A new report suggests that during Cyber Monday, last week, tablets were being snapped up by consumers are a rate of one per second, a trend which analysts are predicting to be maintained well into Christmas. Find out how to ensure that your website is fully compatible with the latest tablet devices [More]

On Friday I was lucky enough to attend #BrightonSEO for the first time, the UK’s only free, full day SEO conference. Although there was no official theme for the event, the talks given focused more on wider marketing principals than actionable SEO tasks.  However this was covered in the 7 slides in 7 minutes sessions. I took a lot of notes from the day, so if you weren’t lucky enough to attend #BrightonSEO or couldn’t be bothered to write your own I’ve included a massive 150 key takeaway points below. Predatorily Thinking - Dave Trott (Executive Creative Director, CSTTG) Most people will see over 1000 adverts per day, but 90% of adverts aren’t noticed. This is epically true of SEO; 4% are positively remembered and 6% negatively remembered. There are two types of creativity: ‘Pure Creativity’ (for example Art & Film) and Applied Creativity where form follows function. It’s the latter that gets you noticed. Media is used to generate a conversion with consumers; this can be broken down as Impact, Communication and Persuasion. Most advertising fails at the impact stages, make sure you look at what you can achieve to help you marketing standout. So how do you turn the marketing principals into predator thinking or Applied creativity, to allow you beat the competition Understand that you’re never going to beat everyone. For example Direct Line spends £81m a year on marketing, if your marketing insurance your simply never going to compete. Don't solve problems you can't solve, solve those you can. For example: How do you advertise the iPod when its always in somebodies pocket? Change what people can see… in this example changing typically black earphones white. Instantly anybody knows you have an iPod. Take the approach of going up stream on problems to find solutions Do You Speak Brand - Antony Mayfield (Founding Partner, Brilliant Noise). SEO has become a broad church, where people keep dividing in to smaller and smaller camps. SEO is often miss-sold and can feel like it's SEO vs Everyone rather SEO + Brand The industry is growing up, which is epitomised by Coca Cola switching a massive 20% of marketing budget to inbound marketing. Digital marketing budget should be spent across all parts of cycle, not just purchase. The combination of marketing disciplines such as PR, Content Marketing, Social, SEO and UX is not a is not a coalition, it's a merger Content is like any long term eCommerce business, you have to invest in the supply chains, both distribution and procurement. If you pitching SEO talk about the benefits not what it does and create story that anybody can understand. Speaking Your Users Language (UX) - Stephanie Troeth. (Freelance) Stephanie provided a great overview of how SEO’s need to go beyond their principal marketing work and think about UX and how it affects a site. Imagery should convey your main proposition Understand whether your communicating something emotional or rational. Make sure the on page language matching the right type. When designing take the ‘mobile first’ principal. Layout you pages as you would for mobile to understand what you most important elements are. When listing to the user there are two approach, closed listening and open listings, use both: Closed ended listing answers the ‘how’ and is often driven by data e.g Analytics, A/B testing etc… Open ended listening answers the ‘why’ and is often driven open ended question system such as Social Media, Listening Tabs and Surveys. Take time to talk to real users and build this into your UX programs. How to win friends. And influence robots - Martin Belam (Principal Consultant, Emblem) Martin Belam worked as one the BBC’s first SEO’s and gave some great insight on thinking about content and UX. Think about how headlines look when out of context. For example if you write a blog post, how would the headline look on another website without the blog content. Look at the user flow around site. How does the user think about the way your site is organised? If you don't need them it, don't publish it. Look at what the opportunity cost to do something, e.g could you be doing something productive or are you spending something that will yield little rewards. Look at page load speed, it helps build trust both search engines and the user Look at the law of unintended consequences for UX/SEO. If one change negatively affects the other is it worth doing? Chasing the Algorithm: Smart SEO or Hopeless Effort? - Rebecca Weeks (SEO Associate Director, MGOMD) This was a good talk about in the end if you're chasing the algorithm you're never going to win. Look at correcting exact match links on high quality domains where penalty has been given. Without good content you are never going to close the gap on competitors. Learn from your errors to develop a stronger strategy, more importantly learn from your competitors errors. Best practice is not always possible, you're never going to achieve everything you want. For local SEO target local exact match domain for high quality link and relevant links. Finally understand that good SEO never chase. API WTF? - Will Critchlow (Founder, Distilled) This session was meant to be delivered by Tom Anthony, however as he wasn’t able to make it. Luckily Will stepped in and lived up to his reputation as a great speaker. Twenty years ago the web was just text, today it has evolved, so has the way it is consumed. For example 10 years ago users spent an average of 40 minutes online a day, now users spend 4 hours! Search has changed and it's been refined already from where it starts, result are looking visually different and voice isn’t the answer as “you sound like a dick talking into your phone”. Visual impact search are about transaction, e.g if you search for something with an attribute API's is how computers talk to computers and helps to tie together all the different channels. If you sell anything that has an SKU you’re going to get steam rollered by amazon. The only way to succeed is if you can off buyers something else, beyond Amazon’s cheap price. How to be a better SEO - Richard Baxter (Founder, SEOgadget) A something of a current personal focus of mine this was a really great session, where Richard simply covered what makes a great SEO and how to achieve that, he also stated that its important to remember that the depth of discipline is huge. Understand what your goals are, where do you want to be 2, 5, 10 years? Get a mentor or somebody you respect and copy him. Good SEO’s a very curious people and seek to understand the ‘why’ beyond the ‘how’. Aim to learn something new once a week. Getting positive feedback? How could you work to make positive feedback even more. Rehearse everything, meetings, calls and pitches. Put yourself out of your comfort zone, personal develop occurs at best in this state. Make yourself indispensable. become an expert on a specific subject. Build your own websites and blog. Make people realise that you care so much SEO, to gain traction. Learn to sell anything. Always follow up, on questions, interviews and client questions Known your figures inside. For example how many unique visits do you clients get each month? Communicate your successes, however minimal make people understand them Leadership comes from certainty and belief if your own opinions and learning. Work towards what you do a little better every day. SEO Deliverance - Tony King (SEO Managing Consultant, Semetrical) Tony gave an interesting talk about how to gain more traction and deliverance within a in house SEO setting. How do you deliver SEO in House? SEO can get pigeonholed into a specific department... Don’t let it. Be seen as the guru and become the go to guy and gain influence within the business. To gain influence, you need to deliver change, to achieve change there are 3 stages. Those 3 steps can be described as Research, Development and ImplementationResearch Stage Know your market, keywords. carry out gap analysis between you and your competitors. Assess your SERPS. What are the SERPS doing in a specific keyword group. Are they image driven, video, schema? Know your completion both in paid and organic. Who are they and how are they performing. SEMrush is great for this. Crawl competitors websites to understand there structure. Carry out SWOT analysis to help guide your marketing. Audit XML sitemaps, when were they last update. Many companies own multiple domains, who manages their renewal, when are they due? Research Stage Understand the site and business What is the site mission What are is goals, traffic, sales and market share. Is tracking working across the site. (You can easily check this using Screaming Frog SEO Spider) Know your strategy and project scope, Who is going to delivery the project, what are costs? Define a budget, but make sure you consider seasonal search trends for budget and begins Determine what tools you are you going to need? And push to buy them beginning of the financial year, when there is less pressure Build teams that you progress Understand delivery includes extended teams such as PR and traditional advertising Test what you read in white papers and blog posts Define and assign responsibility Implementation Who has influence in the sign odd process and what could be their objections? Pre-emt questions with answers. Know your plan when pitching: Start with a business case Let the figures speak for them selves It's all about the ROI Make internal proposal look professional Include cover and contents pages Get two people to proof it Print and bind it Make a PDF version for easy sharing Quantify the changes from your work before and after Separated by a Common Language - Lynne Murphy (Reader in Linguistics, University of Sussex) Lynne covered some the differences between US and UK English and why they exist, a slightly off topic session, however given marketing on its lowest level is about communication. The press hate the Americanization (deliberate typo) of British English. Many ‘Americanized’ words such are erb (Herb) are derived Latin roots, the H was added a later date to denote class in English society. These difference are often drive by the fact that English is actually French in many cases. For example ‘color’ was the original Latin word and pre dates ‘colour’ in the UK. English at its roots is a language which thrives on borrowing. A decade in affiliate marketing - James Little (Partnerships Director, Top Cashback) James little givens us a condensed breakdown Affiliate Websites 10 years ago looked “sh*t”. Many affiliates used spyware and didn’t move away from till around 2005 There was a very negative view of affiliate as a late as 2006-8. This was epitomised ‘ASOS Grubbygate’, where in 2007 ASOS CEO Nick Robertson said that all affiliates were “grubby”. Next Gate, Next dropped commission to 1%, which ‘pissed off’ many affiliates. Ironic this is now one of the best commission rate in fashion retail. The grown up dates 2009-12 affiliates began to ‘grow up’. This growing up period saw the rise of Cashback and Voucher Code site, with some affiliates even becoming mercents (e.g. Wish Club) There are still some issues though, as the IAB got involved as there were loads fake voucher codes Affiliates are becoming brands. E.g TopCashBack gets more traffic than confused.com 7 Slides in 7 Minutes Sessions 7 things you need to know about Mobile SEO - Aleyde Solis (Founder, Orainti Search Marketing) Watch your mobile audience behaviour in Google Analytic, Segment the traffic to gain insight. Review your mobile results and as shown in WMT. Understand your mobile search volume using Google AdWords. Use Fetch as Google Mobile Tot WMT to understand what code mobile Google is seeing. Mobile is often localised, are you offered tailored to this factor? Speed is key over mobile, make sure your site speed is fast. On mobiles site which run in parallel to your (e.g. on sub domains) use canonical tags. Bit.ly/mobileseo Content Planning in a Post Panda and Penguin World - Simon Penson (MD, Zazzle Media) Good content planning focuses on content flow, variation and visualization Serialise, regular content is the ebs of content marketing and should be time effective. Bangs(flows) are big article or big ideas, which may include: Data visualisation Link Bait Look at the hours to market content, peek times should be big bang stuff Social Media Reverse Engineering - Yousaf Sekander (Head of SEO, Elevatelocal) Good, shareable content is not cheap. Find out what worked for your competitors and leverage that for your client. This can easily be done with tools such as Social Crawlitics. Discover who shared your competitor’s content and target them with similar content. Use ‘Back tweets’ to understand who shared content for a given URL. Use sites like Topsy to identify the most influence sharers. For infographics use your own shorter, as you can control where the link points. Future proofing SEO on large websites - Berian Reed (Head of Search & Online Partnerships, Auto Trader) Copy and paste is the biggest method of sharing. The Daily Mail gains 1000’s of links a year through hacked copy and paste functionality using systems like Tynt. Setup referral alerts: use filter to gain full referral URL. Contact those people Learn from competitor mistakes. Why didn't a competitor fix/correct a bug? Change detection; monitor competitor website to identify the pages there changing. Run link detective on competitor domains. Client Checklist for SEOs - Sion O'Connor (Marketing Director, Vanquis Bank) Understand Your Clients: Do they have corporate or personal objectives? Are they focused on CPA or effective growth Who are the stake holders in their business? Who are their customers? Who is the competition? Look for innovation in other environment that you can apply to your customer Become an editor of new trends for your client, informing them of those which are relevant and actionable. Things your client wants: Planning Insights and Best Practice Uncovers differences of opinion Discuss risks and issues Pitching ideas: Who is the decision maker in the business: Use plain English to discuss trends, make sure they understand the payoff and risks. Pinteresting SEO - Danielle Fudge - Head of SEO, Forward3D Danielle discusses their new Pinterest Search tool developed by the team at Forward3D to identify outreach opportunities Pinalytics allows you search Pinterest and return return the URL of the original image along with several key stats SEOmoz Domain Authority (DA) Social Metrics such a Pins, Tweets and Likes You can easily export search results and gain a list of link prospects Currently Pinalytics is 100% Free and will remain so for the forseable future Attributing beyond the last click - Tom Lewis (Head of Professional Services, DC Storm) Removing the value from direct and brand traffic (attribution) Attribute more value to the initiation phrase/point when attributing value to specific part of the purchase cycle. Attribution shouldn’t be based the 30 day Cookie window as buying cycles can extend beyond this period. The business of SEO and how it can make our world a better place - Jason Woodford (Chief Executive, SiteVisibility) There are many reasons to be cheerful about SEO The industry is currently in a boom time, a reverse to the economy. Most people in the current economy take 10-19 years to reach the same salary levels as those in SEO with 3-5 Years. SEO is different to almost every industry as competitors share their knowledge. #BrightonSEO is best example of this. Reasons to be sad about SEO Helps sell stuff that goes in the bin, which isn’t very envronmeanlty friendly. People still get emails saying SEO cost £99 a month. Many people still see SEO as cowboys Many still claim ‘SEO is dead’. How as any industry we can change those views: Act like a real business. Do a great job, delivering a quality end product and service. Develop and nurture talen. Don’t under sell your services, profit - charge the value of your work. Other key points Generating lead growth of recession Focus on charity work and corporate social responsibility (CSP) Work clients on charity work, helps you bond with customers. Work closely with Universities to raise the profile of SEO and attract good talent Collaborate with other agencies for the collective good. Quickfire Analytics: 7 Custom Reports in 7 Minutes - Anna Lewis (Digital Marketing Executive, Koozai) Anna shows us some great custom reports to aid your digital marketing efforts, I’ve listed these below and you can setup them up instantly from the Koozai Blog. SEO Reporting - Key KPI's PPC reporting, overview, on page conversions and Brand monitoring. Social and mentions Brand Engagement Social. Info from data hubs Geek: understand how user technology influences the website Host name report. Helps identify duplicate website websites Email marketing. Make sure you have campaign tracking setup in your email distribution client GA shortcuts. Make sure you set them up.

Now the site is underway, I’m encountering visual problems that need to be addressed.  In particular, I’m noticing the image quality of the product images.  On the live site we optimise the images to best suit not only the space it has to fit in but also, mostly without thinking, the DPI / PPI is set to be 72, as 99% of desktop monitors are set like this.  However modern mobile devices have a much higher PPI to screen size ratio and so normal web images now look pixelated.  As I am creating the mobile version of the site from the same code base as the desktop one, and keeping clarity in mind, I have to resort to using a larger size image which will then be reduced down to the correct size for the different formats.   Also try where possible, to include images as CSS backgrounds as it will make it easier to modify them to look better on mobile devices. General rule of thumb on mobile websites is to use a larger image and re-size it down in order to keep the quality as crisp as possible.  This is even more evident on the new higher res phones.  It’s also handy to follow the Apple style guides when it comes to hi-res images as they make sense. Apple suggest creating an image, 1.75x to 2x the size of the standard image and then naming it with the ending of @2x. Example:I created a logo for a site and set it as a background image with its container being the correct height and width; {background:url(‘assets/harrisonslogo@2x.png’) no-repeat 0 0;width:135px;height:40px;display:block;} Now, as the image is up to twice the original size, we need to reduce it down by using a bit more of CSS3.  This time it’s the ‘background-size’.  As the name suggests it will reduce the background image size either by pixel of percentage.  The easiest thing I found was to set the width to be auto and the height to be 100%, making the image fit correctly within the container; {background:url(‘assets/harrisonslogo@2x.png’) no-repeat 0 0;width:135px;height:40px;display:block;background-size:auto 100%;} You can also add in a small script called retina.js.  This, once included onto the page, will look at the images on the page, and if the site is being viewed on a retina screen, it will go and seek out an image with the ending of ‘@2x’ within the same folder as the standard image, and swap the low-res one out for this version.  Very handy if you want to make carousel banners look crystal clear!

Gone are the days of having to think about supporting IE6, 7 or 8!  We now have much more freedom to utilise the wide range of CSS3 styles that are on offer.   In most cases using CSS attributes will not only improve page load, BUT it allows us to keep the design a lot more clean and polished, as the device is not required to pull extra images through from the server.  During the current project I’ve been working on, I have been using a mixture of the following: Gradient BackgroundsBox ShadowingText ShadowingBackground SizingBorder RadiusBox Sizing As I mentioned before, the benefit of being able to use the CSS3 attributes, means we can improve the look of the sites on mobile devices.  Most of them use a higher screen PPI so using a series of images would end up looking pixelated and generally naff!  Box Sizing: You know that annoying thing with percentages where if you set a containers width to be 50%, then add padding or borders, it will include them onto the overall width so it’s not 50% anymore? Well with Box Sizing applied to the container, it means that borders and paddings are included so the defined width of 50% will stay at 50%.  No more messing around trying to figure out padding in percentages or getting agitated when you want to add a border, as the container drops to the next line! BUT be aware… This is a CSS3 effect so IE will not have any of it.  Bit of a pain that... I would suggest only using it on mobile development for now as it should be supported across all mobile devices and I think that even applies to the Windows phones surprisingly! You also need to be aware that margin will still behave as it should do, creating space on the outside of a container. How to write it:-webkit-box-sizing:border-box;-moz-box-sizing:border-box;box-sizing:border-box;

It has quickly become apparent that although media queries should be the ideal and logical step for modifying CSS files ready for mobile site creation, it’s not entirely practical for an eCommerce website.  Using media queries above other alternatives is preferential, as it’s the quickest and most efficient way of modifying the styles to best suit your site, as long as the site has been properly structured.   The main issue with eCommerce sites, in particular sites that are already built, is that they don’t tend to be built with mobile users in mind. The use of media queries within a CSS file becomes a mine field as you have to start using important rules and trying, where possible, to change the current code to best suit the layout.  Even the thought of this is daunting, so the application will be even worse! There is however 2 alternatives I have come across to reduce the stress and hair pulling.  By using either JAVA, Media Screen calls or a mixture of the two, you can add and remove CSS files that appear on the site.  Admittedly this means that you will need to go through the site, re-coding it for mobile BUT in the long run it will be easier AND there is the added bonus of being able to use most if not all the CSS3 attributes at your disposal.  Good times! The information for the JAVA & CSS can be viewed more on http://css-tricks.com/resolution-specific-stylesheets/ Alternatively, I have added a quick overview of the method I currently use… Step 1:Firstly, apply the CSS link to the site as you would do normally, but also add in the Media Screen lookup: <link rel=’stylesheet’ media=’screen and (min-width: 701px)  href=’css/DESKTOP.css’ /> Step 2:Then add in the mobile version. See how we use the screen lookup to change the link used: <link rel=’stylesheet’ media=’screen and (max-width: 700px)  href=’css/MOBILE.css’ /> Step 3:The final thing that you will need to do, as IE is not a big fan of screen lookups, is to add in an if rule for anything lower then IE9: <!--[if lt IE 9]><link rel=’stylesheet’ media=’screen and (min-width: 701px)  href=’css/DESKTOP.css’ /><![enid]--> That’s about it!  You can use the same method to call other style sheets, but remember to add to the ‘if IE’ rule for the Desktop versions: <link rel=’stylesheet’ media=’screen and (min-width: 701px)  href=’css/DESKTOP.css’ /><link rel=’stylesheet’ media=’screen and (min-width: 701px)  href=’css/1COL.css’ /><link rel=’stylesheet’ media=’screen and (max-width: 700px)  href=’css/MOBILE.css’ /> <!--[if lt IE 9]><link rel=’stylesheet’ media=’screen and (min-width: 701px)  href=’css/DESKTOP.css’ /><link rel=’stylesheet’ media=’screen and (min-width: 701px)  href=’css/1COL.css’ /><![enid]-->

Your website may well be the leading way in which new users respond to and interact with your business. People are increasingly choosing to use the web for research, purchases, financial transactions and social interaction, and in this context creating and maintaining a professional yet engaging and dynamic website has become more important than ever. Here are the top 5 web design mistakes people make – and how to avoid them. 1. A Lack of Focus - Websites need to be focused to their audience and they need to be sharp and immediately engaging. Users want to be able to find information easily and they want to be able to take actions in the smallest number of steps possible. Make links clear and easily accessible. Don’t be afraid to make any calls to action prominently on display. Your visitors are there because they’re interested in your products or services after all. 2. Cluttered Appearance - Text should be uncluttered and the overall appearance should be neat, professional and polished. Think of a webpage as a piece of art and appreciate that some white (or black, or green) empty space is a necessity if you are not to overwhelm and confuse your user. Balance text with relevant images. Make sure the font is easily legible and colour contrast is easy on the eye.  3. Poor Quality Content – For the majority of websites, content should be informative, concise and to the point. The art is in balancing providing information with keeping the reader’s attention. Always proof read your content and check for spelling and obvious grammar mistakes. Spelling mistakes scream unprofessionalism. 4. Poor Navigation – Websites must be easy to navigate for the user to be happy interacting with them. Pages and links should be clearly displayed and the website should follow a consistent system throughout. A site map is sometimes helpful. 5. Inclusion of Animations and Music – Websites that play audio files as soon as you enter them can be extremely irritating, while animations can be distracting and unwelcome as well as potentially causing the browser to crash. A good web design agency or digital marketing agency will be able to identify these and other classic web design mistakes that people make and take practical steps to avoid them. Your website represents your business to the world and it’s worth getting right.

Once you have decided on how your design will look, next is to make sure it renders correctly on a mobile device. [More]

As your structure is set right, it will make it easier to style the code, as to an extent you will be letting the natural html elements create the layout of the design when your creating the styles for your mobile site. [More]

A common challenge that designers / developers are faced with when designing responsive design for mobile devices is the navigation of a website. Heres some helpful advice on how to deal with this [More]

Responsive Web Design for mobile websites. 4 part blog giving hints, tips and advice to put you on the right path to creating a mobile website [More]