Technical SEO is the practice of optimizing a website’s technical aspects to improve its visibility, ranking, and overall success in search engines. The objective of Technical SEO is to make sure that your website is easily discoverable and accessible to search engines so that they can understand its content and provide relevant results to users. Read more
As a UX consultant, I always think about what is better a regular menu or a hamburger menu. In mobile version obviously but in desktop?
Let me explain the pros and cons:
The hamburger menu is an actual navigation element you can find on sites, landings, webs, apps, and programs. It’s a design of three horizontal lines. Is an icon and a button that typically opens a sider menu or navigation.
Created by Norm Cox almost 40 years ago!
This is the hamburger menu: bread, hamburger and bread. So, that’s why the name.
Let me share my thoughts:
PROS: This is a list of why use the hamburger menu:
CONS: This are a list of why NOT use the hamburger menu:
So, here my recommendations, as Nielsen Norman Group:
Desktop:
Mobile:
Today we want to talk about a common error on websites. The 404 pages.
404 page is an error, the Error 404.
Error 404 is an HTTP status code that means that the page you are trying to access can not be found.
For example, if you access www.ebavs.net/cacadelavaca server will return an error page and the 404.
The 404 pages are very common in all the clients that we do consultancy SEO.
We want to explain what are the causes and the solutions to fix it.
Cause 1: A deleted page.
When you have deleted a page from your site, once search engines have analyzed and indexed, the page did not exist so is a 404 page.
Solutions:
Cause 2: An external deleted page.
When you have a link to another page and the link is not running because the site deleted the page.
Solution:
Cause 3: A renaming page.
That’s very common, a client decides to change or rename the page but not consider redirecting.
Solution:
Cause 4: The link is not written ok (a misspelt)
Solution:
So, the next question is do 404 errors affect my web positioning?
Google, says no, but 404 errors could have a direct effect on our users. So if our site has a lot of links that do not work, our visits will go down. It’s important the user experience to our success site.
In other posts we will talk about: a best practice 404 page and How to know if there are 404 errors on my site.
An image of SEO must speak. In my last three works, I made different consultancies for customers and I detected the same issue: the images.
How is this part important, images are important as relevant keywords. Nowadays we use more images and media to improve our websites. So this kind of content needs to be review and optimize.
The images are always forgotten. And Google likes images and users also.
Let’s start with a list of best practices to keep in mind.
When we create a website we take care of the name of images. We always find projects with Incredibles names or numbers to images. I found images like DSC30303 or Screenshot22.01.2009 or Prueba. The name is so important because Google read the archive and the name of our image.
The images need to BE descriptive. Yes Descriptive, it’s mean the name must represent what we see.
It’s important to add relevant keywords also. If we review analytics we could see how customers search us and use the image naming process.
As Google says the Filename give clues about what is the image.
Example if the image is a green car:
<img src=”https://exampleweb.com/images/green-car.jpg”>
Also if you have a brand you could ad your brand on the image like green-car-ebavs.jpg.
I discovered 3GB for a Background image or images of 1Gb.
Bear in mind:
So review the file sizes, compress the images and optimize them. There are a lot of articles to do it:
The formats are relevant also use :
Gif – 317Kb
PNG – 606kb
Jpg – 290Kb
3. Alt attribute
The alt attribute (text that describes an image) is the alternative text is used to:- highlight the identity of an image
That’s a normal code that I discovered:
<img src=”https://exampleweb.com/images/green-car.jpg”>
That’s a good code:
<img src=https://exampleweb.com/images/green-car.jpg alt=”A green car on the road”>
The alt attribute is also a descriptive text for the image, normally we use 8 words.
These are 3 basics tips to follow on your sites. Are very easy and common sense tips.
If you want to know more about SEO, we do Workshops and we are experts on it.
That’s a typical conversation:
We think that we have a serious problem with our naming: a name so obscure that customers never know what it means.
But, 18 years ago we created this naming thinking to do something that we loved, coding and the internet but never in business…
EBAVS was a contraction between Bárbara and Víctor, Víctor and Bárbara.
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Also, we used dieresis on the ä, meaning two brains thinking (so creative ahh), but of course in 2000 the URLs could have signs (THANKS INTERNET!)
Imagine:
Actually, we think about change EBAVS to something more legible, but you know what?
If we write EBAVS on Google we have no competitors and the first pages are us. (Google suggest Ebay also..) The site, the images, the social networks…
We love EBAVS and the meaning.
We are weird and special and we want to continue spelling our name. Know more about us on interviews of EBAVS.
Instagram is the social network that I use to reflect the evolution of our family and “petardos” (as I call them).
Instagram like all social networks has rules to increase engagement with the user:
In my case, I add little rules: publish what I want and I find aesthetic with a clear criterion which is my family.
I love images, I am an addict (photos, paintings, films, art books, comics etc …) with a lot of memory’s photographic and why I love social networks based on images (I’m an art historian). For example, one of the most I use is Pinterest; reminds me of the clipping magazines I do in my adolescence.
Pinterest is an aspirational network. A feminine network, especially for use before going to sleep, from 9 to 12 pm, is when more pinners are.
I’m a Pinterest influencer with 12.2K followers.
Why?
For many reasons:
In summary, create a digital strategy for Pinterest.
If in personal level networks you can establish strategies, then imagine a professional level. One of the services I usually work in EBAVS/ is a consultancy and digital strategy: social networking, UX, SEO, Web Analytics etc.
I recommend analysis tools to review the social networks.
Pinterest:
Instagram:
So, if you want to improve your profile social networks use these tools to see what content is most liked or pined and create a strategy yourselves.
But let me say one thing, have CRITERIA, either an aesthetic or element that makes you feel very comfortable to users and creates engagement.
Tió or The pooping log is a Catalan tradition, typical of Christmas.
It’s a log, for the first time is a relation with fire and connected nature, protection, fertility and winter solstice. It’s very scatological because we feed the log with food like nuts, cookies, fruits and the log eat magically; then on Christmas Eve, we beat and yell it, singing: “Caga tió, ametlles i torró, no caguis arangades que són massa salades, caga torrons que són més bons.
Caga tió, ametlles i torró, si no vols cagar et donaré un cop de bastó
Caga tió!”And then the log, covered with a blanket, make poo; obviously is not real, the poo are gifts for kids or family. We love our scatological traditions, we use to do it, because we have a little girl of 5 years old in the house, and we are expecting a little boy, so we are experts on it.
So we start thinking about a creative idea to make a Christmas action. The objectives are to make something GOOD, something that brings a smile to our faces, so we thought that the best way is sharing:
From that idea, we create an action, started the 8th December – date Tió arrives at the house – to Christmas Eve.
Then, we create the log with kawaii style, and also a landing page to explain all our idea.
The idea consists of feeding every day the poopinglog to see the poo. The poo is a share in Facebook or Twitter with an image (more than 100 ) + phrase + URL to promote a good thing with the #thepoopinlog.
But what kind of share?
The share or poo is something good, so we make research of good things like caring, giving, helping, researching, supporting and sharing; and make happy these organizations, ONG’s, foundations, etc…
And also, we beef up #thepoopinglog, creating a digital strategy based on 3 social profiles:
The question is: Are you freelance?
Yes, we do.
We are freelancers since 2013 and also we work together.
We are a team, a couple, and 2 professional freelancers. We work in Barcelona and we are 100% digitals.
That’s a normal cliche: a team of digital profiles working in his own way. Senior profiles with expertise in Digital Project Management, Digital Web Development, Digital Strategist, SEO and UX.
The background: work in different companies, clients, digital, advertising, agencies etc … and then Freelance.
Blackie Books published a guide to be one of this class of people.
We appear at promotional teaser with a shorts interviews:
“I’m a developer”, “we paid taxes and the client does not pay the bill”, Víctor Santacreu said.
“It’s riskier to be freelance,” said Bárbara Casas.
And that’s it to be freelance. As the video said is not easy, but there a lot of things in our actual way of life, freelance is the best way to work and to have a life.
For us to be freelance is:
Thanks, Blackie Books team, for this opportunity to appear on a teaser and promotional book and also to the book, which is a must for any freelancer. Ironic, and happy but with great information for anyone who wants to be freelance in Spain.
Be brave and be freelance.
A few days ago, we made a cake, a Christmas present to our Betahaus friends.
This present became, on small scale, in our Christmas action. The objectives are to close to the community of the coworking, make know our team and have great holidays.
And from our little action to the big ones:
Merry Christmas!