Flat design doesn’t seem to be going away. The popular use of pastel colors and minimalistic layouts is getting bigger every day, and even the biggest proponents of skeuomorphism (ahem, Apple) seem to be caving to the new focus on designing for the screen rather than designing based on the physical world.
For many designers, this might mean an entire overhaul of your site if you are trying to stick with the trends. However, before you go banging your head against the wall about having to build your site from the ground up, remember that any big web design trend probably has tons of free resources already available to help speed up the conversion.
This is obviously the case with flat design, and while there are scripts to help with making a flat web site responsive or managing navigation, there are also free sets that will help you fill out the details of your site with any icon you need in a style that will match your new page.
Speckyboy recently compiled twenty free icon sets that will help with navigation, social sharing, or payment methods that your users will be seeing. Designmodo also created their own personal set of icons they shared wih their readers designed specifically for social media and sharing.
The icons are all high quality, resizable PNGs or PSD files, and you won’t have to worry so much about the tiny details while you’re working on the bigger picture of your site. Oh, and don’t be confused if you think many of them look like app icons. Rounded corners and geometric shapes are a big part of flat design.
Penguin 2.0 only affected 2.3% of search queries, but you would think it did much more from the response online. Ignoring all of the worrying before the release, there have been tons of comments about the first-hand effects it seems many are dealing with in the post-Penguin 2.0 web. Those spurned by the new Penguin algorithm have even accused Google of only releasing the update to increase their profitability.
Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, used his recent Webmaster Chat video to attack that idea head on. The main question he was asked is what aspect of Google updates Cutts thinks the SEO industry doesn’t understand. While Matt expresses concern about the amount of people who don’t get the difference between algorithm updates and data refreshes, Cutts’ main focus is the concept that Google is hurting web owners to improve their profits.
Most notably, the algorithm updates simply aren’t profitable. Google experienced decreases in their revenue from almost all their recent updates, but Cutts says that money isn’t the focus. Google is aiming at improving the quality of the internet experience, especially search. While site owners using questionable methods are upset, most searchers will hopefully feel that the updates have improved their experience, which will keep them coming back and using Google.
As far as the misunderstandings between algorithm updates and data refreshes, Cutts has expanded on the problem more elsewhere. The biggest difference is that the algorithm update changes how the system is working while data refreshes do not and only change the information the system is using or seeing.
Cutts was also asked which aspect of SEO that we are spending too much time on, which leads Cutts to one of the main practices that Penguin focuses on: link building. Too many SEOs are still putting too much faith in that single practice though it is being destabilized by other areas that more directly affect the quality of users’ experiences such as creating compelling content. Instead, Matt urges SEOs to pay more attention to design and speed, emphasizing the need to create the best web experience possible.
Cutts’ video is below, but the message is that Google is going to keep growing and evolving, whether you like it or not. If you listen to what they say and tell you about handling your SEO, you may have to give up some of your old habits but you’ll spend much less time worrying about the next algorithm update.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-06-04 10:07:262013-06-04 10:07:26What Do Most SEOs Not Understand About Google Updates?
After all these years and new Adobe programs, Photoshop is still the tool for designers. It is the tool of the trade no matter what style you like, whether you do digital painting, sign style design, or photo manipulation. But, Photoshop is to us like the scalpel is to surgeons; in skilled hands it is a great tool, but it can be dangerous if misused.
Unlike when a surgeon makes a mistake, it can sometimes be hard to tell when you are misusing Photoshop or creating a design others aren’t going to respond to. When you’re learning the program, there is so much at your fingertips it can be tempting to use everything, even when you don’t quite know what it does. It also offers many different solutions to problems – some better than others – so it is easy for the uninitiated to complete the task they wanted without getting the right results.
Jay Adrianna, writer for Onextrapixel, recently wrote about thirteen incredibly common Photoshop mistakes designers and photo editors make, as well as easy ways to fix them. Whether you are a beginner, or someone more used to the program looking to refine your techniques and improve your finished products, it is almost guaranteed there is something you can learn from the tips offered. As always, the key is moderation.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-06-03 13:52:522013-06-03 13:52:52The Most Frequent Mistakes New Photoshop Users Make
Blogs are an important part of marketing and SEO. Publishing content on a regular basis allows you to connect with your audience in more direct ways while also helping establish your brand and it’s value. You can generate leads through your community and demonstrate your own expertise while your at it, which makes it a great multi-faceted positive marketing technique.
While it is great as a general marketing method, blogging also helps your SEO by making search engines value your site more. The more content you are putting out, the more crawling the search engines will do of your site, while Google and Bing also recognize your perceived value within your field from your community. Blogs also allow you to do natural link building without getting into questionable connections to other sites, and you’ll have content that can be easily shared through social media.
Just because blogging is inherently good for SEO, it doesn’t mean your blog is as optimized as it could be. Many companies have blogs that are hardly optimized for search, and because of this they aren’t getting the rewards out of it that they could be.
Optimizing your blog isn’t all that hard, especially if you’re using a popular CMS or publishing platform like WordPress, but you have to be willing to take the time to correct the missteps. Ken Lyons pointed out six common ways that blogs fail to optimize. If you just follow through on his suggestions, you’ll find your blog will start performing beyond your wildest dreams.
Many of the suggestions can be done through simply making some changes to your CMS like adding plugins that establish related posts. Making your content easy to find is crucial to search engines, because they crawl pages by simply following links and mapping out the page. If it takes a dozen clicks to find something, there is less chance the crawlers will ever see it. Adding related posts to the end of blog posts allows readers to more easily find content on the topic they are learning about, without having to go back to the search engine, while also improving the navigation of your site and boosting your SEO value.
Similarly, adding previous or next post links at the end of posts on your blog improves the net style navigation you want on your site while also keeping viewers immersed in content. They don’t have to go back to the list of posts unless they want to, and there are even more ways to access individual posts than before. Rather than isolated points in your site map, your posts become part of a chain or a thread creating a larger net.
You can add some things to your site that don’t affect navigability, but will start bringing in many more eyes than before. Many companies are learning how much social media can help their brands, and there are still many ways for companies to capitalize on social media. The most common way this is done is by adding sharing buttons which allow readers to bring content they find important or interesting to the attention of their friends, family, and peers. If people are sharing your content, it is more easily found, even by search engines.
Lyons had three more ways you can juice up your blogging and get the views your content deserves, but there are many more ways you can make your blog more efficient in SEO terms. Navigation is key, but you also just want to make sure your site is as easy to use as possible and find ways to make people want to stay on the page.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-06-03 11:23:342013-06-03 11:23:34Your Blog On Steroids: Tips For Proper Optimization
It appears that flat design is taking the lead over skeuomorphism, as Apple’s new iOS is rumored to be receiving a huge overhaul in the near future. The most recent speculation claims that the new iOS look is going to be largely monotone and understated, as well as abandoning the textures and “realistic” drop shadows of the past.
Web Designer Depot reported the claims which have also been going around most design blogs, which also state that the new mobile OS is rumored to be announced at the Apple WDDC on June 10th, where there is also speculation about a new iPhone announcement.
One of the leading reasons many designers have been slowly migrating is that it is incredibly easy to make a flat design also responsive, especially compared too skeuomorphic designs. Flat design follows the ideology that effects simulating the 3D world such as drop shadows or textures that mimic real objects are not only deceitful, but becoming increasingly irrelevant in an online world.
This isn’t to say that skeuomorphism is completely dead; there are still many designers promoting the strategy. But, Apple has long been cited as one of the biggest proponents of the trend, with their iconic mobile OS styles.
The rumors all started when Apple tapped Jonathan Ive to head the design of iOS7. Ive, Apple’s Vice President of Industrial Design and the man responsible for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch hardware, is known to have a strong dislike of skeuomorphic design, which was heavily promoted in the company by Steve Jobs and former iOS head Scott Forstall.
No one will know for sure what is coming with the Apple conference until the 10th, and many skeptics claim that Apple is likely to be implemented incrementally rather than suddenly with an iOS update.
It isn’t uncommon for business owners to try to handle at least a portion of their SEO on their own. Some will try to find a balance between working with an SEO company and doing some of it themselves, while others try to go totally independent and see what they can do without paying for the professionals.
Both make complete sense and have positive aspects. You want to have control over your company’s online presence, and it is always important to try to familiarize yourself as much as possible with online marketing and SEO, even if you are working with an SEO agency.
There’s a reason there is professional online marketing help available however, and that is there are many online marketing tasks a company should try to take care of themselves, and then there are the more complex tasks that are best left to the people who work in SEO every day.
Many of the tasks the company can take care of are actually best done before you ever begin working with an SEO agency. If you don’t know what you can do on your own, Search Engine Journal writer Amanda DiSilvestro recently made a checklist of things you should do before you begin looking for professional help. They will let you take the reins on your online presence and make sure it fits the way you want your company to be portrayed, while also creating a foundation that experts will be able to build upon later.
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CSS lets us do wonderful things as designers, but it can sometimes be a hassle. If you are super experienced, you may have learned to avoid the problems, but the majority of us are way to accustomed to beginning with a very simple CSS file, and watching it spiral out of control as you continue development.
As you create your site, your CSS gradually becomes a mess. It looks disorganized, borderline unreadable, and there are inevitably quite a few mistakes spread throughout. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad designer. In fact, this could happen to anyone.
Usually there are two ways to deal with this, you can either regularly stop your site development and clean up the CSS, or you can wait until the end and dive into fixing everything all at once. Either way, it takes forever.
Recently, a third (much faster) way has come up. Why not just use a tool to keep your CSS sorted and formatted? No tool is going to keep your CSS looking perfect, but they can at least keep it organized enough to be readable when it becomes time to edit, and you won’t have to do near as much editing as you did in the past.
Speckyboy Design Magazine collected a whole bunch of different options for keeping CSS code looking clean while you work. While none of them will recognize your unique way of writing the code, but you should be able to find something that fits you well enough to make your life much easier.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-05-30 14:40:302013-05-30 14:40:30Tools For Keeping Your CSS Looking Clean While You Work
You run a small local business with brick and mortar locations. What reason do you have to invest in online marketing? Actually, there are quite a few reasons local businesses can benefit from online marketing.
You want your business to be reaching out to customers everywhere they are looking for you or services like yours, and more and more people are turning to the internet before they make a purchase. If they aren’t buying straight off the web, they are checking reviews and public perception of the products they are looking for.
A recent BIA/Kelsey report said that 97% of consumers use online media before making local purchases, and Google suggests that 9 out of 10 internet searches led to follow up actions such as calling or visiting businesses. That means the majority of consumers are turning to the internet, and if your business isn’t there, they will find others.
Online marketing isn’t as intimidating as many thing, either. Search Engine Land says that 50% of small businesses’ online listings are wrong, and the majority of small business owners claim they don’t have the time to keep online listings up to date. Keeping Google’s information on your business updated only takes a few minutes, and that is where most will find you. You can create a local business listing even if you don’t have a website or sell anything online.
The one step above this is to embrace social media. Many smaller businesses focus almost their entire web presence on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, because these are where the brands can reach out directly to consumers.
If you do wish to fully capitalize on online marketing, but don’t think you have the time, hiring someone to manage your online brand and website eventually pays itself off in public awareness of your brand and cementing your brand identity as a trusted business in the community. However, you can’t just do a little. A shoddy or out of date website can hurt public perception of your company, so keeping your site up to date with all the current web standards is important to maintaining your brand’s integrity.
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Web design has more in common with print design than we like to admit. While the web offers endless opportunities and unique design possibilities, print design has been evolving for over 500 years and much of how we approach content of all kinds comes from our longstanding use of print and paper.
Design is really all about connecting with the public and sharing information in an attractive form, whether it be in books, images, or videos. Noupe offered some print design rules that apply in every medium you want to use.
Less is More
Print has always been very aware of size constraints. If you go over the size limit, it means adding more space, which meant using more paper, which means higher costs. The web has the opposite problem. We are given endless space and some designers take that space and try to use as much of it as possible to bombard viewers with everything they have to offer.
When you throw too much at the audience all at once however, you face clutter problems as well as just overwhelming and putting off your audience. Consider a memo or press release, and how corporate designers aim to immediately grab the viewer’s attention with economic design. You can put out information with a strong central theme or message without attacking your audience all at once.
Make Scanning Easy
Very few people read every word on anything. We are skimmers, who jump to and from text littered all throughout or life, and we expect the things we read to make this easy for us. People don’t want to have to search extensively for what they’re looking for. They want the content to be broken up in a way where sections and different types of information are immediately obvious.
Following a typographical hierarchy is one of the best ways to keep your content organized for scanners to find what they are looking for. Headlines and sub-headings guide the eyes and announce the main topic of content sections, while bold and italics draw attention to important areas.
Functionality is More Important Than Style
Managing print functionality doesn’t seem like that much of a task, but part of that comes from our long history of streamlining text into its most legible forms from the birth of the print press. Consider every aspect of print design that keeps text legible; text color, layout, font choice, and even text alignment all have to be considered in order to keep the print “functional” or able to convey the information you’re trying to share.
In web design, functionality is much more of an overt issue, yet the rule remains the same. Some designers try to hard to create lavish sights rich with animation and high quality images, but they sacrifice usability, sped, and practicality in favor of style. Any site that doesn’t work for users isn’t a successful site because people won’t care about fancy design if they can’t use it.
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While on the surface, creating content is about sharing important information of different kinds with the public, we’d all be lying if we said that we didn’t hope to get the most traffic possible coming to your site thanks to some great blog post or infographic. It isn’t easy. Getting over 100,000 views on a page as a startup is a lot of luck, but it also takes a lot of work to make quality content.
There are no magic tricks to make content that will get you exponentially more site visitors and creating one post that gets that many eyes on it doesn’t mean they will necessarily keep coming back, but it can tell us a lot about what people are looking for on the web and what counts as great quality.
Stephen Kenwright works at Branded3 who recently hit the coveted 100,000 pageview benchmark, and he wrote about what he has learned from the short term success over at SEOMoz. You can learn a lot from their isolated case, and the tips Kenwright offers.
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Flat design doesn’t seem to be going away. The popular use of pastel colors and minimalistic layouts is getting bigger every day, and even the biggest proponents of skeuomorphism (ahem, Apple) seem to be caving to the new focus on designing for the screen rather than designing based on the physical world.
