Posted by Rob Toledo
With Mother’s Day in many countries having just passed (I learned this week that the UK celebrates Mothering Sunday earlier in the year), I thought it would be fun to have a conversation about SEO with one of the most incredible people on the entire planet: my mom. I asked her about what it is she believes our industry does on a daily basis as well as how she thinks search engines function in general.
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The <picture> element is a new addition to HTML5 that’s being championed by the W3C’s Responsive Images Community Group (RICG). It is intended to provide a declarative, markup-based solution to enable responsive images without the need of JavaScript libraries or complicated server-side detection.
The <picture> element supports a number of different types of fallback content, but the current implementation of these fallbacks is problematic. In this article, we’ll explore how the fallbacks work, how they fail and what can be done about it.
<picture> Element And Fallback ContentLike <video> and <audio>, <picture> uses <source> elements to provide a set of images that the browser can choose from. The <source> elements may optionally contain type and media attributes to let the browser know the file type and media type of the source, respectively. Given the information in the attributes, the browser should render the first <source> with a supported file type and matching media query. For example:
<picture>
<source src="landscape.webp" type="image/webp" media="screen and (min-width: 20em) and (orientation: landscape)" />
<source src="landscape.jpg" type="image/jpg" media="screen and (min-width: 20em) and (orientation: landscape)" />
<source src="portrait.webp" type="image/webp" media="screen and (max-width: 20em) and (orientation: portrait)" />
<source src="portrait.jpg" type="image/jpg" media="screen and (max-width: 20em) and (orientation: portrait)" />
</picture>
Posted by KelseyLibert
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.
Let's assume you know the basics: content marketing is one of the best ways to engage with audiences and potential customers online. It is useful for improving search rankings, increasing brand engagement and loyalty, increasing brand visibility, and encouraging social sharing and interaction. If you are a consumer-facing company in this day and age, you simply cannot keep up with the competition if you are not actively building your content marketing skill set.
Easier said than done though, right? You’ve probably dabbled in content marketing before, or maybe even hired a “top agency.” Maybe you have even seen some results; a few links here, a few hundred shares there, but then what? Certainly no fireworks, no massive ranking improvements, and no lead or sale increases. Maybe it wasn’t the panacea you’d hoped it might be. Short on time and money, you probably gave up and reinvested your money into tried and true marketing practices that could at least drive a few conversions. You chalked content marketing up to something too expensive or too difficult to find any real success with.
If any of this resonates with you, you are most definitely not alone. Doing content marketing properly is no easy task, and to beginners it can seem to be next to impossible to create anything that will stand out and get noticed. Add to that the explosion of agencies who claim to be gurus and deliver tragically poor results, and the whole “content marketing” arena can start to feel like a convoluted mess that can’t deliver on its promises.
In recent years we’ve seen a number of developments and advancements, such as responsive design, that have had a major impact on the web design industry. One of the most significant advancements has been improved options for using a greater variety of fonts in your web design projects. Google Web Fonts is one of the leading options, although there are others like Adone’s Typekit.
Google Web Fonts is free, easy to implement, and their are an increasing number of font families available. With currently more than 600 font families to choose from, finding the fight font available from Google Web Fonts can be a challenge. In this post we’re showcasing 25 that are worth a look. Browse through the fonts here and you’ll probably find at least one that could be a good fit for that project that you are currently working on.
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You’ve been putting off actually doing much with Google+. Maybe it’s because you’re already feeling behind in keeping up with all the other social networks. Maybe you think there’s no one there ( 500 million users). Maybe you just don’t know where to start.
I can help.
First question first: should you have a personal page, a professional page, and/or also a business page?
Any freelancer or agency that has been in business for any length of time has experienced the monster that is scope creep.
It goes something like this: work with a new client starts off as well as you would expect, but over time the project seems to get bigger and bigger while your price remains the same. The client either (a) seems to think
that the “extra”work is within the scope of the original agreement, or (b) simply doesn’t realize that he or she is asking for more than was originally agreed. Either way, you’re losing money.
Scope creep is a slippery slope and can be difficult to recover from. Once you accept scope creep from one client you are setting a precedent for the rest, and although you may not have to physically hand over money as a result of scope creep, the effect is essentially the same. More time spent on a project than you anticipated puts you out of pocket.
In this article I want to establish the five step process that I recommend to prevent scope creep from taking over your business while keeping your clients happy. Believe it or not, the two go hand-in-hand.
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Posted by RachaelGerson
When Google Analytics doesn't know where a traffic source comes from, it assumes the traffic is direct and lumps it in with your direct visits. This happens frequenly with social shares, as many of us make the mistake of not tagging our links accordingly.
In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rachael Gerson sheds some light on "dark social" and explains why tagging in Google Analytics improves the accuracy of your referrals. Take credit for the work that you're doing, and tag your links!
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Facebook allows advertisers to create a custom page where clicks from their promotional content will lead to. A landing page ensures that your customer finds a more focused and targeted message. The more focused the advertising, the better the chances of converting leads to sales.
When it comes to landing page designs, there are some stunning examples out there. Those that use the functionalities of a landing page combined with great graphics. We’ve selected 10 stunning one’s for you here:
Starbucks’ Blonde Roast campaign offered coffee drinkers a free cup with their regular coffee. Each cup had an illustrated “Light Note” on it – a simple message to brighten your friend’s day. The campaign was so successful that even after Starbucks ran out of actual cups; it launched a Facebook application where people could send cards to their Facebook friends with the same messages and illustrations. The application is easy on the eyes and the mind. It’s simple and elegant with a big green button to get you started.
Read more ›Posted by OptimizePrime
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.
As tax time nears in the United States, it’s hard not to wonder what exactly all that money is being spent on. Instead of getting into politics, I’d rather describe something our taxes do pay for and how it can help you plan an effective local SEO strategy.
During the daily grind, we can become accustomed to exclusive data available to us only through analytics platforms, Webmaster tools accounts, and other resources requiring a username, a password, and a mother's maiden name. This private-access mentality makes it easy to overlook that which is freely available to everyone – including our own Census. I’m Harris Schachter (you might know me better as OptimizePrime) and I'd like to show you not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you.
During the planning phase of a local strategy, you need to identify which specific localities will serve you best, whether it be local content, social media, community engagement (geographic community & company community), on-site optimization, off-site citation building, link building, or anything else that goes into local SEO.
Read more ›When it comes to trends, we all know that they move in circles. What goes around usually comes around, at least within a couple of decades. Retrospectives at art galleries, musical homages and retro interiors are all mining the past for inspiration, as old as the source material it ‘borrows’ from.
However, where it seems peculiar to cherish all things old-school is in digital design. Considering the relative newness of the media, it’s almost incongruent to use retro elements when digital usually strives to be at the cutting-edge of technology. However the most fashionable and exciting brands are all embracing vintage design and the number of sites that are launching with a retro-vibe is definitely on the up.
Perhaps it’s to add a touch of personality and familiarity to an otherwise cold medium of communication. Or perhaps it’s simply where other trends lead, digital follows. It could be a throwback to simpler eras. Or maybe it’s all down to the iPhone’s Instagram app. whatever the reason, vintage logos, photography; colour palettes and imagery are all big news right now.
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