Clinton v Obama – The Results

So the results are in! If you would like to watch the video of the results, then here you go:

 

Getting your blog ranked high in search engines

The other day, I stumbled across one of those great bits of blogging. It pin pointed the topic of blogs and SEO with beautiful perfection. Although deep down it was an ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ (I’ll do an interview for your site, if you plug my book), the contents of it are great for bloggers new and old. Aaron wall, the author of SEO Book provided the information.

Read the full information from Pro Blogger, but if you are after five thing to help your blog along, then this is what they suggest.

• Attribution is important. Linking to popular bloggers and other sources is a way of getting their attention. Its like saying hey I just talked about you, come see what I said. Many will ignore you, but it only takes a couple good ones liking you for your blog to spread like a weed.
• Make sure your content is formatted such that it is easy to read. Use headings and sub-headers, bulleted lists, spread things out, etc. Ultimately you need people to read and trust your work for search engines to want to trust it. Search engines follow what people do.
• Make sure your page titles are unique on a per post level with the unique part of the title element at the far left of the page title. This helps improve rankings and makes people more likely to click on your listing when you do rank. Descriptive enticing headlines will pull more clicks than boring and bland ones.
• Don’t ignore internal navigation. Where possible, allow some of your categories to drive your keyword strategy. Some of your categories should be well aligned with some of your keywords. Create a top hits or featured posts section that makes it easy to find your best content. Also link back to your older posts in some of your newer posts to alert new readers to the best related posts in your archives and help search engines understand which pages are most important.
• If many people are writing about the same thing you are, try to write about something else or try to write about it from a different perspective such that people want to keep paying attention to you. Don’t be afraid of being yourself. Often times our flaws are more interesting than what we are allegedly good at.

The Eyes Have It

How can you be sure that people are finding the information on your site?

One of the best ways to find out this information is through Eye Tracking. It has come a long way since it’s introduction in the early 90’s. No longer do you have to wear a cumbersome headset which impacts on the results. Now you can sit at your desk, and look at a normal monitor. Infra red panels at the top and bottom of the screen can detect your eyes (even through glasses) and report on what you look at. And it works.

I have been the test subject for eye tracking, and it’s one of the easiest things I have ever done. You can even have a video recording so you can see the users facial expressions while they complete the task in front of them. I’ve also employed eye tracking for our websites, and the information you receive is vital for the success of your website.

For a video detailing how eye tracking works, check click the following image:

If you think you want to give it a go, then just follow these simple rules:

1. Get in touch with a company who specialises in eye tracking such as Real Eyes. Organise a time for them to come in and demo the Tobii equipment.
2. Before the meeting, list about five tasks that you would like you subjects to complete. This can be anything from ‘register on the site’, to ‘order the HJ500 Sony product’
3. It’s vital that you define your audience. If you don’t do this, then the results are as good as worthless. If you’re after the interaction of 18-25 year old men in higher education, then they can use only those for testing.
4. You’re done. All that remains is for you to wait for the results.

Judging the Obama & Clinton websites

I have recently been asked to take a look at two websites for their style, content and other criteria. These two sites are for two people who could one day change the world, so it hasn’t been a small task.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are currently battling it out in the real world, so how do their websites check out? I think we can learn a lot about web design from these two sites.

Let’s take a look at them both:

If you ever wanted two sites for the same thing, that looked totally different, this these are your examples. First impressions, no matter what people say, are vital – and Obama’s site is simply beautiful. A good use of a single colour, with a few Web 2.0 features thrown in. There are too many colours, images and links on Clinton’s. You just don’t know where to start.

Here we see ‘traditional’ fight it out with ‘modern’ and in the world that we’re currently in, I feel that ‘modern’ and ‘change’ will win. The agency who created this site have clearly thought about how they would like to position the candidate. A real example of brand management on the web.

Just out of interest, after judging the site, these were my comments:

“It is clear that the Obama website has embraced all that is new about the web. An indication of what he stands for and what he’s aiming to achieve. It is clear, concise and beautifully designed. Although not a poor site in many ways, the first impression of Clinton’s is of desperation. It is loaded with colours and content that can confuse the user.”

Footer – Site map style

Something that is starting to come into a main, is the site map footer. This is something that you’ll see as standard within a few years. Gone are the days where you throw some of the pages that don’t quite make it on the primary banner – you can now show every page on your site.

This is one of those win – win situations. If a client comes to your site and doesn’t want to find themselves at a dead end, they can check your pages before entering. For you, the business or individual, you are showing everything to the client. Even some things that might never be found otherwise. You are also simplifying their lives – a must for any website.

There are two forms of footer I have seen so far. One is on the BBC website, which gives you a heading and then enough information to show you that you’re on the right track.

The other is the Zyb footer, which shows you all pages in the site, please language options that are traditionally found towards the top right of a site. However, they should start to look at the design of how they show this information as it falls a long way behind other early adopters.

It’s also worth showing Dojo. They have decided to add the new style footer, which doesn’t look at all out of place on the site.

 

However, to reinforce this, they have also added a link on their primary navigation bar. Clicking this then shows you the full site menu, much like the footer. Personally I think this is a lovely addition if you have the space to add it.