SEO blogs have been preaching the same old spiel again and again: have good content on your site. It's no secret, yet for many businesses, it seems hard to implement. I thought I'd change the argument up a bit and put it in perspective the only way I know how: by using movies as an analogy. Good content is like a Pixar film. Pixar films fall into the "You Have to be a Jerk to Not ...
Following up yesterday's article, How to Convince a Client their Site Doesn't Need Music, I decided to write a similar one about splash pages. Splash pages are the pages that the user sees before they actually get to a website; typically, they're flash and offer some kind of introductory animation. The user clicks "Skip Intro&qu...
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you may have heard about Ruby on Rails. It's the latest greatest web development platform that has become immensely popula...
Recently I've started working with Rand on doing site analyses for our clients. He's taken me under his wing by walking me through a typical site analysis and telling me what to look for. Obviously, since Rand is the resident expert, it is easy for him to know what to look for and what to recommend to the client.Unfortunately, up until I started working for SEOmoz, I was accustomed to ...
Complete courses to master SEO basics
Learn Keyword Research like the pros
Win rankings and traffic from your competition
A friend of mine runs a content-based website monetized largely through page views. He recently shared a tactic with me that's been immensely successful in improving the number of page views per visit. His terminology - "link density." Link density refers specifically to the placement and number of links on a content page. For example, this page on ...
When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I am a "Web Developer". It's more accurate than "Web Designer" and much less narcissistic than "Webmaster." Even still, people have a hard time grasping what I do every day at my job. I'm sure if you asked 3 very important people in my life -- my girlfriend, mother, and best friend -- what I did at work every day...
I've always subscribed to the "content, content, content" philosophy of developing successful web sites. In my former life as a freelance web developer, I've far too often seen clients get neck deep in logo and font choices -- subsequently ignoring the main reason they got on the web in the first place: content. Unless you have useful, reliable and frequently updated content,...
When dealing with client recommendations for design, usability, and accessibility, we always stress the importance of a custom 404 page. Why? Because I think everyone gets a little sick of seeing standard pages that do little to direct users toward a useful solution. These boring, default 404s are not friendly, they're hostile. And without the proper presentation they risk scaring away less savvy ...
Reading through the the thread - Persuasion Architecture and the Art of Agreement for Website Success - is inspiring. Although the discussion starts with a short review (by Kim) of the Eisenberg brothers' new book, it evolves into a stirring debate and exploration of how websites can influence user actions. From the t...
I've been working on a site audit for the past week or so and have come to an exhaustively thorough section regarding usability and accessibility. While I'm not denying that this sort of information is extremely valuable when optimizing a website, my question to you guys is how much information is too much? How much information about making a site disabled user-friendly should a client receive? Ho...
Bare Naked App kindly pointed out that Skype's home page is one of the most compelling, well written homepages ever created. They properly target their audience, make the site fun, easy-to-learn and hard to resist. And, to top it off, the video walkthrough of Skype's service is pr...
I had to shout out loud on this one, though ZDNET also wrote a nice article about it. Believe it or not, IE's latest update (went through roughly 10 days ago) has created havoc on the web, for both web designers and end-users. As I type, anyone using Internet Explorer now has to "activate" any flash or active-x element related to their ...
Many, many folks who contact us are seeking re-development of their website. When Matt doesn't have the time to put together one of his gorgeous designs for them, it's been very tough for me to point people in the right direction to hire a talented designer who can use CSS effectively and create a standards-compliant site (I don't recommend it as much for t...
If you're thinking about putting together a pure CSS driven site and need inspiration, I've compiled a short list of my favorite CSS showcases. I use these sites not only to inspire visual ideas, but also to learn more creative and practical ways to use CSS. I often find myself digging through source code of sites in the showcases discovering good (and bad) CSS ...