Doing a search online you want quality results, not webpages full of duplicate content and advertisements. Google wants quality results also and takes action to improve them via updates. In fact, the recent Panda Update continues to try to improve search results by getting rid of low quality, thin content. It is important to find pages that contain thin content to prevent damaging the health of your website overall.
From a human perspective, thin content is a webpage that doesn’t effectively answer a question or get someone to take action. From a search engine perspective, thin content is duplicate content, where a high percentage of content is the same as other content on the site (read more on this from the SEO Moz blog) or other websites out on the internet.
Image via Wikipedia, Have Solid Content to Be Found
Thin content gives consistent signals to search engines that the content on the website is poor quality. Some usual indicators for this include low time on a webpage combined with a high bounce rate. There are some pages where this combination is ok. This includes pages similar to the contact page where visitors come for a specific purpose, get what they need (such as a phone number or address) and then leave. Most other pages are not like the contact page so a low time on a page and high bounce rate are indicators that a visitor didn’t find what they wanted.
There is no shortage of content available on the topic of blogging, but many who are interested in the subject still have misconceptions about making money through a blog. This is in part due to the fact that so many people are publishing content about blogging and a lot of those people have different views and opinions. Also, it’s often difficult to determine how much credibility should be given to the source.
In this article I’d like to present 8 myths that are commonly associated with blogging. If you have blogging experience of your own you’ve probably already disproved several of these myths. If you don’t have experience blogging, maybe this information will be helpful to see things in a different light.
Many people see articles or hear stories of others making money through blogging and they assume that it’s easy to do. They assume that within a matter of a few months they should be able to earn a significant income and then it is just smooth sailing from there. The vast majority of people who have believed this myth and have decided to start their own blog as a result have quickly realized that it is in fact just a myth.
The truth is that making money from a blog involves a lot of work, just like having any other type of job or running another type of business. There are plenty of success stories out there, and some of the bloggers who have managed to do very well with their blogs are able to work fewer hours than they would with another type of job. However, for every person like this there are hundreds who have tried and given up without success.
In this post I wanted to turn my attention to an oft-misunderstood basic SEO practice—and one that I get a lot of questions about: the title tag.
The title tag is one of if not THE most important piece of text information that search engines look at as a signal of relevance on a web page. These innocuous words and phrases appear at the top of your browser. They also appear in search results and sometimes as link anchor text, from external links.
Title tag at top of browser
By HTML and XHTML law, a title tag is required on every web page document. Title tags are located in the source code within the Head section. For anyone not familiar with code, you don’t necessarily need to know that but it helps if you want to ask the right questions. It looks something like this:
In the last few weeks, we’ve had the privilege at Union Street Media of launching several new websites.
HKS Associates Inc. is located in New Hampshire’s beautiful Monadnock region. As an office that wears many hats in the industry, they needed a website company that specifically understood real estate. HKS was looking for a vendor who would create a website that represented their markets lifestyle and also took advantage of real estate tools available to help home-buyers learn more about their listed properties. The website needed to be easy to updated without the need for a developer or HTML knowledge. HKS wanted a company who would help them to understand the tech jargon and work with them to implement these new technologies and help grow their business.
A product’s Unique Selling Proposition (also known as Unique Selling Point or USP) is what makes it different from competing products, and more importantly, what leads customers to buy it.
For those in marketing, USPs are extremely important because in order to sell more of a product you need to know what will motivate customers to buy your product instead of the competition’s product, and then you need to effectively communicate that USP.
A large percentage of freelance designers struggle to land as much business as they would like. If this is the case for you, have you taken time to think about what makes you unique in comparison to other designers out there? Why will clients want to hire you instead of another designer? It’s critical that you identify what it is that separates you from other designers, and you must be able to communicate that or make it apparent to potential clients.
Knowing your Unique Selling Proposition is an important step for freelance designers for a few reasons.
Every now and again, we always need to be proactive with our skill set and check we are up to speed with best practices. From a 30,000 feet level, we try to make sure everyone is on the same page without reinventing the wheel. At the end of the day, if we can think outside of the box, throw a few things at the wall and see what sticks, it’s a win-win.
Well, it was all cliche. But did any of it make sense?
Google's Cliche Whiteboard
Cliches are fascinating, since there very existence is born out of an axiom or self-evident truth. In SEO, I find myself repeating the same terms, often out of habit, but also because from an understanding perspective they do provide structure.
Last week I participated in a panel discussion about SEO hosted by AIGA Vermont, the VT chapter of the national organization for design professionals. Together with my counterparts at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Gardener’s Supply, Tom Funk and Joe McHugh, we examined the topic “Designing with SEO in Mind,” sharing information about how to design a website that will look fantastic, attract search engines, and generate lots of targeted traffic to your website.
Many of the take-aways we shared with our audience of designers were, in fact, great advice for anyone with a website. It’s important to build a site well from the start, but it’s equally important to put careful thought into the way you maintain and improve your website throughout its lifetime. Below are some points we touched on at the AIGA Vermont event that will contribute to a great experience for both your website visitors and the search engines.
This is key. Your website needs to inspire trust, and an attractive, professional-looking design is important to that end. However, search engines are much better equipped to digest easily readable text than beautiful pictures.
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The most significant challenge that bloggers face is attracting visitors. For new bloggers nothing can be more frustrating than trying to figure out how to get people to see the content that you’ve spent time preparing.
Getting visitors to your blog is possible and quite realistic if you’re willing to put in some effort to get the exposure that you need. If you’re spending hours on blog posts and you feel like that work is being wasted because not enough people are seeing the posts, we’ll take a look at some things that you can do to get the right exposure.
Here are some things that you can do to get your blog posts in front of more people and to get more impact from each post.
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In this post we are featuring some beautiful and creative texture web designs. Enjoy!! If you like these designs you might also want to check out a couple of our previous posts on DesignM.ag.
41 Textured Websites for Design Inspiration
Image by Intersection Consulting
Recent events in politics testify to the blurring of lines between the off-line and online world.
Despite the rapid adoption of new modes of communication, the old rules of etiquette still apply. I would argue it’s as important as ever, with even more social pitfalls coupled with actual less human interaction as a ballast.
Like me, most of you reading bounce between personal and business social media , email accounts, blog comments and website feedback. In addition, we have off-line communications to have to negotiate on top of that. That’s a lot of communication with their own nuances to get right and one size does not fit all.
Search Engine Optimization
