10 Resources That Will Help You Make an Infographic

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Easy Infographics Graphic

 

It is undeniable that social media has completely changed the ways we share information. Gone are the days when loaning a book was the best way to help your friends learn about a topic. Even long form blog posts are often smothered by easy-to-understand content delivered in direct and immediate formats that are fun to read and tempting to share.

This is clearest when you look at the infographic, poster styled graphics aimed at informing people in depth on topics, similar to the way some of the more detailed posters you find in schools function. The difference is that infographics tend to give much more information than any of those posters ever could, thanks to the removal of site constraints.

Infographics engage users and attract them with stylish graphics and colors, which make readers more interested in the information that would normally be boring. Because of how easy it is to digest the information and get excited about what they present, infographics are incredibly popular on Facebook.

For a while, creating one of these infographics basically required a dedicated designer on staff, as no one gets interested in equally boring or sterile graphics without any of the style that bring infographics to life. That has changed much over the past year however, with a lot of credit belonging to the number of free tools and web applications that quickly help put together infographics with minimal design knowledge.

Crazy Pixels shared 10 of these free resources for businesses or bloggers hoping to share a lot of information in an exciting way. Of course, if you just slap something together on one of these applications, it is still going to come out bad. But if you take the time to compose the graphic and market it towards the proper audience, the rest will take care of itself.

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How is the SEO World Managing Post-Penguin 2.0?

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Image Courtesy of Martin Pettitt

Image Courtesy of Martin Pettitt

It has been well over a month since Penguin 2.0 was unleashed upon the world and the search industry is still reeling from the results of the algorithm update aimed at link profiles, low quality backlinks, and over-optimized anchor texts.

The average estimate says that Penguin 2.0 affected over 2-percent of all English queries. That doesn’t sound like much, but when SEO Roundtable took a poll in late May over half their readers say they had been hit by the changes.

First, it should be said that some portion of those may have been affected by a separate algorithm update released shortly before the new version of Penguin, but that update was aimed at typically spammy sectors like payday loans and pornography.

The majority of those saying they were affected by Penguin however were most likely correct about their recent drop in rankings or loss of traffic. It is either that, or far too many involved were misreading their data or somehow unaware that their payday loan site might be targeted by Google. Let’s assume that’s not the case, because that option sounds highly unlikely.

But, time has passed since Penguin came out. I’ve seen at least 10 articles detailing how to recover from Penguin, and numerous others focused on all the areas Penguin targeted. We should all be getting back to normal, right?

According to the recent poll from SEO Roundtable on the topic, that is not the case. Over 60 percent of those responding have said they haven’t recovered from the algorithm update, with only 7.5-percent saying they have fully recovered.

What does this mean? Well the respondents are clearly SEO informed people who keep up to date with the latest blogs, since they responded to one of the more reputable sites available on the issue. One major issue is that full recovery from Penguin isn’t possible for many of those affected until the next refresh. It is hard to know when that refresh could happen, though it may not be until the next update is announced.

The other issue is simply that those articles telling SEOs how to recover from Penguin range from completely valid to “how to try to cheat the new system” which can be confusing for inexperienced or uninformed SEOs. The best suggestion for solving this problem is playing close attention to what sites you are reading and always take the more conservative advice.

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What Skills Do Employers Expect Designers to Have?

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Graphic design may be one of the most in demand jobs out there right now, especially within the art field. But, as any designer can tell you, competition for work is tough, and designers looking for full-time employment rather than freelance work have bad odd working against them. Employers are looking for designers for diverse projects that can vary wildly depending on who hires you, but they expect you to have just as versatile skills to cover anything they will ask of you.

With such a tough marketplace, it is obviously very important for designers to have a great CV or resume that will make employers want to hire you. That doesn’t mean they want it to be over-styled and decorated. Employers obviously want professional looking resumes that gives them the impression you are equally professional and business-minded. What makes the real difference to prospective designer employers is the skills you have. The jobs may vary wildly, but almost all design jobs require the same 10 skills or proficiencies.

Amy Edwards took the time to go through over 100 design jobs advertised on Bubble to see exactly what employers are looking for, and the results were even more homogeneous than you would expect. Needless to say, those Photoshop and Illustrator skills should be maintained, and you should be get getting experience in all the other programs and design techniques coming out are also hugely important in climbing the career ladder.

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Is Google Using Industry-Specific Algorithms?

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Ranking PodiumA WebmasterWorld thread from roughly a month ago brings up an interesting question for us SEO professionals. While we focus on the algorithms we know about such as Penguin or Panda, it has long been suggested that Google could also be using different ranking factors depending on the industry a site fits within. In other words, sites for roofing companies would be being reviewed and ranked according to different standards than sites for tech companies.

Well, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team and trusted engineer, took to that thread to dispel all the rumors. He doesn’t deny that Google has “looked at topic-specific ranking.” Instead, he says scaling was the issue. In his answer, Cutts explains, “We have looked at topic-specific ranking. The problem is it’s not scalable. There’s a limited amount of that stuff going on — you might have a very spammy area, where you say, do some different scoring.”

He continued, “What we’re doing better is figuring out who the authorities are in a given category, like health. If we can figure that out, those sites can rank higher.”

While Google says they aren’t using different algorithms for different industries, it has been announced that Google uses Subject Specific Authority Ranking, which helps authorities in varying topics to be selected as the most reputable on that subject.

Of course, looking at the comments from SEO Roundtable, who reported on the WebmasterWorld thread, it is clear many don’t necessarily believe Cutts’ statement. Some say they have “always seen a difference in industry types,” while others argue that different industries necessitate using different ranking factors or algorithms due to lack of specific resources available to that industry. For example, industrial companies don’t tend to run blogs, which means creating new content through blogging shouldn’t be as honored as it is on other topics like health and tech with a lot of news constantly coming out.

For now, all we have to go on is Cutts’ word and our own experiences. Do you think Google is using different algorithms depending on industry? Do you think they should be?

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Learn How To Use Color By Understanding Their Meanings [Infographic]

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Color is one of the most important aspects of graphic design as well as branding and advertising. It can be used to give emphasis, depth, and even motion to a design but it also helps establish the overall feel or atmosphere of the design.

As designers, we do more than just create nice looking compositions. We also connect and communicate to others through images, text, sites, sound, and yes, color. Color is one of the strongest tools we have as a designer, because color decides a large amount of how a viewer perceives a design. It can set off emotional or visual cues, or it can be used simply to pull viewers in.

One of the most important parts of learning how to use color in your designs is learning the understandings and meanings of different colors. They don’t just set the mood, but colors can actually mean quite a lot about companies, sites, and even people. You The Designer recently created the infographic seen below which details “The Psychology of Color” for designers and they lead into it with an insight about color from American stage director Vincent Minnelli who once said, “I use colors to bring fine points of story and character.”

We don’t tend to work much with characters as graphic designers, but in some ways we do tell stories through our sites. Our clients want their websites to represent their company or brand as a whole, including its history and reputability. We weave these stories through our websites through imagery that supports the brand story they want to tell. Color plays a big role in this through making connections to preconceptions we already have. If you’ve ever seen a green logo for a health food store, or a red fast food sign, you’ve already seen the principle in action.

AColorGuideForDesigners_51087f68f22e5_w587

 

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Link Building Tactics We Need to Cut Out

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As always, there are a lot of different opinions about link building across the web. There are still those who offer ways to “dominate” links with schemes that push the boundaries of what Google allows and some who are beginning to completely write off link building as a practice.

It is a bit hasty to completely do away with your linking efforts, as they are certainly still a consideration by the search engines. But, we also live in an entirely different linking climate than that of just a couple years (or months) ago. Moderation and quality are the key words in the link building discussion these days, and it is important to know when someone is giving bad advice.

If only you explicitly knew what link building tactics you should just not do, right? Erin Everhart from Search Engine Land offers just that with her article from last week laying out exactly what linking techniques we can just cut out of our routines, and how to pinpoint when people are trying to give you bad advice.

Of course, it all starts with discussing that special word “quality,” which is now the most important factor in all your link building efforts. Google no longer cares if you have countless links to your site, if none of them are reputable. Actually, they do care. They will penalize your site for trying to use bad links to boost your profile. Natural, quality links from sites people actually read are the only way to get positive results from your link building, and anything else is just as likely to hurt you.

In the vein of quality over quantity, mass article submission is almost as bad as farming huge numbers of shoddy links. Its the obvious successor to the new “content is king” mantra everyone is espousing now, as those who were directly gaining scores of low quality links turned to submitting the same weak article to hundreds of different sites.

Of course, there are other link problems aside from link farming in various manners. Though it has become less popular after Penguin, there are still backlink profiles out there with higher exact-match anchor text percentages than their company name. Anchor text is still very important, but there is no reasonable scenario in which you should end up with that high of a percentage. You need way fewer exact-match links than you did a couple years ago, so just follow the rule of moderation.

Guest blogging is even becoming a problem. There are so many sites hiring “article writers” who churn out 10 to 15 articles a day that the tactic has become yet another link building scheme. Instead of outright buying links, they are buying writers to build them cheap links. Guest blogging can be great when done correctly, but you have to take the time to ensure they know a lot about the industry they represent and will provide value to your site.

There are even more link building tactics still happening right now despite Google’s best efforts to shut down the more spammy efforts. Everhart covers a few more in her article, but the main point is that any good-natured SEO tactic can be corrupted and used to try to trick the search engines, the problem is Google and Bing have gotten much smarter, and they will almost always catch you if you try to outwit them. Play be the rules, and give your sites the attention they need, but don’t try to play the system.

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Breaking Down The Facts About Responsive Design

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Source: WikiCommons

Source: WikiCommons

Responsive web design isn’t quite the standard yet, but it certainly shows no sign of going away. It is currently the best solution for the majority of website owners attempting to make their site work well for people accessing it, no matter where they are coming from.

A growing minority of internet users are using smartphones and tablets to browse, and especially with Google’s push to punish sites with poorly configured or non-existing mobile sites, there isn’t much time left before site owners will have to choose between going responsive or creating a separate mobile site. To help you choose, Designrfix shared the latest facts about responsive web design.

  • Display Doesn’t Affect Load Times – Responsive design largely changes the appearance of sites depending on the device being used to access them. They don’t really affect what is actually loaded when a page is brought up, and so it doesn’t really do much to load times. In other words, you can’t rely on responsive design to “dumb down” and speed up your site on slower machines or lesser resolutions.
  • Search Engines Like It – Google has actively supported responsive design as the best solution to going mobile, mostly because it makes the job easier for its crawlers. The webmaster guidelines for Google even address the issue saying, “Google recommends webmasters follow the industry best practice of using responsive web design, namely serving the same HTML for all devices and using only CSS media queries to decide the rendering on each device.”
  • It Directly Affects Your SEO Campaign – Running a separate mobile site rather than simply adapting responsive design basically requires running two SEO campaigns for the same site. With the ability to design for all devices with one site, comes the ability to only have one SEO strategy for the site as a whole.
  • Most Sites Can Be Turned Responsive – This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but for the most part site owners don’t have to create an entirely new site design when they decide to create a responsive design. Instead, most sites can be converted, saving over half the total cost of a full redesign.
  • There Is a Lot of Testing – The main thing people forget to mention when they support responsive design is that designing for all devices means testing for all devices. Going responsive does save you time in the actual design process, but the best rule of thumb for responsive design is if you haven’t tested on a device, your site probably doesn’t work perfectly on it.

I fully predict responsive design to become the standard for all website design in the future because it simply makes more sense for the large number of site owners out there, especially those with limited resources who want to only manage one version of their site.

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Bing’s Duane Forrester Speaks About SEO

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Duane Forrester

Duane Forrester from Bing

While I often focus on Google’s search engine because it draws roughly a third of all searches, Bing is still important for most webmasters. It draws in the second most traffic, and Bing is clearly fighting to gain more of the market. That means we do need to keep up to date with their best practices and guidelines and listen when they share insight.

Bing’s Duane Forrester did just that recently when he shared some thoughts about SEO on the official Bing blog. His statements aren’t radically different from what you would expect from anyone else working in search, but it does give a little insight into how Bing functions. Free SEO News, a regular newsletter, collected the most important quotes.

  1. Links are still important – “They are still a trust signal that can help ranking. […] The kind [of backlinks] where your site impressed someone enough that they blogged about it, or shared it socially. […] These are best as they allow the engines the strongest confidence that the link is trustworthy.”
  2. There’s nothing wrong with reciprocal links – “Reciprocal links still have value. Shocked? Don’t be, as the value may not be what you’re thinking. They don’t hold a lot of value in terms of lifting rankings, but they are capable of driving traffic to your site, so a recip link can be useful for new sites in terms of direct traffic, and these links can help us find your content in the first place.”
  3. Buying Likes, Tweets, or Retweets is useless – “We all want ‘em, and therein lies the problem. Because likes are sought after, people try to sell them. […] Similar to how a link farm operates, like farms exist, promising to supply hundreds or thousands of likes in a short period. Yeah, yeah, they claim to be ‘all natural, totally organic’, etc. Simply put, they are not and are easily seen.”

None of this is groundbreaking of course. It is no surprise to us that we shouldn’t try to cheat Bing or Google and that you can do optimization without spamming. Following the best practices Google and Bing both publicly share with web masters will protect you from all your problems.

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Long Shadow Design Previews The New Flat Design Style

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long shadow design

Source: Web Designer Depot

Flat design is established to the point where many are starting to iterate and experiment with the basic principles in ways that break some of the basic rules of flat design while still clearly relying on the style for the overall effect. Apple’s new iOS7, for example, is heavily influenced by flat design, but as many have noted, is not even close to being completely flat.

One flat design inspired trend that is quickly gaining some popularity is “long shadow” design. It’s hard to call it a full design trend, but it is certainly a unique effect that is starting to pop up across the web.

Long shadow design “produces an effect like looking at an object late on a Winter’s day,” as Ben Moss from Web Designer Depot so poetically described it. It replicates when shadows draw out to dramatic proportions adding significant depth while not completely detracting from an overall flat aesthetic.

The trend is typified by a 45 degree shadow that extends far out, gradually evaporating. The look is very similar to the early Soviet style used on posters and collages by designers such as Kazimir Malevich, which makes it great for icons and branding.

Long shadow design isn’t going to grow legs outside of flat design, but it is a sign that flat design isn’t going to stay completely flat for long.

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5 Questions You Should Ask Before Hiring an SEO Consultant

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Establishing your brand online can lead to higher sales and profits, but the first step is always getting your site high enough in the search engine rankings that potential customers can find you. But, search engine optimization can be intimidating for many business owners to handle on their own.

Hiring an experiences search engine optimization consultant is often the best option for business owners who want to get their business online, but lack the time or technical skills to do so. However, you’ll want to get the most for your dollar. Kim Lachance Shandrow recently shared a list of questions you can ask any prospective SEO consultant to make sure you’re getting the best service possible.

  1. How will you improve my search engine rankings? – Consultants who won’t go into the details about the methods they use are almost always questionable professionals. SEO consultants should be happy to explain exactly how they improve rankings for companies, along with estimates of how long it can take to get the results you are desiring.
  2. Do you follow Google’s Webmaster guidelines? – Any consultant who tries to toe the line of Google’s publicly posted webmaster best practices is almost guaranteed to get you in trouble sooner or later. There are many consultants who will try to use tricks to get high rankings extraordinarily quickly, but Google is quick to punish those trying to abuse loopholes. Bing and Yahoo also have best practice guidelines publicly available that you should also want your consultant to follow.
  3. How will you keep me informed of all changes made to my site? – As a business owner, you should expect to be involved in your SEO strategy from the very beginning, and your consultant should be willing to stay in communication about any changes being made to your site or the SEO strategy as a whole.
  4. Do you have local SEO expertise? – Brick-and-mortar businesses trying to attract people to their local shops need consultants who are experiences with working locally. The strategies for local SEO can often differ from more regional or national level optimization. There are also numerous actions that local SEO requires to get your site showing up for searches in your area that SEOs without local experience may skip over.
  5. How do you measure your SEO success? – Any experienced consultant should be able to tell you in detail how they measure your traffic coming to your website and where it is coming from. The most commonly used tool for tracking rankings and traffic is Google Analytics, and consultant should be willing to share the data with you.
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