http://searchenginewatch.com/
On March 8, 2010, In SEO, by Search Engine Watch
SEO is a best practices game. Understanding how not to over optimize is an important part of the mix. …
SEO is a best practices game. Understanding how not to over optimize is an important part of the mix. ...
On January 28, 2010, In SEO, by Search Engine Watch
There are differences between best practices and using SEO as a means to achieve the goals of your search marketing strategy. Do you know which method your agency is using? …
There are differences between best practices and using SEO as a means to achieve the goals of your search marketing strategy. Do you know which method your agency is using? ...
http://searchenginewatch.com/
On January 27, 2010, In SEO, Web Design Tips, by Smashing Editorial
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Have you gotten your copy of The Smashing Book yet? If not, it may still be worth spending $29.90 for this printed book. The book shares technical tips and best practices on typography, usability, UI design, marketing and color usage. It contains interviews with high profile designers and developers. And you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine. You can buy the book now, it is available and can be shipped right away! And you can also check more details about the book.
Also, in this post we are giving away 35 exclusive Smashing Book Posters (folded, limited edition), and if you want to win one, just leave a comment on this post and tell us what you would do with it! So, let’s find out who are Smashing Magazine’s biggest fans? And we also have a new book chapter available for free download as PDF to serve as an appetizer.
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Have you gotten your copy of The Smashing Book yet? If not, it may still be worth spending $29.90 for this printed book. The book shares technical tips and best practices on typography, usability, UI design, marketing and color usage. It contains interviews with high profile designers and developers. And you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine. You can buy the book now, it is available and can be shipped right away! And you can also check more details about the book.
Also, in this post we are giving away 35 exclusive Smashing Book Posters (folded, limited edition), and if you want to win one, just leave a comment on this post and tell us what you would do with it! So, let’s find out who are Smashing Magazine’s biggest fans?
Bonus: New Free Chapter Of The Book
Need an appetizer? Here are two free chapters of the Smashing Book (Chapter 1 was released a couple of months ago). You can download them as a PDF:
- Chapter 1: User Interface Design in Modern Web Applications
- Chapter 7: Design To Sell — Increasing Conversion Rates
Smashing Book Around The World
Many things have been happening with and around The Smashing Book in recent weeks. You must have read or heard that it would fall apart immediately upon being opened (okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration). In fact, the pages loosened quickly, and the reading experience was anything but ideal (the adhesive binding was the culprit). The verdict from many users was thus: brilliant content, very poor binding. And yes, let’s face facts: we indeed did a poor job in our first attempt at offline publishing, but we are willing to learn from our experience and do it better the next time. In fact, the next time has already come.
We have thoroughly monitored the feedback and heard your complaints, which is why we have produced a Corrected Edition of the book, with stable, high-quality stitched binding. Nothing will fall apart here… guaranteed. And the price remains the same.
The release of the Smashing Book has been very exciting. We’ve seen many photos, videos and even unboxing galleries. We have even seen the books being explored by cats, pancakes, cactuses and babies!
Photo by Remworks
Photo by Eddie Ebeling.
Photo by Julien Bob (the cat’s name is Monsieurbleu).
Photo by Danielle Wu.
A Word On The Shipping
We are of course not a postal service, and because we are located in Germany, we had to rely on the German postal service (Deutsche Post) to deliver the books to you. This usually works fairly well, but the first weeks in December certainly weren’t our preferred shipping time. Logistics companies were already busy with the Christmas season, and so delivery of our books went very slowly. And because we have been shipping the books worldwide, delivery times have varied significantly. No wonder it took as long as a couple of weeks for the books to be delivered, slowed down as they were by the holidays.
It’s truly astonishing what can happen to books when you ship a large number of them. There are hundreds of stories: the labels got messed up, damaged, loosened or stuck together; the book was delivered but is sitting in the apartment of a neighbor who has gone on vacation; the mail carrier delivered the book to the wrong house or misread the label; the label has a printing error; my address has changed; the book was left sitting in a delivery container; the postal service sent the book to the wrong state and is in the process of rerouting it; the book is being held up in customs. The list goes on and on. Every day we learn of a number of such cases. If you purchased your book a long while ago but still haven’t received it, please send your order details to our support team at orders@smashingmagazine.com. We’ll be in touch right away and will investigate.
Was It Worth The Wait?
Well, we can’t answer that question because we are obviously biased. But our readers and book reviewers can answer that question for us. Many book reviews are out there, sharing both positive and negative impressions. In our forum, murphyslaw has published a long, very detailed review of every chapter of the book. What do other readers say? Here are a few snippets:
“The advice is pitched at what I would call intermediate-to-advanced level. It’s aimed at web designers, doesn’t include any coding details, and focuses on notions of good practice. Elegant solutions for common problems are offered on almost every page. The book has also been written by a group of professional designers – so they know what they’re talking about.” — Roy Johnson
“The Smashing Book is a great, really great book for everybody who is interested in design and web-development. Especially the typography and learning from the experts chapters where inspirational resources to me. The content is great but I believe the layout of the pages should be as a book. Support the Smashing Magazine Book by ordering your copy and I hope SM will continue the concept of bringing the content by book.” — Sander Baumann, Designworkplan
“The book is basically all of SM’s best articles condensed into a book. This is what you’d expect, as it would be hard to top what they have on the website already. The content is very detailed, perhaps even too much in some cases, but it is like a ‘bible of web design’ covering all the things you should know.” — Lee Munroe
“I think the Smashing Book is a perfect book for web designers and developers of all levels, and I am excited that it lives up to the hype. It provides very comprehensive information that is both useful and essential for designers and developers who want to make the quailty of their websites improve.” — admixweb
“I think the book is a great buy for the price. For all you people still waiting for it to be delivered, it’s worth it!” — ThatDeadPixel
“Overall, this is a great effort from the Smashing Team and all the authors. The book features good web design theory and many practical techniques backed up by real world examples in the form of colourful screenshots. This book will not become obsolete in the short term, and should be placed in everyone’s library. Overall score: 8.5/10 – A Smashing Book!” — Hixdesign
Please note that all errors and inaccuracies are being collected in the Errata, which can be found through our Smashing List of Links (only a few errors have been found so far).
Buy The Book Now!
The Smashing Book is a printed book about best practices in modern Web design. The book shares technical tips and best practices on coding, usability and optimization and explores how to create successful user interfaces and apply marketing principles to increase conversion rates. It also shows how to get the most out of typography, color and branding so that you end up with intuitive and effective Web designs. And lastly, you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine.
It’s a paperback: 313 pages, full-color images on coated paper, available worldwide. Free shipping to the US and Germany, and reduced shipping costs to other countries. 30-day 100% money-back guarantee. You can find more details about the book in the post Smashing Book: It’s Out Now!
(al)
© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 279 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com
On January 25, 2010, In SEO, by Danny Dover
Posted by Danny Dover
This post is part of an ongoing series where my co-workers and I are working to build a freely available resource center of up-to-date SEO best practices. As we write this content, we are submitting them for peer review so that everyone on the Internet can benefit from collective intelligence. You can read more about the SEO Knowledge Center here.
This weeks proposed SEO best practice deals with duplicate content. It is my belief that duplicate content is the single biggest SEO problem on the Internet. (Well that and Myspace layouts.) On the page linked below, Jen Lopez discusses what duplicate content is, how it gets created and how to get rid of it. Hopefully, this page will help all of you combat this problem.
Please let us know if there is something we should add, remove or modify. We are also open to suggestions on how to design better robots. As you will see on the duplicate content page below, Rand’s robot mock-up skills are like a mixture of Avatar CGI and Shakespearean writing but without any of the talent or impressiveness (or iambic pentameter for that matter).
Duplicate Content
Remember, this page is just a work in progress. I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how to improve it. Please feel free to leave your comments below.
.png)
Posted by Danny Dover
This post is part of an ongoing series where my co-workers and I are working to build a freely available resource center of up-to-date SEO best practices. As we write this content, we are submitting them for peer review so that everyone on the Internet can benefit from collective intelligence. You can read more about the SEO Knowledge Center here.
This weeks proposed SEO best practice deals with duplicate content. It is my belief that duplicate content is the single biggest SEO problem on the Internet. (Well that and Myspace layouts.) On the page linked below, Jen Lopez discusses what duplicate content is, how it gets created and how to get rid of it. Hopefully, this page will help all of you combat this problem.
Please let us know if there is something we should add, remove or modify. We are also open to suggestions on how to design better robots. As you will see on the duplicate content page below, Rand's robot mock-up skills are like a mixture of Avatar CGI and Shakespearean writing but without any of the talent or impressiveness (or iambic pentameter for that matter).
Duplicate Content
Remember, this page is just a work in progress. I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how to improve it. Please feel free to leave your comments below.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog
On January 19, 2010, In SEO, by Gil Reich
Posted by Gil Reich
This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
Q&A sites are a great way to get your message across and to build your brand and reputation.
How many people use Q&A sites?
- In a recent Business.com study, 49% of companies that use social media said they ask questions on Q&A sites. Only 29% said they use Twitter to find business-related information. The 49% doesn’t even include the many who get info from Q&A sites by Googling or Binging.
- Answers.com (where I work) is now ranked (by comScore) as the 17th most visited site in the US. The vast majority of Answers.com’s traffic is to user generated Q&A pages. Yahoo! Answers gets even more traffic. Much of your potential market is already getting their answers from these sites.
Source: Social Media Best Practices: Question & Answer Forums. Business.com, December 14, 2009, http://www.business.com/info/social-media-best-practices-q-and-a
What’s in it for me?
Providing quality answers and links to relevant pages can help you in the following ways:
- Direct your customers (and potential customers) to accurate information about your product.
- Connect with people in your market, build your reputation, and generate leads.
- Provide links back to your site. Some of these links are Follow links, and thus also provide SEO value.
How do I use these sites?
The general rules of social media apply here too:
- Help others
- Build relationships
- Push your products and services when they answer somebody’s question or request.
Q&A sites work great for this, because people are already asking the questions. When I blog I hope my posts address questions that my readers want answered, but they may not. In Q&A sites, your starting point is that somebody asked the queston that you’re answering.
Specifically:
- Search the Q&A sites for questions about your subject, and browse the relevant categories.
- Answer questions fairly and accurately. If appropriate, mention your product or service, and / or link to a relevant page on your site.
- Follow up & interact where appropriate. Use these sites’ message boards to see if you can be of further help, or to congratulate another contributor for a great answer.
- Fill in your User Profile, showing why people should like and trust you. You can also usually link to your site from your User Profile.
In the example below, notice how the user provided a quality answer (much of which follows a template he uses in other answers as well) and adds a relevant link to his site.
What are the leading sites and how do they differ?
- Yahoo! Answers: The biggest site in the industry, with 47 million US visits in November according to comScore (and that’s probably a very conservative estimate). It’s a broad horizontal site. Questions are open for 4 days. Users answer the question, and vote on the best answer. The best answer is selected by either the asker or by the community.
- Answers.com / WikiAnswers: Answers.com has 41 million monthly US visitors according to comScore, making it second to Yahoo! but far larger than the other Q&A sites. It’s also a broad horizontal site. It’s key differentiators are:
- It’s connectd to a reference site, so if you ask "What is the abstention doctrine?" your answer will come from West’s Law and the Oxford University Press.
- It’s a wiki, so instead of multiple users providing multiple answers, users collaborate on one answer.
- In most cases Answers don’t get closed, so you can find questions asked more than 4 days ago and still contribute to the answer.
- LinkedIn Answers & Business.com Answers: These sites are great for more targeted communication, lead generation, and reputation building. Think of Yahoo! Answers and Answers.com as more B2C, and these sites as more B2B. This is Q&A in the context of advanced professional networking sites.
- Stack Overflow and its siblings: Stack Overflow is a great Q&A site for programmers. If you’re a software developer and you want to establish yourself as an expert and to network with your peers, this site’s perfect. The same technology is now powering other niche sites, most notably serverfault.com (for system administrators) and Answers on Startups, which Rand Fishkin just named one of the 10 Sources I’ve Come to Love.
- Aardvark: Aardvark is more of a closed system where you ask questions to people in your network. This is great for well connected journalists and bloggers to get answers from their network, but may not be ideal for spreading your message beyond your social circle.
How is using them like doing a guest post on SEOmoz?
Answering questions on Q&A sites is exactly like doing a guest post on SEOmoz:
- Find the sites where the people you need are getting their information.
- Give them quality information that will benefit them.
- Get your own message across, with full disclosure of who you are. You can be self-serving, but not too self-serving.
- Build relationships, and establish your expertise.
Ultimately you need a win-win here. You need to serve the needs of the community with whom you’re interacting, in a way that also builds your business and reputation.
Where can I get more information on Q&A sites?
See the following excellent articles:
- Jason Falls: How to drive business leads with Q&A forums
- Using Yahoo! Answers to generate leads. Does it work?
- Lisa Barone: Finding Answers on Business.com
- Business.com’s Study: Social Media best practices: Q&A forums
Or contact me (Answers.com user: Gilr)
Posted by Gil Reich
This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
Q&A sites are a great way to get your message across and to build your brand and reputation.
How many people use Q&A sites?
- In a recent Business.com study, 49% of companies that use social media said they ask questions on Q&A sites. Only 29% said they use Twitter to find business-related information. The 49% doesn't even include the many who get info from Q&A sites by Googling or Binging.
- Answers.com (where I work) is now ranked (by comScore) as the 17th most visited site in the US. The vast majority of Answers.com's traffic is to user generated Q&A pages. Yahoo! Answers gets even more traffic. Much of your potential market is already getting their answers from these sites.
Source: Social Media Best Practices: Question & Answer Forums. Business.com, December 14, 2009, http://www.business.com/info/social-media-best-practices-q-and-a
What's in it for me?
Providing quality answers and links to relevant pages can help you in the following ways:
- Direct your customers (and potential customers) to accurate information about your product.
- Connect with people in your market, build your reputation, and generate leads.
- Provide links back to your site. Some of these links are Follow links, and thus also provide SEO value.
How do I use these sites?
The general rules of social media apply here too:
- Help others
- Build relationships
- Push your products and services when they answer somebody's question or request.
Q&A sites work great for this, because people are already asking the questions. When I blog I hope my posts address questions that my readers want answered, but they may not. In Q&A sites, your starting point is that somebody asked the queston that you're answering.
Specifically:
- Search the Q&A sites for questions about your subject, and browse the relevant categories.
- Answer questions fairly and accurately. If appropriate, mention your product or service, and / or link to a relevant page on your site.
- Follow up & interact where appropriate. Use these sites' message boards to see if you can be of further help, or to congratulate another contributor for a great answer.
- Fill in your User Profile, showing why people should like and trust you. You can also usually link to your site from your User Profile.
In the example below, notice how the user provided a quality answer (much of which follows a template he uses in other answers as well) and adds a relevant link to his site.
What are the leading sites and how do they differ?
- Yahoo! Answers: The biggest site in the industry, with 47 million US visits in November according to comScore (and that's probably a very conservative estimate). It's a broad horizontal site. Questions are open for 4 days. Users answer the question, and vote on the best answer. The best answer is selected by either the asker or by the community.
- Answers.com / WikiAnswers: Answers.com has 41 million monthly US visitors according to comScore, making it second to Yahoo! but far larger than the other Q&A sites. It's also a broad horizontal site. It's key differentiators are:
- It's connectd to a reference site, so if you ask "What is the abstention doctrine?" your answer will come from West's Law and the Oxford University Press.
- It's a wiki, so instead of multiple users providing multiple answers, users collaborate on one answer.
- In most cases Answers don't get closed, so you can find questions asked more than 4 days ago and still contribute to the answer.
- LinkedIn Answers & Business.com Answers: These sites are great for more targeted communication, lead generation, and reputation building. Think of Yahoo! Answers and Answers.com as more B2C, and these sites as more B2B. This is Q&A in the context of advanced professional networking sites.
- Stack Overflow and its siblings: Stack Overflow is a great Q&A site for programmers. If you're a software developer and you want to establish yourself as an expert and to network with your peers, this site's perfect. The same technology is now powering other niche sites, most notably serverfault.com (for system administrators) and Answers on Startups, which Rand Fishkin just named one of the 10 Sources I've Come to Love.
- Aardvark: Aardvark is more of a closed system where you ask questions to people in your network. This is great for well connected journalists and bloggers to get answers from their network, but may not be ideal for spreading your message beyond your social circle.
How is using them like doing a guest post on SEOmoz?
Answering questions on Q&A sites is exactly like doing a guest post on SEOmoz:
- Find the sites where the people you need are getting their information.
- Give them quality information that will benefit them.
- Get your own message across, with full disclosure of who you are. You can be self-serving, but not too self-serving.
- Build relationships, and establish your expertise.
Ultimately you need a win-win here. You need to serve the needs of the community with whom you're interacting, in a way that also builds your business and reputation.
Where can I get more information on Q&A sites?
See the following excellent articles:
- Jason Falls: How to drive business leads with Q&A forums
- Using Yahoo! Answers to generate leads. Does it work?
- Lisa Barone: Finding Answers on Business.com
- Business.com's Study: Social Media best practices: Q&A forums
http://www.seomoz.org/blog
On January 15, 2010, In SEO, Web Design Tips, by Tom Kenny
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When designing a large website, especially one that contains a store, you may be required to design a system for ordering online, or a multi-step process of another sort. Walking users through this process by making it easy and intuitive is key to helping increase conversion rates. Any frustration along the way may cause them to leave and pursue other options. Progress trackers are designed to help users through a multi-step process and it is vital that such trackers be well designed in order to keep users informed about what section they are currently on, what section they have completed, and what tasks remain.
In this article we will look at various uses of progress trackers and see how they’ve been implemented, what they are doing well, and what they are not doing well.
You may not be familiar with the term ‘progress tracker’, also called a ‘progress indicator’ — but chances are good that you have encountered one at one time or another. They are used in online stores when placing an order, signing up to an online product or service, or even when booking a holiday online. Progress trackers guide the user through a number of steps in order to complete a specified process.
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When designing a large website, especially one that contains a store, you may be required to design a system for ordering online, or a multi-step process of another sort. Walking users through this process by making it easy and intuitive is key to helping increase conversion rates. Any frustration along the way may cause them to leave and pursue other options. Progress trackers are designed to help users through a multi-step process and it is vital that such trackers be well designed in order to keep users informed about what section they are currently on, what section they have completed, and what tasks remain.
In this article we will look at various uses of progress trackers and see how they’ve been implemented, what they are doing well, and what they are not doing well.
[Offtopic: By the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has a mobile version? Try it out if you have an iPhone, Blackberry or another capable device.]
What are Progress Trackers?
You may not be familiar with the term ‘progress tracker’, also called a ‘progress indicator’ — but chances are good that you have encountered one at one time or another. They are used in online stores when placing an order, signing up to an online product or service, or even when booking a holiday online. Progress trackers guide the user through a number of steps in order to complete a specified process.
An example of a progress tracker at Game
The Difference Between Progress Trackers and Breadcrumbs
As we have detailed previously in Breadcrumbs In Web Design: Examples And Best Practices, breadcrumbs are a way of enhancing navigation by revealing a user’s current location. Initially, breadcrumbs and progress trackers may seem very similar and in many ways they are, however, there are significant differences.
Breadcrumbs show you only where you have been (or what sections are above the current section in the application’s hierarchy), whereas progress trackers indicate a set path that a user follows to complete a specific task. Progress trackers show you not only where you are currently located, but also what steps you have previously taken, and what steps you are about to take.
Example of breadcrumbs at Coolspotters
Progress trackers are best used when there is a specific goal to achieve. They are synonymous with conversion and are used as a way of improving usability — which is key when optimizing conversion rates. Conversion is all about selling online so you will see a progress tracker in some form in almost every online store.
Now that we’ve reviewed what a progress tracker is, let’s look at situations that would require or even benefit from the implementation of a well-designed progress tracker.
Uses of Progress Trackers
As mentioned previously, progress trackers can be used in a variety of contexts. The following three are the most common.
1. Online Ordering
By far the most common application of progress trackers is in conjunction with online purchasing, since this usually involves multiple steps.
The progress tracker used by HMV.
The progress tracker used at Etsy.
2. Feature Tour Guides
Progress trackers are also used to guide users through the features of online products and services, as demonstrated in the following examples:
Progress tracker as used by Search Inside Video.
Flickr’s tour page provides a look at the features of their service.
3. Multi-Step Forms
If a form requires a lot of user input, it may be best to split the form into multiple steps.
Livestream’s progress tracker design.
The progress tracker used on Buffalo’s Project Planner form
Best Practices in Progress Tracker Design
Indicating a Logical Progression
Most progress trackers are designed to display the steps from left to right. In most lands, people read from left to right, so it makes sense that progress trackers follow that pattern. That isn’t enough though — there has to be something that informs the user that they are performing a multi-step process.
Blockbuster have included both arrows and numbers in their progress tracker, thus clearly communicating a logical progression.
Keeping the User Informed of their Location
One key aspect of good progress tracker design is keeping the user informed of where the user is in the process. This complements the logical progression because the user will know where they are in relation to where they have been, and what sections are to follow.
Mr and Mrs Smith indicates the user’s current location by clearly highlighting the current step and turning the arrow downwards.
Positioning
Since progress trackers are a form of navigation, it is best to place them below the primary and secondary navigation (such as breadcrumbs) and above the content that the progress tracker relates to. Also, while a progress tracker can act as a page title, it is best to place the title of the current section underneath the progress tracker, to reinforce the current location.
Gamestation places their progress tracker clearly below the primary and secondary navigation.
Implementations of Progress Trackers
Plain Text
Below is an example of a plain text progress tracker on Media Temple’s website. One benefit of a plain text progress tracker is that it can be edited easily.
Sprite-Based
Sovereign uses the popular CSS sprites technique to build their progress tracker and reduce HTTP requests going through the online booking process.
Design Mistakes to Avoid
Indistinguishable from Breadcrumbs
TypePad’s Design Assistant can be very easily confused with a breadcrumb navigation system.
Not Enough Information
easyJet’s old progress tracker on their booking path was poorly executed. Although it gave you the total number of steps in the process, it didn’t indicate which steps you’ve completed or which were remaining.
Their new progress tracker, launched within the last few weeks, is a big improvement, indicating current location, past steps, and steps to come. They now also make good use of the page title which has descriptive wording to complement the current progress tracker label.
No Sense of Progression
daniblack incorrectly uses a tab system for their progress tracker. The problem with this is that tabs don’t offer any visual representation of progress. The addition of numbers or arrows would give at least some sort of indication of progression in this example.
Progress Tracker Showcase
Now that we know what a progress tracker is, how it is used, and the best approach to its design, let’s look at a number of well-designed progress trackers currently in use.
Battle.net uses the method of incrementally filling a bar as you progress through the steps in their sign-up form.
Amazon has a shopping trolley travelling across their progress tracker, leaving an orange line marking where it has been.
John Lewis uses an image of a truck travelling along their progress tracker.
Comet ticks off sections that have already been completed.
Boots‘ Progress tracker spans the width of the page.
Web MD uses a progress bar and percentage values as a way of tracking progress on their health check questionnaires.
Golfsmith uses a combination of numbers and a progress bar with an arrow.
lookfantastic uses icons to visually enhance their progress tracker.
Related posts
You may be interested in the following related posts:
- Showcase Of Modern Navigation Design Trends
- Designing “Coming Soon” Pages
- Call to Action Buttons: Examples and Best Practices
- Search Results Design: Best Practices and Design Patterns
© Tom Kenny for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 45 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: progress, showcases
http://www.smashingmagazine.com
On January 14, 2010, In SEO, by great scott
Posted by great scott!
This week Will Critchlow is back to help Rand talk about best practices for keeping your clients (and yourself) happy during consulting contracts. It’s important to start early (setting expectations, contracting, agreeing on KPIs), maintain good communication, and follow through on deliverables. Happy clients mean more business, improved reputation, higher demand and more success for you. Check out this Whiteboard Friday to get some ideas about where you might be able to improve your process and leave your clients so happy they’ll sing your praises to everyone they know.
PS – As mentioned in the video here are links to some of Sarah’s great posts pertaining to SEO contracts:
- Does Your SEO Consulting Contract Have a Clause Limiting Your Liability?
- Manage Risk By Including an Indemnification Clause in Your SEO Consulting Contracts
- Why You Should Give Yourself the "Opportunity to Cure" in Your SEO Consulting Contracts
- Manage Client Expectations And Reduce Your Risk By Including A Warranty Disclaimer In Your Client Contracts
Posted by great scott!
This week Will Critchlow is back to help Rand talk about best practices for keeping your clients (and yourself) happy during consulting contracts. It's important to start early (setting expectations, contracting, agreeing on KPIs), maintain good communication, and follow through on deliverables. Happy clients mean more business, improved reputation, higher demand and more success for you. Check out this Whiteboard Friday to get some ideas about where you might be able to improve your process and leave your clients so happy they'll sing your praises to everyone they know.PS - As mentioned in the video here are links to some of Sarah's great posts pertaining to SEO contracts:
- Does Your SEO Consulting Contract Have a Clause Limiting Your Liability?
- Manage Risk By Including an Indemnification Clause in Your SEO Consulting Contracts
- Why You Should Give Yourself the "Opportunity to Cure" in Your SEO Consulting Contracts
- Manage Client Expectations And Reduce Your Risk By Including A Warranty Disclaimer In Your Client Contracts
http://www.seomoz.org/blog
On January 13, 2010, In SEO, by Danny Dover
Posted by Danny Dover
I believe that the hardest part of SEO is simply keeping up with the trends. Our industry moves extremely fast and as a result, my co-workers and I have spent countless hours searching through old blog posts, articles and e-mail threads while trying to find small tidbits of information. Each of us have separate lists of our favorite resources and up until now, we haven’t had a convenient way to aggregate these.
Luckily, we are finally fed up enough to try to do something about this problem.
Together, we are going to spend the next month putting together an SEO Knowledge Center that will contain information on the best practices and important information for various SEO elements. After they are done, I am making it my responsibility to keep these pages up to date for the duration of my employment at SEOmoz. (Read: Job Security ;-p)
While my co-workers and I write these, we would like to offer up all of our drafts for peer review. Below you will find the first three SEO elements that we are tackling. We are big fans of the wisdom of the crowds and would love to hear all of your feedback.
Title Tag
URL
External Link
Please note: These pages are not yet finalized! That is why we are submitting them for review
Please feel free to leave us feedback, including your favorite resources and tools for these specific SEO elements, in the comments below or with me on Twitter.
Mini Update: Thank you to everyone who has offered suggestions so far I just wanted to clarify the editing process for these pages. The first version of the SEO Knowledge Center will only be updatable by people who work at SEOmoz. I don’t think that is sufficient long term, so I would love to hear ideas on how to add a better feedback system. My first thought was wiki style, but given the nature of these pages, I don’t think this is the best solution. What do all of you think?
Posted by Danny Dover
I believe that the hardest part of SEO is simply keeping up with the trends. Our industry moves extremely fast and as a result, my co-workers and I have spent countless hours searching through old blog posts, articles and e-mail threads while trying to find small tidbits of information. Each of us have separate lists of our favorite resources and up until now, we haven't had a convenient way to aggregate these.
Luckily, we are finally fed up enough to try to do something about this problem.
Together, we are going to spend the next month putting together an SEO Knowledge Center that will contain information on the best practices and important information for various SEO elements. After they are done, I am making it my responsibility to keep these pages up to date for the duration of my employment at SEOmoz. (Read: Job Security ;-p)
While my co-workers and I write these, we would like to offer up all of our drafts for peer review. Below you will find the first three SEO elements that we are tackling. We are big fans of the wisdom of the crowds and would love to hear all of your feedback.
Title Tag
URL
External Link
Please note: These pages are not yet finalized! That is why we are submitting them for review :-) Please feel free to leave us feedback, including your favorite resources and tools for these specific SEO elements, in the comments below or with me on Twitter.
Mini Update: Thank you to everyone who has offered suggestions so far :-) I just wanted to clarify the editing process for these pages. The first version of the SEO Knowledge Center will only be updatable by people who work at SEOmoz. I don't think that is sufficient long term, so I would love to hear ideas on how to add a better feedback system. My first thought was wiki style, but given the nature of these pages, I don't think this is the best solution. What do all of you think?
http://www.seomoz.org/blog
On December 20, 2009, In SEO, by RobOusbey
Posted by RobOusbey
Amongst the add-ons I add to any new install of Firefox is the Web Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederick. (Find the install links at the bottom of this post.)
Obviously, this add-on is chock-full of features that are useful for web developers, but it really does make diagnosing various SEO issues much easier. This list gives the top seven tasks that I find easier when the toolbar is installed.
Click on any of the small images in this post to see them in full size.
1. Browse Like a Robot
By turning off JavaScript and Cookies, you can browse the web as it’s seen by ‘bots (which in most cases can’t accept cookies or execute JavaScript.) This basic change can help you recognise site architecture issues pretty quickly, such as when a main navigation bar is displayed using JavaScript or when visitors who can’t accept cookies always get redirected to the front page. (Yes, I’ve seen both of these in the wild.)
2. See What the Spiders See
For a more hardcore spider-emulation experience, use the Toolbar to turn off styles and images. The sudden appearance of previously cloaked text or seeing that the ‘main heading’ is actually an H4 item and sat 75% of the way through the content might suggest why a particular page is having issues.
This is how the site looked before Timmy joined
Although different spiders treat meta redirects in different ways, it can often be easier to diagnose some on-site issues if you disable them altogether via ‘Disable → Meta Redirects‘. To see what the site serves up to different user agents (such as mobile devices, GoogleBot, etc) you’ll want to get the author’s other successful add-on, the user-agent switcher.
3. See the Structure
Talking of page structure, you can press ‘Information → View Document Outline‘ to see the structure of a page, or simply ‘Outline → Outline Headings‘ to see the hierarchy of headings within the page.
4. Validation and Best Practices
The toolbar gives quick access to code validation tools (such as the HTML, CSS and RSS validation from WC3.) There are also options to highlight links without title attributes, or images with missing (or blank) alt attributes.
5. A Tip for Search Marketers Who do CRO as Well
Those of us with our massive screens (by the way, did you see this guy?) might not always appreciate how people view our pages. However, a quick click on the ‘resize’ button lets you see the site through the viewport of an older monitor or a net book.
I should probably let LoveFilm know that 20% of people can’t see their big green ‘Start a free trial’ button.
6. Making Web Page Screen Captures Easier
A change we’ve tried to make at Distilled recently is to include more illustrative images in our client reports. A fiddly task that comes up from time to time is creating a screen shot of a web page, but without it being obvious which links you’re already clicked on. A quick click on ‘Miscellaneous → Visited Links → Mark All Links Unvisited‘ removes the ‘visited’ styles from any links on the page.
7. Reputation Management Tip: Anonymity Made Easy
A year ago, I posted about how to hide your referrer string when browsing, as a handy way to prevent people seeing that you’re probing their site. It’s much easier to do with the Web Developer Toolbar, by simply clicking ‘Disable → Disable Referrers‘
You can read more about the Web Developer Tool Add-On, or if you’re running Firefox, simply install it now.
If you’re already a convert to this add-on, do let us know in the comments of any other features you use regularly.
Posted by RobOusbey
Amongst the add-ons I add to any new install of Firefox is the Web Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederick. (Find the install links at the bottom of this post.)Obviously, this add-on is chock-full of features that are useful for web developers, but it really does make diagnosing various SEO issues much easier. This list gives the top seven tasks that I find easier when the toolbar is installed.
Click on any of the small images in this post to see them in full size.
1. Browse Like a Robot
By turning off JavaScript and Cookies, you can browse the web as it's seen by 'bots (which in most cases can't accept cookies or execute JavaScript.) This basic change can help you recognise site architecture issues pretty quickly, such as when a main navigation bar is displayed using JavaScript or when visitors who can't accept cookies always get redirected to the front page. (Yes, I've seen both of these in the wild.)2. See What the Spiders See
For a more hardcore spider-emulation experience, use the Toolbar to turn off styles and images. The sudden appearance of previously cloaked text or seeing that the 'main heading' is actually an H4 item and sat 75% of the way through the content might suggest why a particular page is having issues.This is how the site looked before Timmy joined
Although different spiders treat meta redirects in different ways, it can often be easier to diagnose some on-site issues if you disable them altogether via 'Disable → Meta Redirects'. To see what the site serves up to different user agents (such as mobile devices, GoogleBot, etc) you'll want to get the author's other successful add-on, the user-agent switcher.
3. See the Structure
Talking of page structure, you can press 'Information → View Document Outline' to see the structure of a page, or simply 'Outline → Outline Headings' to see the hierarchy of headings within the page.4. Validation and Best Practices
The toolbar gives quick access to code validation tools (such as the HTML, CSS and RSS validation from WC3.) There are also options to highlight links without title attributes, or images with missing (or blank) alt attributes.5. A Tip for Search Marketers Who do CRO as Well
Those of us with our massive screens (by the way, did you see this guy?) might not always appreciate how people view our pages. However, a quick click on the 'resize' button lets you see the site through the viewport of an older monitor or a net book.I should probably let LoveFilm know that 20% of people can't see their big green 'Start a free trial' button.
6. Making Web Page Screen Captures Easier
A change we've tried to make at Distilled recently is to include more illustrative images in our client reports. A fiddly task that comes up from time to time is creating a screen shot of a web page, but without it being obvious which links you're already clicked on. A quick click on 'Miscellaneous → Visited Links → Mark All Links Unvisited' removes the 'visited' styles from any links on the page.7. Reputation Management Tip: Anonymity Made Easy
A year ago, I posted about how to hide your referrer string when browsing, as a handy way to prevent people seeing that you're probing their site. It's much easier to do with the Web Developer Toolbar, by simply clicking 'Disable → Disable Referrers'You can read more about the Web Developer Tool Add-On, or if you're running Firefox, simply install it now.
If you're already a convert to this add-on, do let us know in the comments of any other features you use regularly.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog