miercuri, 6 februarie 2013

SEO Blog

SEO Blog


What makes email marketing a professional communications tool?

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 10:25 AM PST

Email marketing remains as one of the most effective marketing tools in use today. The statistics don’t lie: some 90 per cent of those that access the internet maintain at least one email account. That’s a huge proportion of the population. Add to that the ease with which great swathes...
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Understanding The Value Of A Link

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 10:14 AM PST

In the SEO game, most people feel that whoever has the most will win. Up until the end of 2011, this was largely true. Link quantity trumped quality and as a result, many people flooded their sites with low quality, automated, borderline spammy links. After a slew of search engine...
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How to Begin A Your Booming Career in Web Design

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 08:08 AM PST

Imagine living in this day and age without the internet. How would we be surviving? Have you wondered how people got by before the internet? This is because it has clearly revolutionized the world that we are living in today. This is also since it is the wellspring of information...
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4 Key Factors To Consider When Printing Posters For Your Business

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 08:00 AM PST

Advertising is very important for the growth and success of any business. There are many ways to advertise a business or an event, and one way is using posters. Posters have the ability to reach a large audience, which can translate into an increase in customers or sales. If you...
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5 Tips For Organizing A Workshop With Utmost Ease

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 07:58 AM PST

Planning a workshop takes a lot of patience, creativity, and focus. These form a great avenue for coming up with solutions to problems, learning forums, ideas, and establishments or building of relationships. Plan your workshop around goals set and get every participant involved in the process. To make it productive...
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The Importance Of Prototype Development When Designing An Electronic Product

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 04:16 AM PST

Every day, there are many people who come up with great inventions that they can then sell to venture capital companies and even to general consumers. For instance, you could decide to come up with some kind of new electronic device that can then be sold to the people you...
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Why A CEO Should Understand SEO – Knowing Both The Incredible Benefits And The Process Of Successful SEO!

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 03:50 AM PST

A CEO of any company should understand SEO well. In order to gain the largest amount of new customers as possible from SEO, the CEO of a business should have an excellent understanding of how SEO, or “search engine optimization”, works to increase traffic to their websites and revenue for...
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A Complete Guide to URL Structure and its Importance in Search Engine Optimization

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 01:44 AM PST

Even to this day, many companies do not give heed to the URL structure. The URL is comprehensively the most basic and the most important element of SEO. People tend to keep a long URL. It mostly consists of various numbers coupled, that means absolutely nothing to a lay person....
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How to Get Killer Search Engine Rankings with Manual Link Building?

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 01:29 AM PST

If you are looking out for ways to grow your online business, then you need to make sure that your company's website appears on the first page search results of the leading search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, just to name a few, or else all your potential consumers...
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Overview about Pay per Click Campaigns

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 01:09 AM PST

Pay per click campaign is one of the best methods to promote a website. There are many benefits of using this campaign. You can attract customers directly from the campaign. In this campaign, you pay what you get for. It means that the advertisers need to pay for any clicks...
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5 Important Questions for your Potential SEO

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 09:57 PM PST

While Search Engine Optimization is a rapidly growing part of the marketing process, we are finding more and more that it opens up the door for sub-par optimizers attempting to dabble in a very complex part of the online marketing world.  While there are definitely pure scam artists out there,...
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The Future of SEO: Semantic Search

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 09:38 PM PST

The Future of SEO: Semantic Search The old practices of link building with anchor text is coming to an end. Everyday it has less effect in the search results as every SEO Professional can see with their clients. But wait, what will replace this factor?. We can think of social...
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The Best Smartphones To Hit 2013

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 09:28 PM PST

Are you thinking about being a smartphone owner (finally!) in the year 2013? Or maybe you're thinking about ditching your old smartphone for something flashier and more relevant for this year? Here is a ranking of smartphones which techno-savvy individuals are anxiously anticipating for this year: Samsung Galaxy S4 This...
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10 Tools for Creating Infographics and Visualizations

10 Tools for Creating Infographics and Visualizations


10 Tools for Creating Infographics and Visualizations

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 05:52 PM PST

Posted by Miranda.Rensch

Hello there! I'm Miranda Rensch, Product Manager at SEOmoz and lover of visual communication. Communicating visually is one of the most effective ways to explain complex concepts and relationships, and can be a great way to explain your services/products and create valuable site content. I often use diagrams and whiteboarding in order to communicate new features and concepts internally with my team.

I've compiled a list of tools you can use to create visualizations, or simply use to communicate visually with your teammates. Enjoy, and feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments!

Tools for creating simple infographics and data visualizations

1. Piktochart

Piktochart is a web-based tool that has six decent free themes (and a whole bunch more for the paid version) for creating simple visualizations. You can drag and drop different shapes and images, and there is quite a bit of customization available. You can also add simple line, bar, and pie charts using data from CSV (or manual entry). You can export to PNG and JPG in either print or web quality. Note that with the free version, you get a small Piktochart watermark on the bottom of the PNG / JPG downloads. 

 

2. Easel.ly

Easel.ly is another free web-based tool for creating infographics. You cannot create graphs using real data with this tool, but its really good for conceptual visualizations and storytelling. It has a beautiful user interface and the themes you can start with are gorgeous. The themes support many common purposes: map, flow-chart, and comparison/relationship graphing. This tool has the best selection of well-design objects (people, a bunch if icons, landmarks, maps, animals, etc.) and backgrounds that I've seen throughout this list of tools. Additionally, you can upload your own images with the free version. You can download a web-quality version as JPG. This tool is still in beta, but it seemed to work pretty well to me!
 

easelly-infographics


3. Infogr.am

Infogr.am is another free, web-based tool with some really nice themes and a great interface for creating simple infographics. This option also allows you to create charts using real data. There are 31 chart options that offer some really cool displays, like a radial bar graph, scatter charts, bubble graphs, and map charts. You can also add your own images and video. When you're done creating your infographic, you can embed it on a website and publish it to the infogra.am site (I wasn't able to find a way to download). This app is also in beta, but again, seemed pretty solid to me.  

 
infogram-tool
 
  
 

4. Visual.ly

Visual.ly (I know, these visualization tools love their '.ly's!) has some simple free tools worth mentioning, many of which integrate with social networks to analyze Twitter and Facebook data. You can create fun Venn diagrams, Twitter account show-downs, visuals that analyze hash tags, and a few others, but there's almost no customization available. However, they offer a marketplace where you can get connected with visual designers and motion graphics artists who specialize in infographics. The site itself also has a ton of great info graphics to inspire you or your designers. There is some serious data visualization eye candy in there, people.


5. Tableau

Tableau has some free tools for creating data visualizations. It is not web based, so you have to download the software. Once you do, you can upload a spreadsheet or CSV and create a variety of interactive data visualizations types, including heat maps showing density of an activity by location, Venn diagrams to show associations, bar charts, line graphs, and others. This tool is for Windows only. See Tableau's gallery for examples of the types of visualizations you can create or learn more about how it works.


[Bonus!] Looking for some more fantastically geeky data viz options?

Datavisualization.ch has created an excellent list of packages, libraries, and data visualization frameworks for creating more complex and interactive visualizations using your own data sets and dev environments.

visualization tools


Tools for diagraming and wireframing

6. OmniGraffle

This is a desktop application that I use all the time at work. The interface is very intuitive, and it's quite an effective tool for wireframing in detail. You can customize and stylize objects to the extent that you can use the tool to create whole infographics exactly as you want them using this tool (it's difficult to do data visualizations with actual data, though). There are tons of free downloadable stencils which make it super easy to diagram mobile and web interfaces, architecture diagrams, and even office/home layouts. This tool has its cons, though; it's not the cheapest tool at $99 for standard and $199 for the pro version, and it's offered for Mac only.

omnigraffle-tool


7. Basalmiq

This is another nice wireframing tool good for creating simple diagrams of web and mobile interfaces. It's $79 for the desktop version, but there's also a free web demo which is sufficient for simple diagramming.

basalmiq


Other tools for visual communication

8. Make a video

The RSA Animate series (illustrations done by CognitiveMedia) is a really good example of using visual communication to accompany a verbal explanation of something. You can hire an illustration artist to do something like this, or do it up yourself Whiteboard Friday-style and draw on a whiteboard while you explain your topic (this works great in internal meetings too; try it next time you're trying to explain a concept to someone and see how it goes). If you hire an illustration artist, deliver the verbal script that they'll need to animate to and add points where you can see visuals supporting the topics, but give them freedom to explore creative ways to visualize, too.

rsa-animate


9. TimelineJS

TimelineJS uses a google spreadsheet with links to YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Sound Cloud, and other media sources to create really nice-looking timelines. You could use this tool to create an interactive visualization of the starting of your company, your client's company, tell the story of an industry, etc.

timelinejs


10. Present.me

Present.me allows you to create presentations where you record yourself talking next to the slides you're presenting. This tool might be a good way for people working remotely to share a proposal or concept, or for documenting presentations you've given on your blog or site.

present-me


Planning your infographic

So now you've got a bunch of tools you can play with, but before you go too crazy adding bubble charts and radial bar graphs, take some time to really plan out your infographic and what you want people to take away from it. Here are some tips on researching and planning a great visualization:

1. Learn from others

If you're not sure what type of info graphic to create, these sites can be great places to see what other people are doing:

2. Understand graph options and themes

It can also be helpful to think about the different types of visualizations that exist and the purpose they serve. Many Eyes by IBM Research made a really great list of graphing types and when to use them (i.e. when to use a stack graph vs bar chart vs scatterplot). Visual-literacy.org also made a really awesome Periodic Table of Visualizations that shows examples of every kind of graph type you can imagine.

There are also a few themes you can identify in the world of infographics; I've listed some of them below. Consider where yours might fit in.

Humor and social commentary: Make an observation about humanity, wine, beards, etc.


Communicate relationships: Show density, proportion, and differences.

relationships


Decision flow chart: Clarify options and paths.

flow-chart


Timeline: Show a sequence of events.


3. Plan your visualization

When you're beginning to brainstorm and develope your visualization, here are a few steps you can take:

  1. Identify the take-away. What do you want your audience to learn from this vizualization? Is there an action you want them to take? Is there a way you want them to feel (e.g. amused, surprised, like they understand an issue better)?
  2. Brainstorm a "script" or flow for your infographic. Sit down with a notebook (or, better yet, with a whiteboard) and a few creative people, and list as many options for conveying your story as you can in thirty minutes or an hour. Don't get too attached to any one concept; just get a bunch out there to start. Consider the types of data available to you and how you could represent it (timeline, flow chart, relationship/proportion graphs, etc.).
  3. See what other people are doing (there are some sites for inspiration listed above). Add any ideas you get for layout and graphic representation to your list of ideas. 
  4. Choose one idea and wireframe it (again, there are a couple tools listed above). Run the concept by a few people. Ask them if any of it is confusing, or if there's something else related to what you've planned that they're curious about that you could consider adding. 
  5. Create the graphic using one of the tools listed above, or hire someone to help you out. Here are some options for hiring contract infographics designers that we love: Freelancer99 designsDesigncrowdElanceOdeskNowsourcingColumnfiveInfog8, and Mikewirthart.
  6. Promote it! Justin Briggs wrote a nice article a while back about strategies for promoting infographics.

Good luck, visualizers! If you have any other suggestions for great ways to communicate visually on the web or IRL, please feel free to share!


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The Best Way to Finish the Job of Deficit Reduction

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
 

The Best Way to Finish the Job of Deficit Reduction

Yesterday, in a statement from the Briefing Room, President Obama explained that while our economy is headed in the right direction, looming automatic budget cuts will cost jobs and slow down our recovery. Those deep, indiscriminate cuts aren't the best way to meet the $4 trillion in deficit reduction needed to stabilize our debt.

The best way to finish that job of deficit reduction? A "balanced mix of spending cuts and tax reform," the President said.

Watch President Obama's remarks.

President Obama Makes a Statement on the Sequester

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog:

Announcing the State of the Union White House Social
On Tuesday, February 12th, President Obama will deliver his fourth State of the Union Address from the Capitol. Apply today for a chance to join the White House social media team for the State of the Union.

Working to Counter Online Radicalization to Violence in the United States
A new inter-agency working group will be responsible for developing plans to implement an Internet safety approach to address online violent extremism, coordinating the federal government’s activities and assessing our progress against these plans, and identifying additional activities to pursue for countering online radicalization to violence.

Announcing We the People 2.0 and a White House Hackathon
We're working towards Petitions 2.0, releasing an API, and inviting a small group to join us on February 22, 2013 for the White House Open Data Day Hackathon.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST).

9:50 AM: The President departs the White House en route to Annapolis, Maryland

10:10 AM: The President arrives in Annapolis, Maryland

10:30 AM: The President attends the Senate Democratic Issues Conference

11:30 AM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney WhiteHouse.gov/live

12:25 PM: The President departs Annapolis, Maryland

2:00 PM: The President makes a personnel announcement WhiteHouse.gov/live

4:00 PM: The Vice President administers the oath of office at a ceremonial swearing-in for Secretary of State John Kerry at the State Department WhiteHouse.gov/live

7:30 PM: The Vice President delivers remarks at the House Democratic Issues Conference

WhiteHouse.gov/live  Indicates that the event will be live-streamed on WhiteHouse.gov/Live

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