There’s nothing like creating an amazing design that your client loves, while also saving some money in the process. You don’t have to compromise on the quality of the fonts you choose, just because you’re not paying the big bucks for them. Better yet, why pay for fonts at all when there are some really great ones out there that are ready for you to use for free? 10 Free Fonts That’ll Change Your Life I’m going to introduce you...
Before the holiday shopping season approaches, online retailers should be readying and refreshing content, category and product pages to maximize search visibility as interest surges, and auditing their sites to ensure a smooth user experience. While there may only be a few weeks left before Black Friday, there is still plenty of time to implement the tips and techniques below to ensure that you’re getting the most out of the work your teams have already put in,...
On Wednesday, September 23 at 1pm EDT, MarTech Today’s, Editorial Director and host of MarTech Live, Kim Davis, will be talking with marketing automation experts about the state of marketing automation, and where it fits in the fast-evolving marketing stack. Kim’s guests will be: Helen Abramova, Marketing Technology Lead, Verizon Justin Sharaf, VP Marketing, Jahia Solutions Topics of discussion will include how marketing automation platforms seek to differentiate themselves; whether marketing automation fits in the stack as a hub and central...
We are in the midst of a transformation in local advertising. Google has a new form of trusted answers that are revealed through a unique and compelling sponsored ad unit. The advertisers that participate in this new layer of trust are proudly displayed next to a green, check-mark badge. This designation is quickly becoming the symbol of trust for Google users. Google is so confident in the consumer value of these answers that they put them atop...
SMX is back and taking place online December 8-9. We’re planning a full editorial program focusing on what search marketers need to know now to be successful in the COVID and post-COVID era. Things have changed over the past five months and will continue to do so. With limited ad budgets, every dollar counts and efficiency is at a premium. Organic reach is more important and cost-effective than ever, and yet, major changes to how Google presents...
As a freelance web developer, how many clients do you get from your website? If you’re like most, you’re probably lucky to get one client every 2-3 months. Unfortunately, that’s very common. These days it’s not enough just to be a web developer if you want to make really good money. You have to be able to differentiate yourself in the marketplace to get more opportunities. If you can do this successfully, I’m 100% sure that it...
Google announced[1] it will soon begin crawling some sites over HTTP/2. HTTP/2 is the next generation of HTTP, the protocol the internet primarily uses for transferring data. It requires less open connections and thus can be more efficient on your server when crawling your web pages. Google said there is no ranking benefit to this change or to your site supporting crawling over HTTP/2. What is HTTP/2? HTTP/2 is a major revision of the HTTP network protocol used...
Facebook is launching “Facebook Business Suite,” a new mobile app and desktop interface that brings together Facebook and Instagram publishing, messaging and analytics in a single dashboard intended to simplify management of content across both platforms. It is being rolled out today globally. Seeking simplicity and time savings. Created for small businesses (SMBs), it will later be available to any business on Facebook. However it’s clearly intended for SMBs and focuses on simplification of content management across...
[embedded content] In this episode, we discussed the gender gap in SEO. We talked about new research, experiences of women in SEO and solutions for improving female representation and pay equity in the search industry. Our panelists included: New research[1] from DeLeon and North Star Inbound shows that women account for roughly 30% of SEOs globally — a stat that hasn’t budged in five years. Across the board, whether by retainer, project or the hour, women are charging and...
30-second summary: The biggest Google update of the year is called the Page Experience update. Core Web Vitals are part of that update, and they are definitely ranking factors to keep in mind, especially when optimizing images. AMP is no longer the only way to get a “Top Stories” feature on mobile. Starting in 2021, any news webpage can become a “Top Story”. Combining AMP’s privacy concerns and cost of operation might mean that AMP will disappear within a couple...
30-second summary: COVID-19 has kept consumers in their homes, which has led to significant spikes in internet use and companies scrambling to digitize in order to meet customers where they are. The ability to quickly develop digital capabilities will continue to be critical for meeting customer needs and ensuring organizations’ survival. To remain competitive, companies must enhance the digital customer experiences they offer through upgraded social media, optimized conversion, strategies, better marketing research, an effective internal website search, and fresh...
Google announced at the start of September it would reduce the visibility of search terms shown in reports[1] for advertisers. Privacy was the reason cited by Google but advertisers quickly called the motives into question and complained about the loss of transparency[2] into a large amount of ad spend. A few well respected PPC influencers weighed in on the impact of this change on Twitter. Wonder how much visibility into search terms we lost? We went from 98%...
According to Adobe’s Digital Economy Index data[1], “buy online, pickup in store” (BOPIS) grew more than 250% year over year in August. The company also said that 30% percent of online buyers prefer BOPIS/curbside pickup over home delivery (read: traditional e-commerce). Google has said something similar. The company reported Wednesday that searches for “curbside pickup” saw a “tenfold” increase in the past several months amid the pandemic. Buy online, pick up locally. One of the reasons for this...
Last year at Google Marketing Live, Google said it would be unifying custom affinity and custom intent audiences under a custom audience option. Custom audiences are available[1] now in Google Ads for Display, Discovery, Gmail and YouTube campaigns. How custom audiences work. You no longer create custom affinity or intent audiences. Now, when you set up a new custom audience from the Custom Audiences tab on the top menu of Audience Manager, you’ll have the option of...
The game has changed. On average, 15-20% of your URLs are not indexed by Google. This is on top of partial indexing issues for pages that are actually indexed. Partial indexing is when your URL is indexed by Google but some of the content of the page isn’t indexed for numerous reasons. The larger your website is, the more likely you are to struggle with indexing. Just to give you some examples: Walmart: only 61% indexed by Google, Yoox.com: only...
On Wednesday, September 16 at 1pm EDT, MarTech Today’s, Editorial Director and host of MarTech Live, Kim Davis, will be talking with marketing leaders about email marketing, from the technology that powers it to the challenges of integrating email across other marketing channels. Kim’s guests will include: Michael Barber, Founder, Barber & Hewitt April Mullen, Director of Brand and Content Marketing, Sparkpost Topics of discussion will include cutting edge technologies which can be teamed with your email campaigns such as dynamic...
Late Friday, Google confirmed it had an indexing issue that specifically impacted what content was shown in the Top Stories section in Google Search. In addition, the Google Search Console coverage report has not been updated in about two-weeks, which is unusually delayed. Indexing issue. Google said there was an indexing issue that lasted about four-hours on Friday evening. It started at 6:00 p.m. ET on Friday September 11, 2020 and lasted until about 10:00 p.m. ET...
Looking for a fresh approach to designing websites? One-page websites can create more memorable and less overwhelming experiences for visitors…when designed the right way. Smart design choices can help reduce the fatigue and frustration people would otherwise feel when using the web. There are a lot of ways web designers can minimize distractions, information overload, and analysis paralysis. For instance, designing with abundant white space, shorter snippets of text, and calming color palettes all work. One-page websites might be...
30-second summary: WeChat, a widely-used Chinese app, provides users with a variety of features including messaging, shopping, and more, inevitably affecting the search landscape with the abundance of data and content it provides to users. Chinese users are stepping away from using traditional search engines, and instead, are leaning on searching within one-stop apps that are more tailored to their search queries. Many companies like Bytedance and Alipay are increasingly trying to make their mark in search by creating...
30-second summary: Partial match domains refer to when your domain name has partially included the main keyword that you are trying to rank for. There are many aspects that make it different from how the exact match domain works. Tudor Lodge Consultants share a quick guide to help you succeed at partial match domains, understand the caveats, and optimize effectively. Partial match domains refer to when your domain name has partially included the main keyword that you are trying to...
In today’s look at the latest research for web designers, we’re going to look at studies and reports from Payoneer, Robert Half, Hootsuite, and Contentsquare to see what they have to say about things like: Current freelancer demand Web designer earning potential A change in ecommerce shopping trends Unseen content rates 1. There’s Light At the End of the COVID-19 Tunnel for Freelancers Payoneer’s The State of Freelancing During COVID-19[1] had to take a different approach to reporting on the freelancer workforce...
Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News[1] site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the...
Have you ever been working on a project, added some text, only to notice that you love the font, but something looks terribly, terribly off? That’s what we call a kerning issue. Today we’re going to go over some simple rules of kerning, tracking, and letter spacing in graphic design. Let’s do this! What is Kerning and Tracking? Kerning is defined as the amount of space between two letters, or other characters, such as numbers, punctuation, etc. Tracking refers to loosening or tightening...
Apple delayed one of iOS 14’s most controversial new privacy features: consumer opt-in permission to track[1]. The rule requires apps to get consent from users to access the device’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) and transmit data to third parties. Publishers bracing for impact, sigh with relief — for now The announcement of Apple’s quasi-deprecation of IDFA came during the company’s developer conference earlier this year. It immediately set off alarms among mobile marketers. Facebook said[2] the change could...
