Daily Archives: July 4, 2012

Tips For A Finely Crafted Website

July 4, 2012   SmashingMagazine.com

Tips For A Finely Crafted Website

Good Web designers know what many others might not realize: that creating a truly beautiful website requires care, time and craft. And similar to how a craftsperson molds their creation by combining raw materials, skill and unwavering focus on the vision, a beautiful design is planned and executed with exceptional focus on what is to be achieved by the website.

It is important, however, not to confuse a beautifully crafted website with one that simply brushes over the content with attractive visuals. This article provides a small selection of tried and true methods that Web designers regularly employ to give a website that bespoke look and feel (think a tailor who carefully cinches a suit here and there to ensure a perfect fit).

Make no mistake: these methods do take extra time, and they often result in improvements that the untrained eye might not consciously register. But the payoff is a better overall experience for the user. Users will leave with a smile and a lasting impression or relationship with your website, even if they can’t quite put their finger on why.

Start From Scratch, Every Time


For a truly customized design, always start with a blank slate.

Whenever possible, avoid cobbling together work from old designs. Every website should be treated as unique, regardless of its type (e-commerce, author website, blog, etc.). The very best websites are designed to fulfill a defined purpose. Building your design from the ground up fosters clarity, focus and commitment to the design.

At every step in the design process, ensure that everything in the layout has a deliberate purpose; you should be able to explain your thought process behind every element on the page. If something has no reason to exist on the page, then consider removing it because it could simply distract visitors from more important content.


Every element on the page should have a reason for existing.

Simply copying and pasting elements from previous designs is a crutch that prevents you from experimenting, learning and growing as a Web designer. This isn’t to downplay the value of iterating on previous design elements, which can be a useful exercise and which can challenge you to get creative and experiment.

Invest In Custom Icons And Graphics

Spotify
Spotify uses custom icons and graphics, rather than relying on stock images, to give their design soul and character.

Custom illustrations, imagery and iconography make for a unique experience on a website. While stock photography and vectors do save a ton of time, a photo of a smiling sales rep wearing a headset just feels phoney to visitors when they’ve seen the same image on five other websites.

Invest time in creating custom icons and graphics to preserve the look and feel of your website, as well as the authenticity of your message.

Spotify is a perfect example of this. Its lighthearted, “sketchy” illustration style sets its apart from all the other music services, and it leaves a lasting, positive impression on visitors.

Some other examples of great websites with custom icons and illustrations:

Remove Friction That Impedes Scrolling


Encourage scrolling by removing obstacles.

As screen resolutions expand and touchscreens multiply at every turn, we’re encountering longer pages and smaller website footprints. And with good reason: a user who has to scroll down the page will encounter far less obstruction than someone who has to click a link and wait for the new page to load. Removing this obstruction will not only simplify the navigation, but help to tell a cohesive story, without the interruption of page loading.

As Paddy Donnelly’s excellent article “Life Below 600px” explains, the fear that users will ignore any content unlucky enough to fall below the fold afflicts designers much less today. And the proliferation of devices of different resolutions makes it almost impossible to determine where exactly the fold lies.


“Life Below 600px” is an excellent essay that dispels the myth of the fold.

Weave a cohesive story concept by getting creative with connecting individual page sections. This will promote a natural flow for the user, encouraging them to explore deeper into the page, building momentum in their experience and making it easier to get all the way through the page. You can even tie radically different styles of content together on the same page by adding small visual cues at the bottom of each section to indicate that more content awaits — much like how different rooms in a house can have entirely separate functions yet retain a common theme. If each section on the page comes to an abrupt end or looks like a footer, then users will be less likely to reach the end.

In fact, scrolling has become such a natural interaction on most Web-enabled devices that Apple did away with the scroll bar in OS X Lion.

The Dangers of Fracking and Slavery Footprint deserve hearty mentions. Both websites drive the user to scroll down with incredibly creative parallax effects and compelling stories.

More awesome examples of mega pages:

Make The Design Invisible Through Interactivity And Functionality

After more than 20 years of evolution, the paradigms of the print world still provide the fundamental building blocks of the way we present content online. Think about the terms we use to describe the Web: pages, headlines, columns, scrolling. These are band-aid metaphors that we’ve adopted to make the Web more understandable to the public. But the medium itself is capable of so much more. Static text and images are usually fine, but human beings by nature crave varied stimulation, and the Web is capable of feeding that craving with a much more interactive and richer experience.

Zurb
Joyride uses “Pit stops” of interactivity to keep the visitor engaged with the website.

Providing clear points on the page where users can interact with the design, rather than passively consume it, will help to relieve the burden of wading through long passages of copy. Visitors will experience the invisible part of a design; content sliders, tooltips, lightboxes, modal windows and other points of interaction give them something to do and can propel them further along in the story, much like how a good museum exhibit mixes methods of conveying information. Of course, swing too far to the extreme of too much interactivity and you’ll distract users, so be cautious of how much you build in. All interaction points should serve the overarching goal of the page.

Joyride is a great example of this approach. While the page has plenty of content, Joyride does a great job of guiding the user around the page and highlighting points of interest to come back to later. (And the little surprise at the end will leave you grinning.)

Great examples of engaging users with interaction on the page:

Pay Attention To Detail

Whether you’re going for clean minimalism or complex and illustrative, pay special attention to the details of every element on the page. Even slight inconsistencies will be picked up by users subconsciously, thus diminishing their experience or confusing them.

A few common pitfalls to watch out for:

  • Typography gone wild
    Each typographic treatment in the design should be consistent with its function. Headings in one part of the page should look the same as headings elsewhere on the page, and indeed throughout the rest of the website.
  • Buttons, buttons everywhere
    Be conscious of where a button style is called for, as opposed to plain text links. Overusing buttons diminishes their overall effectiveness.
  • Changing gradients
    If your design has gradients, use them consistently, with the same shades across like elements and with the same gradation.
  • Mind the gaps
    Consistent spacing and alignment between page elements will make the layout feel refined and high quality.

Thoughtfully questioning each element in the layout is key to achieving a highly polished design. The burden is on you to prove that an element has a reason to be there and is not superfluous to the experience. At the end of the day, don’t fall into the trap of thinking “No one will notice,” because the chances are high that someone will!

As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said:

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Consider whether the elements on the page have the right amount of detail to fulfill their purpose. Does that button have the right texture and color treatment to serve its role? Does it need texture at all? Simplicity is key and is relative to the purpose of the element.


Polished designs can be found across the Web, if you look closely.

Polished touches lie all around the Web if you look. Little Big Details rounds up some details from the Web and other interfaces that many of us encounter every day but don’t notice.

Details

To see a truly polished design, head over to PixelResort. To describe it in one word: sumptuous. No detail has been spared for each element. The entire experience has a weight and tangibility that stays with the user.

Some other excellent examples of polish on the Web:

Bringing It All Together

Creating a truly beautiful and memorable website ain’t easy. You’ll need to make a significant investment of time and effort, focused in key areas for maximum payoff:

  1. Design the entire layout specifically for the given website. Putting a new coat of paint on an old template won’t give you the most compelling design possible.
  2. Create your own graphics to give the design a unique personality.
  3. Motivate visitors to scroll by weaving a story across the page that compels them to finish.
  4. Engage visitors with variety. Adding “rest stops” of interactivity will keep them actively thinking about the experience that you’re leading them through.
  5. Finally, polish, polish, polish! Think about every detail in the design. Make sure nothing is missed.

There you have it: five solid techniques to ensure that your website is a beautiful and memorable experience. This roundup is by no means comprehensive, but the techniques will pay you back with returning visitors, high engagement and user satisfaction.

Do you have any tips on adding beauty to a design? Feel free to post them in the comments!

(al) (jc)

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More reports suggest a smaller iPad is coming

July 4, 2012   CNN.com


The screens of current iPads measure about 10 inches across diagonally, but reports suggest a 7-inch model may be coming.

(CNN) — A new round of Apple rumors and leaks are suggesting what some tech observers have been predicting for the past year: that a smaller, less expensive iPad is on the way.

The talk of a 7-or-8-inch version of the popular tablet (the current model has a nearly 10-inch screen, diagonally), comes on the heels of Google announcing plans for the Nexus 7, its own smaller tablet that will be more in the mold of Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

The Nexus 7 will have a 7-inch screen and sell for $199 like the Fire, which has been one of the few iPad rivals to gain any real traction in the tablet marketplace.

Finally, Apple owns

Article source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/edition_technology/~3/m2SMzOedvpM/index.html

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Amid GPS boom, paper maps hang on

July 4, 2012   USAtoday.com

But of the more than 35 million Americans expected to travel by car this Fourth of July, a good chunk will probably reach for technology before they’re tempted to unfold — and in a tradition that used to bind Americans as tightly as a highway cloverleaf, try to refold — a paper road map.

Websites like MapQuest and Google Maps simplified trip planning. Affordable GPS devices and built-in navigation on smartphones downright transformed it — and transportation agencies around the country are noticing, printing fewer maps to cut department costs or just acknowledging that public demand is down.

The drop in sales began around 2003, when affordable GPS units became the go-to Christmas present, said Pat Carrier, former owner of a travel bookstore in Cambridge, Mass.

“Suddenly, everyone was buying a Garmin or a TomTom,” he said. “That’s the year I thought, ‘Oh, it’s finally happened.’”

Transportation departments around the country are in the middle of reprioritizing their spending amid times of falling revenue, and paper maps could be on the chopping block, said Bob Cullen, spokesman for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

“Just based on the current climate, there have been some cuts,” he said. “I would expect map printing to be one area that’s been targeted.”

In late June, at the annual exposition of the Road Map Collectors Association in Dublin, Ohio, collector Terry Palmer was selling some of his beloved maps. The 65-year-old from Dallas, Texas, wore a T-shirt with intricate route lines of the United States on his chest, back and arms.

“The GPS of course now being so available, a lot of new cars are coming out with built-in GPS. People are utilizing those, and they don’t want a road map,” he said. “A lot of the younger generation, they’re used to having their phone, and they don’t need a road map to figure out where to go.”

In Georgia, officials are printing about 1.6 million maps to cover a two-year period — less than half of what they were printing a decade ago. In Pennsylvania, where officials say public demand has gone down, about 750,000 maps are being printed — way down from more than 3 million in 2000.

Officials in Oklahoma and Ohio also say map printing is down, and Washington state discontinued them altogether by 2009 because of budget shortfalls.

But in other states, printing has remained steady because maps remain popular at visiting centers. In Missouri, officials say they’re printing about 1.5 million maps for a two- to three-year period, consistent with printing from a decade ago. Officials in Connecticut, Mississippi and Nebraska also say printing has remained the same.

It’s unclear why some states are affected more than others. Some speculate certain regions affect how people travel there. In Delaware, for example, officials attributed a jump in printing of about 100,000 maps to people visiting beach areas and renewed real-estate interest.

There’s a universal theme to paper road maps, especially for baby boomers traveling after retirement, said Kevin Nursick, spokesman for Connecticut’s transportation department. Paper maps, he said, offer an experience that dead batteries and unreliable service connections cannot.

“Simpler times are something everyone yearns for. And maybe looking at a map takes you back,” he said. “The technology is neat, but on a personal level, there’s a sense of nostalgia when you look at the paper map. A lot of people are yearning for simpler times.”

At the collectors’ association exposition, a carpeted ballroom at an Embassy Suites hotel outside Columbus featured old road maps for sale, and gave collectors a glimpse into an era of romanticized advertising — brightly colored paper maps promising the sunny beaches of Florida, the mountains of Montana and Chicago’s famous skyline.

Free roadside maps boomed between the 1920s and 1970s, when oil companies worked with a handful of publishers. As major highways were being built, those maps became synonymous with the possibilities of the open road.

Dick Bloom, a founding member of the group, has been collecting maps since he was 10. The retired airline pilot from Danville, Ky., said there used to be an element of surprise in road trips.

“The paper map was all you had back then,” Bloom, 74, said from his merchandise table. “It was the only way to get around. It was a lot more of an adventure back then. Life was much more of an adventure.”

Transportation agencies aren’t the only ones printing paper road maps. Companies like AAA and Rand McNally have been in the business for decades and are just as synonymous with trip planning.

Members of AAA, whose services are fully integrated online and include a TripTik mobile app, requested more than 14 million paper guides in 2010, spokeswoman Heather Hunter said. The number of paper maps AAA prints has declined, but she wouldn’t go into detail.

Rand McNally is known for its road atlases but also offers an interactive travel website and GPS devices; it declined to comment on how many maps it’s printing these days.

Carrier, now a consultant in the mapping and travel publishing industry, said the additional services from traditional mapping companies show the incredible potential in the industry.

“There’s no question in the U.S. that traditional road maps are diminished,” he said. “But there are other areas of the map industry that are thriving and even growing.”

Charlie Regan, who runs the maps division for National Geographic, said the company has sold more paper map products in the past three years than it has ever sold since launching the division in 1915. He attributed it to customers learning to appreciate good map data — and also noted that sales of international maps have remained consistent, and that sales of recreational hiking maps are on the rise.

“It’s almost like a golden age in mapping. More people than ever before in history are using maps every day,” he said. “For me, that’s fantastic, and it’s an opportunity.”

What most people agree on is that paper road maps will not go away quietly, like pay phones and phone books. Chris Turner, a collector from Jeffersonville, Ind., shook his head at the notion of paper maps becoming obsolete.

“With a GPS or other mapping system that you might use, you feel like you’re beholden to the GPS lady. You know? ‘Turn left here. Recalculating.’ Well, with a map, you can trace your route and you can decide for yourself still where you want to go.

“And if you want to vary from the GPS lady, so be it,” he said. “But you’re armed with that knowledge from that map to do that.”

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How Content Creators Benefit From The New SEO

July 4, 2012   SmashingMagazine.com

New SEO ChallengesHow Content Creators Benefit From The New SEO

Due to big changes in the SEO landscape, designers, photographers, videographers and writers have new opportunities to build their reputation, expand brand awareness and generate more leads. This post describes five important developments that content creators should be aware of, and then we’ll outline several ways to capitalize on them.

Five SEO Developments That Favor Content Producers

Thanks to self-publishing and social networks, the world is drowning in content. Google’s response: make it easy for searchers to drill down to exactly what they are looking for. Today, we can perform a search and look at the results all together in one big chunk, or we can carve off just a piece. We can look at search results from complete strangers, from people we know or from both.

In the past, search results simply connected keywords to websites. Today, in pursuit of an easier way to drill down, Google also connects keywords to social networks, user behavior and authors. Here are five ways this is playing out, and why it’s all great news for content creators.

1. Personalized Search

While search engine users are accustomed to getting objective results on search engine results pages (SERPs), Google now serves up “subjective” results as well. When logged into Google and with personalized search turned on, you will see SERPs that include results based on your Web browsing history, as well as content authored or endorsed by your social connections.

Personalization can radically change what you see in regular searches and image searches. Here is a Google image search that demonstrates the difference. My search for “how to use twitter” with personalization turned off yields the following:


Image search without personalization.

With personalization turned on, the results look like this:


Image search with personalization.

Notice that the first two rows of images are completely different. At the top of my personalized search, I see 10 images associated with my Google+ connections. With personalized search turned on, I also have the option to view only my personal results.

This is intriguing. Google is doing everything it can to encourage personalized search. It has a selfish interest in doing so: it wants as many people as possible to be logged into Google for as long as possible, using Google products, providing Google with data and being exposed to personalized Google ads. As personalized search gains traction with users, content creators will be able to gain a lot of search visibility in three ways:

  1. Creators become visible to their direct connections.
    Content associated with a particular creator will get top position in personalized searches conducted by people who have circled them. Imagine what would happen if a creator tripled the number of circles they were in, or if Google began to incorporate Twitter and Pinterest follows into its personalized search results.
  2. Creators become visible to their indirect connections.
    If a creator’s content is endorsed by someone in the Google+ network, the content could appear in the personalized results of searches conducted by that person’s connections. The ripple effect can extend a considerable distance.
  3. Creators become visible to people who visit their website.
    If someone frequents a creator’s website, Google will serve that creator’s content in their personalized searches.

The trend: As time goes on, expect Google to get smarter about how it ranks personalized content, and for Google to cast a wider net across social networks to retrieve it.

Quick tip for creatives: Strengthen and broaden your social connections to give your work more exposure on search engines. Keep looking for better ways to bring new visitors to your website, and to keep them coming back.

2. The Importance of Social Shares

One factor that Google considers in evaluating a page of content is its social shares. Google sees likes, +1s, tweets and other types of shares as indicators of content quality and trustworthiness. This is reasonable enough: a blog post with 1500 retweets has more clearly established value than a comparable post with five.


Social sharing is more important than ever.

At the moment, how much value Google accords to social shares is still unclear, which is fair enough because many questions remain unanswered. Is a tweet more or less valuable than a like? How do you evaluate the authority of the person doing the sharing? How are people gaming the system to inflate the number of shares?

Nevertheless, we should expect social sharing to grow in importance for SEO. First, there is demand: people would love to consider social endorsements for certain types of searches, provided they have confidence in the data. Secondly, there is self-interest: Google is committed to its social network, Google+, and isn’t about to ignore it on its own search engine.

The trend: Social sharing now has its biggest impact on standard search results. Expect Google to ratchet up the presence of share-influenced links in personalized results as well. For instance, we could start to see a variety of segmented search options that display content shared by a defined subset of your connections.

Quick tip for creatives: Make social-sharing buttons prominent to make it easy for people to share content on your website; actively engage in social media; and publish your content on websites where content is widely shared.

3. The Rise Of Search Segmentation

In the old days, there weren’t too many ways to slice and dice search results. Today, there are scores. Tomorrow, there will be hundreds.


Multiple search options create opportunities.

More segmentation means more opportunity for freelance authors to improve their search visibility based on the nature of their content. When results are lumped together in one big mass, it’s challenging for a small enterprise to stand out. However, if creatives focus their content efforts on, for example, standing out in a particular segment, then they could capture a larger share of segmented searches. (An example of how to go about this appears in the “Reading Level” segment in the next section.)

Note, too, that segmented search offers a “personalized” option, where, again, users can zero in on content based on their browsing history and social connections.

The trend: Google will continue to categorize content to help users drill down to search results that are precisely relevant to their intent, rather than broadly relevant to their keywords. In particular, segmented search options for images and video will become much more sophisticated, in response to our insatiable appetite for visual content.

Quick tip for creatives: Stay current on how Google segments content, and shape yours to stand out in segments that are natural homes for your work.

4. More Emphasis on Quality and More Transparency

For years, creatives have complained that “black hat” SEO tactics pollute rankings, pushing high-quality content down the page. However, as Google’s algorithm grows more sophisticated, it gets better at combatting black-hat practices — more great news for content producers.


Google is sending clearer SEO signals.

Google fights content spam by emphasizing quality in its algorithm and by being transparent in how quality is calculated. Quality has always been a focus; the current level of transparency is something new.

Google’s Panda update, released in 2011, was a declaration of war against content manipulators. A primary goal of this algorithm change — and of many that followed — was to decisively penalize worthless content and to reward highly relevant, meaningful and trustworthy content.

In addition to the algorithmic measures, Google is taking the smoke and mirrors out of search by more openly communicating algorithm changes to SEOs and the general public.

Why? In some cases, black-hat tactics were inadvertent, caused by website administrators using outdated techniques or misinterpreting Google’s algorithmic intent. Furthermore, a good deal of high-quality content gets lost in the search shuffle because creators simply ignore SEO. More than ever, Google wants every website to be optimized and optimized properly. The more high-caliber content Google can serve up to users in SERPs, the more business it will do.

The trend: Google will push hard in this direction, devising more accurate methods of evaluating the relevance, substance and trustworthiness of content. It will get better at interpreting both the inherent quality of the work itself and the social-sharing data associated with it.

Quick tip for creatives: Stay up to date on how to communicate the quality of your text, images and video to Google. (Links to step-by-step tutorials on how to do this are provided at the end of this post.)

5. Google+ and the rel=author Link

Google enthusiasts see the Google+ social network as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Most everybody else thinks Google+ is less useful for marketing than sliced bread. But whether or not you like Google+, the network cannot be ignored for SEO. Content creators ought to take note of two particular aspects of the network.


The rel=author link builds a creator’s brand and search visibility.

First, Google+ content gets indexed and ranked. In fact, when you publish original content on Google+, not only is it indexed and ranked, but it is given prime positioning in personalized SERPs. Images and video that are stored on Google or associated with personal pages on Google+ also receive greater exposure in search, as demonstrated earlier in the screen captures for image search.

Secondly, the rel=author link associates a page of Web content with its author’s personal Google+ profile. This is a technical mouthful, but it’s a big deal for creatives. Google has begun to link content to its creators as well as its publishers. “Authorship markup,” or “author rank,” is being developed at a furious rate because people sometimes want the option of searching for content by a particular creator or want results ranked according to the authority or expertise of the creators.

The trend: High-authority creators will see their content become more visible in search results, and for that reason, publishers will need to seek out high-authority creators to boost traffic to their websites.

Quick tip for creatives: Set up a personal Google+ profile and incorporate the rel=author link into your published content. (Instructions on how to do this are provided in the next section.)

How To Capitalize On The New SEO

Given these recent developments, let’s look at how authors can manage their content to increase its visibility and obtain all of the benefits that go along with that. Some of the following suggestions are technical in nature, while others are creative techniques that are not always thought of as aspects of SEO. However, with Google getting better at evaluating the quality of content, people are now less able to inflate the ranking of inferior content through technical manipulation and must instead treat the quality of their content itself as the linchpin of their SEO program.

Create Highly Sharable Content

SEO is no longer a game of mechanical keyword placement. In fact, SEO has moved even beyond a game of relevance and substance. For content to succeed in search today, it must be relevant, substantive and sharable. Content creators can use a variety of stylistic and marketing techniques to enhance social interest in their content, including the following:

  1. Convert dry text into visually engaging content to generate immediate interest;
  2. Provide consistently informative, well-researched and enlightening content that generates long-term interest;
  3. Develop a unique voice and style;
  4. Take a provocative stance or add humor when appropriate and compatible with the corporate style;
  5. Provide detailed content on a topic that has not been widely covered (scarcity of information increases demand);
  6. Attribute information to factual sources (trustworthy content is more confidently shared);
  7. Link generously (encourage sharing by setting a good example);
  8. Title content creatively to spark curiosity;
  9. Use Web design and typographic best practices to optimize readability and scannability;
  10. Embed video in blog posts and Web pages;
  11. Display attractive and intuitive social-sharing buttons;
  12. Give users an incentive to share.

Set-Up Methods and Benefits: Use The rel=author Link

Here’s a basic outline of how to set up rel=author links for your content. Google has a more thorough rundown.

  1. Create a personal Google+ profile page with a high-quality headshot;
  2. Validate your email address;
  3. In the byline of any content that you create, set the anchor text to be your name as it appears in your Google+ profile, and link to your profile with a URL that looks like this: https://plus.google.com/102318046680468697385?rel=author.
  4. When your content is published, link back to its URL from the “Contributor to” section of your Google+ profile.

Once your content is indexed, your Google+ profile picture and name, along with the publication date, title and description, will (sometimes) appear in SERPs, in both standard and personalized results. This gives you more exposure, and it instills trust in users that the content has a human author, and that the author is reputable. This adds up to higher ranking and more people clicking through to your content.

Please note: Author attribution is still in the early stages of development. Google frequently changes both the procedures for setting up links and the presentation of author information in SERPs. The instructional link above should be up to date whenever you are ready to dive in.

How to set up different types of content:

  • Guest blog posts
    Set up a rel=author link somewhere in your content. The most sensible place to do this is either in the byline or in the bio area. If the blog doesn’t accommodate such placement, then a rel=author link in the body of the post would work, too.
  • Infographics
    If you create an infographic, add a blurb below the image saying, “Infographic by [your name],” with a rel=author link.
  • Video
    Follow the same procedure as described above for infographics.
  • Dual authorship
    What if an article is coauthored or the author wants to credit a photographer? The best practice is to use only one rel=author link per page. If more than one link appears on a page, the first that appears in the markup will be the one whose name and image are featured in SERPs.

Bring Back Blog Marketing

Blogs are back. In terms of social sharing, blog posts are far more likely to be shared than standard Web pages. In terms of segmentation, blog posts figure prominently in search segments such as news, time ranges and, of course, blogs. Here are some blogging techniques that fit especially well in today’s SEO environment:

  • Incorporate the rel=author link into the byline of every post in your archive.
    This establishes you as the author and gives all of your existing content an SEO boost. Several WordPress plugins are available to automatically set up the links for single- and multi-author blogs. If you are using another CMS, check with the developer to see whether and how it supports rel=author linking.
  • Ramp up guest blogging efforts.
    Getting published on highly authoritative, highly shared blogs has always been useful, and adding the rel=author link to your guest posts delivers even more value.
  • Blog directly on Google+.
    Earlier, we mentioned that Google indexes and ranks original Google+ posts. To take advantage of this, some “plussers” are actually writing lengthy original posts on the network. This strategy could be well worth testing, especially if you already have an active presence on the network. And it could work particularly well for photographers, designers and videographers, who can surround their visual content with keyword-optimized text.

Consider the Reading Level When Composing

Let’s consider an example of creating targeted content to capitalize on Google’s segmented search.

Depending on the topic, writing at a particular reading level could be quite advantageous for SEO. For instance, here is how Google categorizes content that matches a search for “social media marketing”:

If you wrote a post about social media marketing at an advanced reading level, Google would probably rank it very low in its fully aggregated SERPs. Because the vast majority of content (82%) is written at an intermediate level, Google assumes that is what searchers are looking for.

However, for segmented searches, it’s a different story. Writing an advanced article would probably make you highly visible to people drilling down to that reading level. And even though it’s a small group (2%), it could include people with a lot of interest and ready to take action.

Another possibility is to write a basic article about social media marketing. Here again, there is less search competition (16%), and there is a good chance that people who are new to social media will want to drill down to basic articles.

Google does not clearly explain how it defines these three reading levels. But its model, according to Google’s Daniel M. Russell, is based primarily on input from teachers who have classified various pages of text. You can read more about Google’s reading level model on Russell’s personal blog.

The New SEO Formula: Relevance + Substance + Shares = Visibility

At one time, SEO was a fairly straightforward exercise in shaping content on a particular domain to rank highly on basically one flavor of SERPs for a given set of queries.

But as we’ve seen, Google now considers who created the content in addition to where the content lives, and query options have expanded thanks to the segmentation of search options. On top of all this, personalized search options enable users to view results based on the online behavior of themselves and their social media connections.

While technical expertise still matters tremendously in SEO, authorship is gaining ground, and quickly. Google is attempting to cut out the SEO middleman and make search a matter of directly connecting great content creators (as defined by the inherent quality of their work and their popularity) with searchers who will find great value in their content. This explains why Google is being more forthcoming about its algorithm: the maneuver levels the technical playing field and forces SEO practitioners to differentiate themselves through the content itself. What more could content creators ask for?

Resources

Below are resources containing detailed information on content-related SEO techniques that should be of interest to creatives who market themselves and their work.

Note: All images used for this post have exclusively been created by Straight North.

(al) (il)

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A Hands-On Experience Of The Rehabilitation Of The Script

July 4, 2012   SmashingMagazine.com

Rebirth of Script TypefacesA Hands-On Experience Of The Rehabilitation Of The Script

Serifs, sans serifs and… scripts. In theory not a bad typographic palette to play with, but when it comes to practice, the options are always far fewer.

One member of that stylistic trio could never quite punch its weight. Over the last few years, however, we have seen something of a rebirth and revitalization of scripts, a category that once represented a care home for the typographically underemployed. Why has this come about, and why was one needed in the first place?

The problem with scripts was that, although they were supposed to offer a freer, natural, handwritten

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