Social Media posts

In the last post, we took an in-depth look at Google’s Panda and Penguin updates and how they have impacted on search rankings for businesses. Whilst we established that using black hat SEO techniques is likely to result in a site becoming penalized, we didn’t look at what’s known as gray hat SEO.

Gray hat SEO is, as the name suggests, somewhere in the middle of black hat and white hat. This means that whilst the practices may be perceived by some as being OK, for the most part they still break search engine rules and may result in losing rankings, or worse.

However,...

Twitter finally tossed a bigger hat into the advertising realm on February 20, 2013 by announcing the new Twitter Ad API and the five initial partners who will power this new vehicle. Yes, Twitter already has the capability to run ads — we’ve all been annoyed by ‘Promoted Tweets’ clogging up our timelines since 2010 — but now the experience should be better for marketers and less disruptive for users.

In theory…

But...

In just a couple of years, Pinterest has established itself as the third largest social networking website, behind Facebook and Twitter (and ahead of the likes of Google+).

For a website that is still in relative infancy, such a record is definitely commendable. The question that now arises is, can we harness Pinterest’s popularity to promote our online ventures? In other words, just as we employ Twitter and Facebook to create an online identity of our businesses, will it be possible...

Pinterest have just announced on their blog that they will be experimenting with a new look using a small group of people who sign up as testers.

They are not moving away from the gridded style that so many have become familiar with — and so many have tried...

Not a lot keeps Mark Zuckerberg up at night. When he slips between his — presumably luxury — sheets, rests his head and closes his weary eyes, it’s unlikely his sleep will be disturbed by worries over his cable bill or the cost of servicing his car. As his peers toss and turn, fretting over the problems they’ll have to face the following morning, the 28 year-old billionaire drifts into a deep, satisfied sleep.

At least that’s what you might expect…

However, if you snuck into the Zuckerberg household under the cover of...

Going viral is the holy grail of advertising these days. Mom and Pop run businesses can become global names overnight with the right hashtag, video or promo.

When Metro Trains — the metropolitan rail network for Melbourne, Australia — wanted to raise awareness of the inherent dangers...

Now that the dust has begun to settle on Mozilla’s go-stop-go launch for Firefox 16, the company is able to turn its full attention to the next release; Firefox 17.

Mozilla’s adoption of the rapid release program means that when Firefox 16 was pushed to release status, the production line kicked in and all existing versions took a step up the chain. Firefox 17 is now the current beta version, Firefox 18 has moved from central to aurora...

Not every company or designer has a lot to say. There are people who believe in letting a product or service speak for itself, and there are some folks who just downright don’t talk much. Sometimes this can translate over to the web via sites that aren’t extremely heavy on content. 

The truth is, if a site isn’t a blog or magazine, there may not be a ton to say. With blogs, there are articles for days and pictures and resources and things. Some companies that have been around for ever and have tons of products, but most don’t. Even if you do prepare for lots of content, you should probably scale it down as not to scare an audience.

An issue that pops up a lot with these content-light sites is the way in which it’s presented. Most times, these websites are extremely boring, informational and have very little purpose. That makes it hard to get people interested in your site and learning more about your product or service.

In May this year, our editor suffered an unfortunate accident.

Having booted up his machine and fetched his morning coffee he sat down at his desk to review the overnight comments: we’re lucky enough to have a global readership and it’s always a pleasure to read the opinions of subscribers from Arizona to Azerbaijan.

It was when his gaze settled on the number of pending comments that he fell from his chair, hot coffee sprayed liberally about his person. There were more than 500,000 posts awaiting approval. We pride ourselves on engaging with our audience, but half a million responses...

Some days work sucks. We start out with good intentions, but our energy levels are low and we go from constructively improving our website to surfing the App Store looking for new games to play.

One response to this kind of procrastination is to force yourself to continue working. You plug away at whatever task you said you would work on at the beginning of the day, but achieve little. This can feel like banging your head against a brick wall and prove remarkably unproductive.

A better response to these periods of lethargy and procrastination is to switch gear and focus on less demanding activities. This is more productive than giving up entirely, but less demoralizing than attempting to complete...

Restaurant websites have become infamous for their outdated designs, and frustrating user experience. How many times have you visited a restaurant website and asked, “What was this web designer thinking?”

We see the same (often laughable) problems again and again: background music as you skip past another Flash website “intro”; PDF food menus (or no menu at all); all of the content is image-based instead of text, causing extremely slow load times. The list goes on and on…

As you would in any website design project, you must start by putting yourself in the visitor’s shoes and pinpointing their most pressing needs. For restaurants, we know that visitors want to easily browse the food menu. They want to know the restaurant’s location and it’s operating hours. They want to see a few photos to get a feel for the interior dining...