion. Make sure that everyone involved in your IT team is clear on company objectives, technology requirements, and equally as important, search engine trends.
by Yomi Ashiru | Dec 23, 2013 | Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Design
Content marketing is not an ad on a billboard, newspaper or a one-page spread in a magazine. The idea central to content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return.
Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent.
Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
The ability to create relevant, accurate and valuable content is imperative. This will surely help in modifying and changing consumers’ behaviour to your advantage. And this is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it.
According to a report, a research carried out reveals that 80% percent of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement. Seventy percent say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company, while 60 percent say that company content helps them make better product decisions. Think of this – what if your customers looked forward to receiving your marketing? What if when they received it, via print, email, website, they spent 15, 30, 45 minutes with it?
Sharing good content and making use of good strategy is beneficial for both customers and businesses, as customers tend to submit their loyalty to business organizations that shares content with it. However, as a business owner, one must not be carried away as it goes above just sharing good contents, because the consistent sharing of these contents is as well important.
“If we run an ad without context around it, that’s not good for anyone. The lines are clearly drawn so everyone knows what they are getting into.” Grant Jones
Content marketing and sharing is not just about the present but also the future, as it is predicted that the successes of many businesses will be affected adversely by how they share their contents
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