Tag Archive for: News

Why You Need To Promote Your Content Yourself

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Getting your posts out to the masses is one of the hardest parts of writing online. Just publishing them isn’t even close to enough. The good news is, it has never been easier to share on the internet thanks to socia media.

Promoting your content is absolutely a part of getting it in front of other people, and you have to do the promoting yourself. The easiest way to think about it is to ask yourself “why should anyone care about my content, if I don’t care enough to promote it?”

There is no shame in pushing your content in front of the eyes of others. Of course, there is a line where pushing it onto others can be a turn off, but its way better than toiling in obscurity.

Jordan Kasteler, columnist from Search Engine Land, has nine different methods he uses to promote his content online. It may seem weird to put your work out there in front of others at first, but its the only way to get your content out there. In a world where content marketing is a huge part of SEO, its important to get people sharing your work.

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What Are Semantic Mark-Ups and Why Do They Matter?

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Bloggers are always talking about untapped methods of raising click-through rates and positions in rankings. They aren’t always as untapped as the writers make them seem, but the advice offered within their articles is usually solid. That’s the case with Chris Silver Smith’s list of semantic markups that can be added to pages.

Semantic markups are a way to increase the odds that information from a site will be highlighted on search engine result pages through the use of rich snippets. This increases visibility, and helps gain attention and click-throughs.

Semantic mark-ups most likely won’t directly improve your rankings on searches, there is quite a bit of evidence that they do increase click-through rates, because customers are more attracted to your listing. The average increase is supposedly 15-percent.

A raise in click-throughs can improve rankings over time because click-throughs do help determine rankings, so that alone is a great reason to start adding them to your websites.

Semantic mark-ups might not be the esoteric idea Smith presents them as, they will undoubtably help almost any page that adds them. They optimize for all of the most popular search engines, and they will benefit your site overall.

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Using MajesticSEO to Diagnose Bad Links

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MajesticSEO is a tool that is as well-known as it is respected. It is great for site audits and research, but it also has an important use in the current state of SEO where it has become clear that your site can be hurt externally, through bad links.

MajesticSEO can help you diagnose bad links, and possibly a bad linking campaign. Though, it is entirely possible the bad links dragging you down are not coming from external sources, but instead are caused by unscrupulous site owners or SEOs.

Search Engine Journal writer Irish Wonder helps walk you through identifying and understanding bad links with the use of this great SEO tool. They aren’t perfect means of diagnosing your problem, but they can help point you in the right direction if you can’t pinpoint the exact issue.

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Easy Ways To Save Money As A Designer

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Web designers find themselves continuously facing the largest issue for anyone in an artistic career. It is often difficult to start a career making work you love while earning enough money to live comfortably. Every artist is used to cutting costs when they have to, like eating Ramen noodles for a week or two to afford a program or drawing tablet.

Of course, there are less drastic ways to save money so that you can be a successful designer. One of the biggest costs for designers is software. $400 Adobe products that get updated every year can take a huge chunk out of your budget, but there are plenty of small software developers creating cheap or free alternatives. For $50-$100 you can find software that can accomplish nearly everything that $1000 dollar Creative Suite can do.

Speaking of free resources, the design community also serves as one of the greatest methods to get free textures, photography, icons, WordPress themes, and any sort of plug-in you could imagine. Searching for blogs and sites that offer these types of free resources also gives you an opportunity to interact with others in your community which can lead to strong professional relationships down the road. Just a simple, friendly “thanks” for the free stuff leaves a nice impression.

The active design community offers another type of resource that can save you tons of money on books and classes as well. There are all sorts of free tutorials and workshops online you can participate in that will keep you up to date on the latest design standards while putting you in direct interaction with others in the community.

Brian Spero from Web Designer Depot has plenty of other ways designers  can keep their costs down. If you are a recent graduate or a newer freelancer, these ideas are definitely better than living off of Ramen.

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What is Evergreen Content?

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When trying to pump content out for a blog, it is easy to become focused on resharing news or tips essential to the community, especially with SEO. The problem is that SEO changes so quickly, most of these posts go out of date very quickly. This is why every blog needs a good amount of “evergreen content”.

Evergreen content is the term for any posts or articles on your blog that will always be relevant to your content. Sujan Patel from Search Engine Journal uses an example to show the distinction.

If you are running an SEO blog, an article about the latest Penguin update won’t be relevant a week or two later when the next update appears. However, a post like “What is SEO?” will always be important, especially for any new readers you gain. The definition of SEO isn’t going to change, and the overall idea of the industry stays largely consistent, though you may need to update the article every few years.

Evergreen content is always up-to-date and will always be a primary interest for your readers. For blog managers, it offers more effective content, that can be re-run later with the same impact it originally had.  For readers, it is helpful because new readers are always looking for basic information.

I like to think of it like Wikipedia information. Wikipedia articles tend to consist of factual information without touching too much on “best practices” or other time sensitive issues. When someone accesses a Wikipedia article, they want a basic explanation of what something is and why it is important. If you can convey that in an article, you have the recipe for great evergreen content.

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What Is The Device-Agnostic Approach To Design?

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If you look at the tags for most articles on responsive design, you will notice the way most writers connect responsive design to mobile design. Thinking of responsive design as a mobile design method kind of misses the point however.

When Ethan Marcotte first coined the term ‘responsive design’, he wrote, “responsive design is not about ‘designing for mobile’. But it’s not about ‘designing for the desktop’, either. Rather, it’s about adopting a more flexible, device-agnostic approach to designing for the web.”

So what exactly is device-agnosticism? It is the main selling point of responsive design. The device-agnostic approach to design is designing for every device at the same time, or focusing on no specific device. PC Magazine defines it simply as saying the approach is “not tied to a particular device.”

I won’t say more about the benefits of thinking agnostically about devices, as it is already covered in just about every article I’ve done about responsive design. But, what I will say is I made the same mistake many have by slipping responsive design under the idea of mobile design. Thinking that way still focuses on the needs of devices. Instead, as Sarita Harbour from Web Designer Depot, explains, you should stop thinking about the needs of devices, and start thinking about the needs of the consumer. Isn’t that what is most important anyways?

 

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What Do You Need To Know For SEO In 2013

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SEO changed so much, it is hard to predict what will be best for 2013. Just this past year, Google has issued so many changes that it has become pretty much a constant. Trying to pinpoint where we will be a year from now almost feels impossible.

Paul Bruemmer from Search Engine Land, however, believes he knows how to keep up with everything for the next year with just a few tactics that can help guide you. Some are timeless, such as always keeping up with the best SEO practices, specifically starting with the Google 2012 Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. When in doubt, Google usually has an answer for any SEO practice you should be focusing on.

Social Media is, of course, also going to be a strong driving force in SEO for the next year, as there are no signs of them losing popularity. Even with the ever-changing heirarchy of sites, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are solid constants that can be leveraged increasingly to keep in touch with consumers.

Falling behind in SEO is dangerous for your career and your clients, and any good SEO knows to keep up. Brummer’s suggestions are by no means comprehensive, but if you are wanting to make sure you’re in a good place to take on the coming year, the article is a great start.

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The Myths and Misunderstandings of Mobile SEO

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It is shocking to me how many people write off mobile SEO as being unimportant or overhyped. Just taking a quick look at the rising rates of people searching with mobile devices makes it pretty clear how much of the market is dominated by mobile devices.

Sure, there are still more people using desktops on the internet, but every year we see a greater percentage of that traffic coming from smartphones and tablets. The trend isn’t going away. More people have tablets and phones every day as more affordable options become available.

So, why then is mobile SEO on quite a few lists of things people hope we stop talking about next year? It is because many people in the SEO industry don’t really understand what mobile SEO is, or how it works.

Bryson Meunier also had a problem with how many people seem to be writing off mobile SEO right now, and he compiled a list of the misconceptions and myths as well as explaining how they’re wrong.

 

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How To Improve Your SEO Audits and Link Evaluation

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If you are doing a ton of SEO audits, or just doing audits on sites with lots of big data, you probably have been itching to find any way to make your process more efficient without impacting the quality of your work.

Alan Bleiweiss, writer for Search Engine Journal, had that problem. With Google fighting unnatural links, we all have felt a heightened need to be examining inbound link profiles. These two things combined have caused Bleiweiss to bring together a set of techniques he uses to speed up his audits.

No one wants to spend their entire life doing audits, but theres no need to lower your bar for quality just to save some speed.

 

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How Does Google Handle Linkspam Abroad?

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Have you ever wondered how Google handles web spam in other languages or other countries? According to Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team,  they have people placed on the ground across the globe to handle markets for their native countries.

Cutts, was responding to a question asked online, when he said, “If an algorithm misses something, they are there to find the spam. They know the lay of the land, they know who the big players are, and they’re really quite expert. So if there’s some really unique kind of link spam going on in Poland, for example, there’s a person there.”

The video is below. The question was poorly phrased (Europe is smaller than the US? Really?), but it helps illustrate just how international of a company Google is trying to be. I’ve heard European countries use Google less than the US, but clearly Google is still trying to offer the same experience across the globe.

 

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