75 Website Promotion & Management tips, tutorials, techniques & resources
Tips for Attracting Local Clients
"Most web designers work with clients from all over the country or even all around the world. While it certainly allows the designer to expand his or her marketplace, there are sometimes competitive advantages that exist when targeting work from local clients. Because local marketing is sometimes overlooked, I wanted to put together this list of suggestions for doing more work in your own backyard."
The Benefits of Mixing Branding and Usability in a Design
"Including branding in the whole website design could also improve usability, making a particular website a more comfortable place to surf through. Many companies are taking advantage of this, Apple, for example, is not only successful because of a beautiful design but they also combine easiness and first class interaction design to the whole branding and marketing strategy on the web."
Social Media Starter Moves for Freelancers
"With our attention forever dividing, how can you rise above the fray and be not only seen but selected for the opportunities you seek? Here are some thoughts on the matter."
Search Engine Traffic & New Blogs
"I’ve learned a number of things about search engine traffic and blogging through this experience that I believe can be encouraging to new bloggers that are struggling to draw traffic from search engines."
A Good Meta Description is Hard to Find
"Everyone knows that the
tag is the most important element on a web page for SEO, right? But what of the meta description, which provides the text summary for each result (the snippet)? It's far more important than many web designers seem to think." 30 Ways to Increase Website Traffic
Why Does Your Search Traffic Suck? The 7 Most Likely Reasons
"I'm sure there's another 20 one could add to this list, but I'm hoping it will at least provide a good starting roadmap for those who are having no success whatsoever with their SEO efforts."
5 useful url rewriting examples using .htaccess
"f you are looking for the examples of URL rewriting then this post might be useful for you. In this post, I’ve given five useful examples of URL rewriting using .htacess."
Make Sure Your Links are Legit (5 Easy Steps)
"Many times we get an opportunity at a link on a site that looks great and we are super-pumped about it because it is in the right spot, on a great looking, relevant website. But don’t get your hopes up yet... there are a few simple steps you can take to make sure that you’re getting all the right juice from the right place."
5 Must Have SEO Plugins for WordPress
"When I first started building sites in WordPress a year ago I was disappointed in the quality of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugins available. During that time I put several plugins to the test, and here are the five I use exclusively to optimize my WordPress sites."
10 Tips For Your First Email Campaign
"Sadly, I’ve seen too many web designers dive into their first email marketing project before doing the proper planning. There are some basic things you need to square away before you send your first email newsletter."
Mashing Up Feeds Using Yahoo Pipes
"Yahoo Pipes may just be in beta, but it's already a great tool for web publishers that wants to add a bit of more flair and life to their websites. It's in no way hard to mash up RSS feeds using Yahoo Pipes, and I'll walk you through the most basic way of using the service in this tutorial."
Why You’ve Got to Dig Digg to Get Dugg
"In this post, I want to talk about the most often overlooked aspect of what is required to write content with strong potential on Digg (and the same principle applies to StumbleUpon, Reddit, or any other social media service you can imagine)."
Secrets of Going Popular Twice on Digg
"What happens if the same URL is submitted to Digg more than once? Will the submissions get buried? Social Alerter's data can help us in answering this question. There is a lot of ground to cover here so buckle up - it's a long post."
A Few RSS Icon Resources
"Looking for a good RSS icon for your site? You could go with the standard one, or use a variant that looks similar, without being so unrecognizable people won’t know it’s an RSS button."
How to Get on Digg
"We’ve been doing some double-oh-seven-type investigating and advanced quantitative analysis for several months now, and have come up with the following never-before-published, Best Three-pronged Approach Ever formula for getting noticed on Digg."
The Effect of Website Typeface Appropriateness on the Perception of a Company’s Ethos
"This study investigated the effect of website typeface appropriateness on the perception of the site’s company. Results indicate that typefaces that are high in appropriateness should be used for websites. Neutral and low appropriate typefaces significantly decreased the perception of the company as judged by professionalism, believability, trust, and intent to act on the site."
The Internet Infopreneur
"StumbleUpon has millions of interested users. They want more information. They are waiting to hear about you. Here are 17 powerful ways you can let them know."
65 Must Read StumbleUpon Articles
"A couple of weeks ago I asked the readers of Newest on the Net to submit their favorite articles about StumbleUpon. I would like to thank all of you who have participated. I think that we have created the ultimate list of StumbleUpon articles."
The Dynamics of the Subscriber Impulse: When Do People Decide To Grab Your RSS Feed?
"Regardless of where and how they become exposed to your website and content, however, I believe that certain reactions will need to get triggered on the visitor’s mind before he arrives to the conclusion that he actually should click on that small RSS icon."
The Blogger's Guide to Search Engine Optimization
"While we wrote a 300+ page book about SEO, only a dozen pages are needed to cover how to do SEO for a blog. Why? As search improves, Google and other search engines collect more data, which allows them to recommend and rank blogs based on how well people trust those blogs."
Relevance and Distribution: Two Essential Factors in Social Media Marketing
"To increases the chances of success, you just need to focus on two main factors: relevance and distribution. Remember them well because these two simple elements will drastically improve the popularity of your bait in a social media channel. Just two points."
Run a StumbleUpon Advertising Campaign For Your Blog
"One of the things that I do from time to time is set myself a small budget for advertising my blog. I do it as a little bit of a challenge - to see what ad systems work best and more importantly to see what I can learn about branding and promotion. The bonus is that it also drives some new visitors to your blog."
Under the Microscope: Six Strategies for Building Viral Content
"This week at Skelliewag has focused on viral content — content that, by its nature, is designed to be shared via social media, word of mouth and links. It’s content that others want to talk about, and will turn readers into promoters of your content."
37 Viral Post Ideas You Can Use Today
"Viral articles are word of mouth worthy, and will grow your site more so than any other kind of content. I want to focus on 37 concrete ideas for viral posts that should be readily applicable to your niche. This post could be a useful port of call the next time you run out of inspiration, or if you want to try something different with your content."
A Beginner’s Guide to Getting More StumbleUpon Traffic
"To answer the most frequent questions I receive, and to give more detailed information about the process that helped even a beginner at StumbleUpon like myself get such amazing and fast results, I decided to write this in-depth guide to getting more StumbleUpon traffic."
The Blogger’s Library: 28 Free eBooks and Excerpts for Bloggers
"Looking for some reading material? These eBooks cover topics ranging from content creation, promotion, social media, general blogging, business blogging, making money blogging to web writing/copywriting, SEO and design."
Natural SEO : Reciprocal Linking and Interlinking
"I would say, reciprocal links are natural. In today’s world of active online communication and idea sharing, it’s even inevitable. That’s the main reason (as I see it), they can’t be absolutely discounted."
The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren't
"Internet marketing is about lots of little things, not one big one. This list is half-list, half-procedure. If you go down these items in order it might give you a decent internet marketing plan for the next few months."
Scylla & Charybdis
"When advertising requirements are gathered and understood early on in a product life cycle, you will create a powerful experience for your audience and lucrative one for your advertisers."
RSS: Best Design Practices And Icons
"In this article we give an overview of what RSS is and present best design and usability-practices for design and placement of RSS-buttons on a web site. We also showcase dozens of free RSS-icons and provide you with references to related tutorials and how-tos."
Complete List of Best SEO-Tools
"What are the best ways to boost your position in search engines? What keywords should you use on your web-pages? And which tools should you use to improve the quality of backlinks, link popularity and Google Pagerank? We deliver answers. Here is the list of the most useful SEO-tools you might be willing to use, developing and optimizing your next web-site."
Corporate Identity Manuals & Guides
"The protection of visual identity is probably one of the most important issues when it comes to developing concepts in which corporate identity (CI) is used. Both in web design and in print - corporate identity manuals are supposed to give designers precise guidelines on how logotypes, colors and typography should be used. Basically for one simple reason: to promote the visual identity in the most convenient, consistent and efficient way and make sure no mistakes are done."
Tutorials Round-Up: Ajax, CSS, PHP and More
"You don’t have to re-invent the wheel all the time - you can use existing solutions, modify and improve them and publish them as well - just the way other people did it for you. In this post we’ve covered over 200 Ajax, CSS, Flash, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, RSS, XML as well as ASP, C++, Perl, Python and Java tutorials."
Google PageRank: What Do We Know About It?
"Over the last weeks we’ve done an extensive research and selected dozens of facts and suggestions about PageRank, which seem to be true in practice. Besides, we’ve collected academic papers related to the issue - such as scientific proposals for better search results (such as Topic-Sensitive PageRank); you’ll also find references to mathematical background of PageRank as well as 16 useful PageRank tools you can use to analyze and track the ranking of your web-projects."
Golden Rules of Linkbaiting
"Let’s take a look at non-trivial and most effective rules, principles, techniques, strategies, methods, examples and resources related to link baiting. Among other things this overview will cover the aspect of effective copy writing as well. Golden rules of linkbaiting - in a comprehensive overview."
Google AdSense: Facts, FAQs and Tools
"We’ve spent several hours, trying to find out, what might increase your Google AdSense income and which tools you can use to observe and track your revenues. We’ve selected the key-points of successful stories and useful tips as well as Google AdSense sites and services you can use on a daily basis. Let’s take a look."
Dollars & Sense of Web Analytics
"As Web developers, designers and marketers, we are quick to make recommendations to improve Web sites. Yes, we can look at anecdotal evidence and say, “I did this for another client, and boy did the site take off.” What’s missing is concrete evidence that substantiates the claim and excludes other influences. This is where Web analytics comes into play."
RDF For The Rest Of Us
"You have a website full of information, and you want to make it easier for people to reuse it - but what format should you publish it in? This is where RDF comes in."
Niche Marketing and Link Building Resources
"The best things about niche link building is that it is (1) highly effective, (2) looks natural, and (3) lets you find targeted audience and like-minded people who will then cite you and link back to your site."
6 Reasons Why Your Linkbait Failed
"Linkbait is basically a piece of content placed on a web page that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible. Many linkbaits are also designed to go viral or go be popular on social media sites."
20 Resources For Google Analytics
"Google Analytics has quickly become one of the most popular analytics software available, additionally there are numerous resources available which deal with configuration, implementation, analysis, and reporting. Below I have compiled some of the most useful resources for Google Analytics related strategies."
Social Bookmarking Icons Collection
"Attractive social bookmarking icons are a factor in website visitors clicking on them and help everyone to share, bookmark & promote your content. WebResourcesDepot have collected these beautiful social bookmarking icon sets."
Freelance Bloggers: 12 Tips to Promote Your Work With Social Media
"Social media provides an excellent opportunity for freelance bloggers to promote their writing and draw traffic and exposure. If you can outperform other freelance bloggers by delivering some extra traffic with social media, your services will be more complete and more effective."
Maintaining your Personal Brand Online
"Maintaining a personal brand using your own name or alias can actually be easier than maintaining a corporate brand, especially when it comes to social networks or blog comments. Using a company name within blog comments or setting up Facebook groups for a company often has that "spammy" feel to it."
Redirecting with .htaccess
"In this tutorial I’ll explain the benefits of using .htaccess to redirect, instead of PHP or Javascript and I’ll show some examples about how to use .htaccess redirects."
How to make a custom 404 page
"You can achieve a lot of things with a .htaccess-file. You can make your own custom 404-error pages, redirect pages, rewrite pages, block IP-adresses and more. In this first .htaccess tutorial, I will explain the custom error pages."
List of Google Analytics Alternatives
"The list below is categorized by the tracking Code. Granted that some of these tools don’t work exactly like Google Analytics or have the same features, they are still good alternatives to Google Analytics."
The Principles of Beautiful HTML Email
"As web designers, we're used to designing for the particular constraints and capabilities of web browsers, and there's a ton of great advice out there to help. HTML emails are a different story, though -- they've often been the black sheep of the web design world, and have either been ignored or actively repelled."
Study: 6% of People Online Contribute 50% of Display Ad Clicks
"Those people who click heavily have a number of other characteristics of note. "Heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000," the study said, and they "are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.""
Preparing Your Website for Social Media Traffic: Don’t Be Caught Unprepared
"In order to benefit from the visitors that are sent from social media websites, you’ll need to be prepared. Unfortunately, reaching the front page of a popular social media site doesn’t mean that you will automatically benefit from the traffic. If you’re not prepared, the traffic will come and go and you’ll be left will little to show for your “success.”"
Get More Traffic: 18 Social Media Sites for Web Designers
"Yes, it's great to get your article on the front page of Digg's design section — you get a huge traffic spike; hopefully your site stays up; you get a bunch of snarky comments — but it's not exactly easy to do. Fortunately, there are alternatives. Here are 18 web design-related social media sites that are easier to rank well on and will keep sending quality traffic your way."
Building a Website for Analytics
"Implementing a web analytics solution is a mission-critical activity for any business serious about succeeding online. Without a comprehensive ability to analyze your site’s traffic, you’ll be unable to determine the effectiveness of your website, online marketing campaigns, and overall online business objectives."
Mind your phraseology!
"Controlled vocabulary is aimed at getting people to what they are seeking. No matter what crazy thing they type in the search box. Let's see it in action."
Three Ways to Improve External Search Engine Usability
"One of the most important details that server logs show is which search engines visitors use to get to the site, and which search terms visitors enter. Checking this information is an extremely useful, fascinating, and almost voyeuristic endeavor that has become a hobby in and of itself."
Typography and Web Advertising: Making Every Opportunity Count
"First, web ads must have content that matters to the target. Nothing is more important than a message that is fundamentally a mirror in which the target will recognize himself. Second, the presentation of the ad must be compelling, as well. Simplicity of presentation is critical, as well as visual difference. Our job is to craft a design that is distinct from its surroundings, and therefore noticeable."
Top 10 SEO Myths V2
"When I posted the article “Top Search Engine Optimization Myths” I was greeted with an incredible amount of criticism, mainly due to some details from the article which just show that it has been written a while ago. Thus I decided to update, “remix” the article and republish my version of the top 10 SEO myths."
Top Search Engine Optimization Myths
9 best practices for email design
"Here are some basic best practices to follow when designing for emails that will ensure your work displays as intended."
Web 2.0 for Designers
"There are six trends that characterize Web 2.0 for designers. In this introductory article we’ll summarize each of those trends and give brief examples."
The Seven Deadly Sins of Email Marketing Management
"As with most technologies, email marketing can be a double-edged sword. As a communication channel, it is easily abused by ill-willed spammers, giving it a dirty name. To avoid being painted with the same brush as the bad guys, there are a few pitfalls to avoid when it comes to maintaining your most precious treasure, your list of opted-in addresses."
11 Ways to Improve Landing Pages
"Attracting traffic is easy. The tricky part is converting it. And that’s the purpose of your landing page."
Offline Marketing
"Lately, big-name online companies have been revisiting offline marketing and diving into the public to increase market share and promote brand awareness."
Search Engine Optimization and Non-HTML Sites
"What’s the good of building a great-looking Web site that no one knows about, or can find? Unfortunately, that is the reality of building Web sites entirely in Flash."
Ambient Findability: Findability Hacks
"Findability defies classification. It flows across the borders between design, engineering, and marketing. Everybody is responsible, and so we run the risk that nobody is accountable."
Graceful E-Mail Obfuscation
"Most e-mail obfuscation techniques I’ve tried tend to be bothersome and time-consuming to implement because they have to be applied to each and every e-mail address that you want to protect. Most require you to use lengthy inline script elements and inline event handlers. They may also invalidate your markup."
High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization
"I have been a search engine optimizer for several years, but only recently have become infatuated with web accessibility. After reading for weeks until my eyes became sore, and painstakingly editing my personal website to comply with most W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, I have come to a startling revelation: high accessibility overlaps heavily with effective white hat SEO."
Win the SPAM Arms Race
"SPAM is evil, moronic, and pervasive, but help is on the way. All it takes is a bit of JavaScript, a smidgen of PHP, and the ten minutes it takes to read this short, sweet tutorial. Reduce dreck mail with Dan Benjamin’s easy-to-implement address encoder."
CSS and Email, Kissing in a Tree
"Despite prevailing wisdom to the contrary, you can safely deploy HTML emails styled with good old-fashioned CSS. If you’re not content to roll over and use font tags in your HTML emails, read on."
Using XHTML/CSS for an Effective SEO Campaign
"Improve your search engine ranking by harnessing the benefits of well-authored XHTML and using CSS to boost your code-to-content ratio."
Plain text email templates and formatting tips
"Not everybody has an email client that can show HTML, and some people just prefer plain text. We got permission from the creators of three really well designed plain text newsletters to share modified forms of their format with you, which should save you some time and make sure that your plain text readers aren't missing out."
Best Practices For Bulletproof E-Mail Delivery
"Have your e-mails already been flagged as spam, although you’ve sent a seemingly legitimate proposal to your client? Have you ever wondered why the efficiency of your newsletter campaigns suddenly dropped down? In both cases you deal with a problem which is harder to get done with than you think it is: bulletproof e-mail delivery."
10 Reasons Web Designers Should Blog
"Maintaining an active blog has been one of the best decisions I ever made in terms of my career. I feel that every designer could greatly benefit from running a blog if they have the desire to share their thoughts with others."
Ensuring your HTML emails look great and get delivered
"In this article, David Greiner explains what you need to do to ensure that your emails not only look great in today’s email clients but also actually make it to where they’re going."
Secret Benefits of Accessibility Part 2: Better Search Ranking
"Think accessibility is just about helping human visitors use your site? Think again! As Trenton reveals, many accessibility techniques can aid search spiders, to help boost your search rankings, too."