User experience design (UX, UXD, UED or XD) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction with a product by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction with the product. User experience design encompasses traditional human–computer interaction (HCI) design, and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users. As an aspiring or practicing web professional, we should make every effort to enhance user satisfaction.
UX Term origin
User Experience Architect Donald Norman – it has been said that he has invented this term as he thought human interface and usability were too narrow and he wanted to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with the system including industrial design graphics, the interface, the physical interaction and the manual. Since then the term has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose its meaning. He has written his personal reflection about this in his Wikipedia article.
As a web professional, you are likely aware that WordPress is used as the principle technology for over 25% of the top 10 million websites (actually now 29% based on the December WordCamp US State of the Word 2017). To better understand the reach of this technology – in the above mentioned State of the Word presentation, it was mentioned there are now over 47,000 plugins and said plugins have been downloaded over 633 million times.
Version 5 coming (Project Gutenberg)
We have recently learned that the next major update (version 5.0) will be based on Project Gutenberg. We understand this will be the most extensive update since version 2.0 of WordPress. As a web professional, it is important you understand the implications of this upgrade (and the potential effects with your clients). These include:
the default editor is changing from the current TinyMCE editor (and changing significantly). If your clients are editing their own content, you need to either train them on the new editor or make certain you use the classic editor plugin (you might want to try both out to better understand the changes). Note this is beta software at the time of this writing so you do not want to install this on any production WordPress sites.
although you can presently test Project Gutenberg, it is presently available as a plugin (meaning you may not be able to fully test your current themes and plugins at the moment).
the new focus will be on conceptual editing (similar to what you may have experienced with LinkedIn Pulse or similar approaches).
the focus is on “identifying and adding meaning to content using blocks and block contests.” See below for what this means.
Just like having the ability to speak a foreign language, this sort of skill is helpful in almost all professions. HTML and CSS are the foundational languages of the web. As web professionals we should know what updates are taking place in HTML and CSS world. I came across few articles about what’s new about both CSS grid and HTML.
CSS Grid Layout excels at dividing a page into major regions, or defining the relationship in terms of size, position, and layer, between parts of a control built from HTML primitives. (more…)
As web professionals are undoubtedly aware, many changes are happening with JavaScript these days. Yes, there is a fair amount of churn in frameworks employed on various projects. We did ask the question (some time ago) – are we relying too much on JavaScript? Regardless of your opinion about that question, we need to be aware that major changes are happening to core JavaScript as well. ES6/ ES2015 (ECMAScript 6) is the latest version making its way into browsers near you (and many other places). For those who have been working with web technologies for quite a while, you may recall that ES5 was released in 2009. Yes, nearly a decade ago. (more…)
As we begin a new year, we thought it summarize some recent information regarding web accessibility. As a web professional, one should already know that making your pages accessible helps your search engine ranking and much more. As an organization, we have been promoting (and encouraging members) to participate in Project Silver (this initiative is focused on a new version of accessibility guidelines) for some time. We encourage you to consider helping with this initiative.
Of course, it is important to understand what we should be doing now to make certain our projects are accessible. We found the following articles to be a helpful review of what is presently happening with respect to accessibility.
In December, Scott O’Hara discussed the trials and tribulations of the title attribute. This is a great review of the current state of use/ disuse of this attribute. In a nutshell, Scott review this venerable attribute since it’s inception in the HTML 1.2 draft (yes, that was in 1993). One of the main issues with this attribute is that most browsers assume a visitor is using a mouse [for example, to see a title tooltip, you must hover your cursor]. Surprisingly, Internet Explorer 10, 11 (and MS Edge) display tooltips (after a short delay) as if the visitor hovered over them. Additionally, when you long press an image in iOS 11, the title attribute also displays in the popover menu. Of course, these sorts of examples do not help much with overall user experience (and are not consistently implemented). Scott also reviews how this attribute is somewhat useful on select elements for screen readers. NVDA and other readers will announce title on landmark elements (header, footer and so forth), but will not on div or other elements (unless role updates are provided as well). Scott provides a number of use cases where the title attribute can be helpful. The bottom line is that the title attribute can be potentially quite useful, but a number of previous bad practices and lack of consistent support among browsers and screen readers is hampering more consistent use. We encourage readers to review Scott’s entire article. It takes about 20 minutes to review and is well worth the read.
In July, IBM updated their accessibility checklist (now at version 7.0). We encourage readers to review it (if you haven’t already). In addition to providing a thorough checklist, we like the approach of combining the revised US Section 508 standards (which also incorporates Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) along with the additional requirements needed to meet European standard EN 301 549. One central checklist for multiple countries. That alone should be useful for those who conduct business in the U.S. and E.U. We encourage web professionals everywhere to make certain they review (and use) such a checklist.
Dennis Lembree provided a very useful article on the topic of building a culture of accessibility (with a focus on leadership roles). Many of us have encountered situations where initiatives fail because there is no clear leadership. What we like most about this article is the specific breakdown (by corporate division) how individual leaders can contribute to a culture of accessibility. We already look forward to follow ups to Dennis’ post and additional insights. We encourage web professionals to take 5 to 7 minutes and read his entire article.
For those using the React framework, Scott Vinkle provides a very useful overview of React’s accessibility code linter. What we found most helpful is that Scott walks you through creating a new React app and describes in detail how to employ the code linter for maximum accessibility. As a web professional, you are employing linting as part of your continuous improvement strategy (aren’t you?). We encourage you to review Scott’s article (particularly if you are considering employing React in applications you develop in 2018). It will take you a couple of hours to review this article (if you work along with his examples).
For those web professionals who are new to web accessibility, we offer a foundational course on this topic via our School of Web initiative. As a current member of Web Professionals, you first course is free.
As you surmise from the above overview, a lot has been happening in the past months regarding accessibility. We encourage you to provide comments regarding your efforts to incorporate accessibility in your projects and tell us what you have been doing to develop a culture of accessibility in your organization. We may be in contact with you to do a follow up post on the specifics you provide.
All the best for a great 2018,
Mark DuBois
Community Evangelist and Executive Director.
As 2017 draws to a close, we thought it might be helpful to discuss the tools we use for various activities. These tools are not directly used for web design and development; they help our overall processes. Web Professionals considering freelance work or those working in enterprises may find this list helpful. Obviously, these are the choices we have made; we are not endorsing these particular tools – they just work for us. Your mileage will (and should) vary. We also include a brief overview of why it is important to consider using a tool for a specific task.
Accounting – many prefer QuickBooks. Others prefer Freshbooks. Regardless of the tool you use, it is important to keep track of income and expenditures.
Advice – mentoring is particularly important when you are starting. Obviously, Web Professionals members are here to help. Additionally, you may wish to consider the Small Business Administration and SCORE. The latter provides free business mentoring.
File management – we often work across multiple computers (and need access to files in a variety of situations). We have come to rely on tools such as Google docs, One Drive, Dropbox and similar services.
Graphics and video – we have come to rely more and more on Adobe Spark. It is a free tool and provides the ability to rapidly create messages for social media and more.
Networking – we should not be working alone; it is important to network with peers. We often rely on Meetup to find local groups with similar interests. Our members also know we use Slack to enhance member to member communication.
Password vault – passwords should be long and complex and not reused on various sites. This is why a password vault is so handy these days. If you are not using one, you should be. Examples include Dashlane, LastPass, or KeePass (there are other alternatives as well). You only need to remember one password to open the vault and can then copy and paste passwords for a specific site as needed. We also recommend using two factor authentication where possible (see below).
Portable Apps – when there is a need to use Windows computers in client locations (or you simply want to take your browser favorites/ bookmarks) with you from computer to computer, we have found PortableApps to be a reasonable solution.
Project management – we often use Trello (yes, there are many alternatives). Trello fits with our work flows. We find it easy to share boards, checklists and more with others as needed.
Screen capture – we typically rely on SnagIt. However, there are times when using computers while working with clients, we have used Greenshot. The latter also has a zip version (so we can take it with us on a USB drive) along with other portable apps (see above). Yes, you can use the snipping tool (and the Mac equivalent), but tools (such as SnagIt) provide greater control and the ability to rapidly crop and annotate the screen capture.
Sharing/ collaborating – we typically use Connect and Zoom. There are many alternatives as well, such as Join.me. The advantage of using these tools (in addition to collaboration) is that you can record your screen (with narration) and use these for training, demonstrations and more.
Time tracking – Toggl is what we use to keep track of time spent on various activities. It is important to measure how much time you are spending on various tasks and projects.
Two factor authentication – Passwords are no longer enough to provide access to sites. We recommend using two factor authentication where possible. Google Authenticator, Duo, and Microsoft Authenticator are examples. The SANS OUCH newsletter provided a timely overview of 2 factor authentication recently. Disclosure, I (Mark) am one of the reviewers of that newsletter.
WordPress site management – if you are running multiple WordPress sites (and roughly 1/4 of all sites in the U.S. these days are based on this technology), you might want to consider using ManageWP. This is a freemium service offered by GoDaddy. It has a number of useful features in the free version (and you can get site monitoring for a nominal amount per site per month). This can save you a lot of time updating plugins, dealing with SPAM and more.
This is our list of tools that we often use. What did we forget? What tools in the above list do you use? Do you have alternative tools you prefer? Why do you prefer those? We look forward to your comments and further discussions. Let us know if you would like to have a separate Slack channel devoted to tools as well.
Web professionals should be aware of this discussion concerning Web Typography & Layout: Past, Present, and Future. As a web professional, it is important to know what the future holds.
Key takeaways include:
how to avoid being overwhelmed by all the tools and typefaces available today. We need to think of typography and layout as one.
how to move away from frameworks and bring creativity back into layout. We should focus on larger type and readable layout, including proper use of whitespace.
we should help the reader feel like a collaborator.
Three experts—Mozilla’s Jen Simmons, publication design legend Roger Black, and Jeffrey Zeldman (A List Apart)—discuss typography and layout on today’s web: where we are now, and where we’re going. CSS grid can be a very helpful tool. Jen Simmons provides a number of examples on her labs.jensimmons.com site.
Typography can encourage long-form reading and not just scanning.
What are the most exciting areas of cutting-edge experimentation in typographic technology and digital layout, and what new skills will we need to design tomorrow’s web content? At a minimum, we should understand CSS grid and variable fonts and how they can be properly applied. Layout and typography were connected in the age of metal type, and they will be again. We must make our pages readable and employ the time tested skills that were employed by typesetters so long ago. We should think in terms of properly sized type (which is responsive given that our content may be consumed on phones, tablets, desktops, or other devices).
This discussion also reviews the history of layout on the web, and what multi-device reading and orbital publishing means to the practice of publication design as we move away from frameworks. We need to bring creativity back into layout (including layouts that break the mold). We must fully understand the implications of CSS Grid and its portents and help the reader feel like a collaborator. There is a new wave of user customization, and we need to understand how it impacts our designs.
Earlier this year, I had the distinct honor of speaking with Christopher Schmitt about SVG (especially SVG filters). In this 6 minute overview, he discusses why these are important to web professionals everywhere. The full discussion is available to our members (once you login, scroll down to find the link).
Some of the sites mentioned by Christopher in this interview include the following:
ColorFuzz.com (to test a site’s support for color blindness)
Mark DuBois
Executive Director and Community Evangelist
For those who are interested in a transcript of this interview, we provide the following:
[Mark DuBois] I’m speaking with Christopher Schmitt today. Christopher thank you so much for taking the time to be with us and to help web professionals better understand SVG filters.
To use an anology – they are similar to CSS rules; they can enhance text and images and so forth but I know that is an over simplification. Could you help our listeners better understand the technology please.
[Christopher Schmitt] I’ll be happy to. Thanks for having me on Mark.
With SVG filters, I think your analogy is good except that with SVG filters you to actually create a SVG file (which is pretty easy to do) and then you can associate that to an image and apply filters to that. What I really like about it is that you can apply SVG filters to almost any web element you have on the page like a div or the whole page, that is where the power of SVG applies. You can expand to more and more things. Ok.
[Mark] Thank you very much for that. What’s happening with them today? What’s the future looking like with respect to SVG filters. I know you’ve been doing some things recently.
[Christopher] This week my company Environment for Humans we did an online SVG conference are with seven speakers with wide ranging topics. You wouldn’t expect to have an all day conference on jpeg. But you could if you want to be ultra nerdy about it, but just for practical purposes of SVG. We had talks about SVG animation and are we talked about some responsive logos where you actually create a logo that is like a vector image a word type of logo mark. A prime example is like Disney’s castle logo that you see at the beginning of every movie that they do with a simple two color inclusion and the words Walt Disney underneath. One example that always been shown around is that if you have a browser fully expanded you shorten the browser and the castle goes away and you see the words Walt Disney you shorten the browser more and you just see that trademark script D from Disney’s name no matter what size your viewport is, you actually see the Walt Disney trademark.
That’s a great thing you can do to deal with the flexible nature of responsive web design where you have to deal with a lot of the not just resolution independence that you need (because of browser resolutions retina and all that), but you also have to deal with connectivity of the Internet too. Some people have very slow connections to the Internet so you don’t want to be throwing down a lot images for one logo. An example too, we also did stuff with the work flows with Sketch app which is a nice alternative to Illustrator and it’s also great for making wireframe mockups. There is not a lot out there in terms of dealing with Sketch and dealing with SVG exports and high upper level things like that too. There are a lot of things we can do with SVG. I have fun geeking out. There are so many things you can do with it.
[Mark] Definitely, I think the idea that it’s a vector based is very helpful today with all the different resolutions out there. It seems (in my view of the world) a pixel is no longer a pixel. With respect to SVG and filters and so forth why should practicing web professionals care? Why should they be interested in this today other than what you just talked about?
[Christopher] What I like about it is we can jettison Photoshop in some ways to do simple digital imaging effects. So, if you wanted to do a sepia tone, you can do that with SVG filters and can reuse over and over again without having to go back into Photoshop. One example I love was a few years back, Andy Clarke had this great example of making a print style sheet and use CSS filters for converting images to the black and white so when they printout it wouldn’t use color ink which is expensive, so you conserve it. He also did that to old versions of IE so you get a generic black and white version of it (which was pretty funny), but you can also do it with SVG to create images.
There is a kind of filter you can use called color matrix and you can do a whole lot of cool things with it. Before I get to that, I want to say that I’m an old guy in terms of the web. Been on the web since 1993 and I love Photoshop, so when I say get rid of Photoshop, it saddens me to say that. I have been working with Photoshop since version 1.5.
[Mark] Is there anything else you’d like to share with web professionals about this or other technologies, Christopher?
[Christopher] I have a weekly newsletter, I started this year, it’s called UXDesignNewsletter.com. Every week I send out a list of resources at least 10 plus more. That I think are really great. It comes out every Monday. If you want to sign up UXDesignNewsletter.com.
[Mark] Fantastic! We will put the link out there and encourage our members to sign up or anyone else listening to this as well. Christopher, thank you so much for taking the time today in helping us better understand what’s going on in the world of SVG, SVG filters ad more. Thank you again.
The following material was provided by Helen Miller (TemplateMonster). We thought Web Professionals should be aware of this new marketplace.
TemplateMonster has over 15 years of experience, and offers a ‘boundless ocean’ of wordpress themes and 60,000 templates holding the promise of making users’ lives easier and more enjoyable. Having the right business wordpress theme can jump start any project and save you a tremendous amount of time and effort. As of now, TemplateMonster has become a digital marketplace and welcomes talented vendors from all over the world.
So, what’s the idea behind the digital marketplace? That’s simple as that. This marketplace is the right place where even a beginner can start earning their first $1,000 with the focus on what matters. Starting a business is challenging, but the digital marketplace opens a new world of possibilities. For more experienced web developers this means a way to a more recognizable and reputable business with an income up to $10,000. It still makes sense if you’re looking for opportunities to increase your revenue streams and to earn extra money. How about earning up to 70% commission from each sale of your digital product?
Why is This Important to Web Professionals?
Important thing is that both beginners and professional web developers can benefit from becoming a vendor on TemplateMonster digital marketplace. Simply put, this marketplace is a huge platform that gathers together the most skilled and talented professionals from the web development industry in a single place. What’s more, depending on the earnings a vendor wishes to get, he can sell either exclusive or non-exclusive products. So, if you’re a professional web developer willing to go any length to achieve your goal, get up to 70% commission from each sale for your exclusive products. Here’s a head’s up for you – it’s worth doing it for the long run.
Top Reasons to Become a Vendor on TemplateMonster Digital Marketplace
Everything in this world has a reason and that reason has a purpose. With a great purpose to help gifted web developers to succeed, there’s a number of reasons why to join the digital marketplace. Since it offers a leeway for gaining the attention, getting a wider customer reach, and making your name more recognizable for the audience, don’t waste your valuable time and become a vendor today.
So, what’s the cut for a vendor?
Once you become a vendor, you get one account for selling both exclusive and non-exclusive products. (In comparison, on Theme Forest vendors can sell either exclusive or non-exclusive products.)
It takes 12 hours for a digital product to be reviewed, 1-3 days for more complex digital works. (2 weeks is an average time on ThemeForest.)
No limitations on the number of products to upload or send for review at once. (On ThemeForest, a vendor can upload 1 product to one category at once.)
With a ’Quick Start’ a vendor can earn higher commission from each sale faster.
With the ’Ticket System’ a vendor can get quick responses from the Review Team.
The ability to assign more than 1 category to the digital products.
No location restrictions. Net15 payments should be enough.
How to Become a Vendor on TemplateMonster Digital Marketplace
Here are 4 basic steps needed to become a vendor on this digital marketplace.
Sign in the author application. Here, you need to specify what types of digital products you create and whether you’d like them to be sold on the marketplace.
Get in touch with the personal manager. No worries, the personal manager will take care of all the organizational issues, clarify the details about the files you submit and the way you’d like to cash your earnings.
Once the product page is designed, you’ll receive an email notification.
Start earning money. Receive earnings from the themes sod on a monthly basis.
Why Does It Matter Now?
Start with the experience and interests you can’t get enough. Become a vendor on the digital marketplace to make more money and receive top rankings from the clients. However, it’s important to note, your earnings directly depend on the quality of the themes you sell. That’s right. The better the product you sell, the bigger the chance to earn more income. What’s more, each item can be rated and commented by a client. This may leave the more positive feedback and higher ratings.
Don’t waste your valuable time and promote your themes. Here’s a head’s up for you – TemplateMonster is known for its seasonal promo campaigns and discounts. Thus, if you’re really serious about making money as a professional web developer, decide whether you want those discounts to be applied to your digital products or let them stay available at the regular price. Still, you can promote your digital products through multiple venues like a personal blog, social media, affiliate program, or site. Choose your way to winning the battle for attention.
Since TemplateMonster digital market accepts both exclusive and non-exclusive digital products, the vendor is responsible to decide whether to sell it exclusively at TemplateMonster and get up to 70% commission from each sale, or on other sites also and get 40% commission maximum. That’s an issue worth thinking about, isn’t it?
Besides, take time to learn the types of digital products allowed submit to the digital marketplace.
Why Should a Web Professional Take Advantage of These Offers/Opportunities?
If you’re a professional web developer, you have no room for error. Take a chance to expand your client base and boost your earnings. Once you become a vendor on the digital marketplace, a team of marketers, designers, and coders will review your digital product. If built properly in accordance with the requirements explained in the ’Vendor Agreement’, you’ll be suggested with the lowest and the highest cost of the digital product. However, as a vendor, you can adjust it within a 15% price range.
The best part is that in case you face any hurdles, your personal advisor will never leave you alone. With your personal advisor, you can get rid of all that worries.
If you’re passionate about what you do and excited about how you do it, get involved and become a vendor. With the human desire to grow, there’s always room for improvement. Taking advantage of the opportunities the digital marketplace offers can enhance your career and achieve your leadership goals.
The bottom line is that you have a choice. Grab the moment to get involved in TemplateMonster’s staggeringly powerful collection of beautiful website templates. Take your business to new heights.
This guest post was created by Helen Miller (Marketing Manager at Template Monster). Many thanks to Helen for making this available to our readers.
Not all the content of an HTML page is visible to end users. Metadata that reside in the webpage’s header is visible to search engine crawlers (and others who view the source code). Nevertheless, it’s still important for you as a part of the on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization). In this article I give a brief characteristic of the most frequently used metatags and determine their role in on-page SEO in 2017.
What is Metatag?
Metatag is an HTML tag that is situated in the webpage’s header and provides crawlers with the information about the information, presented on the page. Metadata is meant to specify post description, author, date of publication and other relevant information that’s useful for crawlers.
Notwithstanding the fact that all modern browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and IE, support metatags, not all the metatags are actually attended to by the search engines. The reason for this is that Internet space has evolved over time, and some metatags that were abused by spammers in the past, are now ignored by crawlers, and do not affect your page’s ranking.
What are Most Used Keywords and How to Optimize for Them?
In this article, we’ll speak about the three most important metatags, such as Title, Description and Keywords metatags. Let’s look into them one by one and determine their optimal length, examine their examples and go for tips on how to optimize for them to maximally boost your on-page SEO.
Make Your Statement: Title Tag
Title tag is not metadata per se, although it’s specified in the website’s header. Title tag is visible not only to crawlers, but to website users as well, which makes it double important. First of all, people searching for a certain keyword see what’s specified in your title tag on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). For this reason, your title used in the title tag is also referred to as a SEO title. Secondly, SEO title appears in your browser window’s header on the tab that stands for opened page. Lastly, it gets displayed in social networks when your post gets shared.
SEO title is very important in decision-making process of potential website guests. It’s the boldest text displayed in your SERP entry. Moreover, crawlers do attend to it and will display your website’s page based on the keywords that your SEO title contains. The closer the keyword to the beginning of the title, the more likely it’s to be displayed.
How Does It Look from Inside?
Title tag is added to the head part of an HTML page and typically looks like shown in the following example:
CMS engines tend to make your life simpler (which is not always desired) and form the SEO title automatically based on the provided page title. This is often not what you desire. To get the desired, optimized SEO title, you’ll have to resort to one of the useful (in many ways) SEO plugins, e.g. Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress.
With this plugin you get an opportunity to point a SEO title that’s optimized for certain keywords and boost your on page SEO by this.
How to Optimize Your Title Tag?
The main tips that concern your title tag optimization are the following:
Length: the optimal length of a title tag is 50 – 60 characters (including spaces). Do not exceed this limit as your title will be cut off by search engines. Do not be too concise: use your chance to use your limit of 50 – 60 characters to the fullest.
Placement of a keyword: your focus keyword should be shifted to the beginning of the title; then come the least important words.
Use unique title tag: your title tag should be unique for every page on your website. Do not duplicate your title tags for max SEO impact.
Mind relevance: watch out you title tag’s relevance. If Google or other search engine would deem your title tag irrelevant, they’ll replace it with an automatically generated one that would hardly be as good as your coined one.
Avoid keyword stuffing: if your repeat your keyword over and over or stuff your title with multiple keywords, search engines would penalize you for such a practice, so avoid it.
Make your article title different from SEO title: this is your extra chance to rank for different keywords with one post.
Let’s now review an example of how these tips can be used in practice:
In our case the focus keyword is ‘best burgers in London’. The SEO title of an article was optimized in the following way:
This is a very well-optimized title as it starts with the focal keyword that is then followed by a very appealing headline that uses ‘buns’ instead of ‘burgers’ to avoid repetition. The SEO title fits into the maximum length of the title tag, so the title is not cut off on the SERP.
To learn more about how to optimize meta tags in WordPress themes, check out the following video-tutorial by TemplateMonster, one of the leading template providers on the market:
What Your Article Is About: Description Metatag
Description metatag is used to provide a brief description of your page’s/post’s content to crawlers, so that they know what your page/post is about. A well-written description is often displayed by search engines on the SERP, so users may read it and make a decision whether to open your website based on it. If a search engine finds your meta-description not good enough, it will replace it with text snippets from your article on the SERP.
Google has recently stated that it does not rank pages for keywords used in the meta-description. However, it’s still important for your on page SEO as it does tell the search engines what your content is about (and helps them make a decision whether to crawl the page further), and, if displayed, influences user’s decision making process on SERP, thus, influencing your click-through rates.
How Does It Look in HTML?
Description metatag has the following look in HTML:
How to Optimize Description Metatag?
Follow the tips below to get a concise and informative meta-description:
Length: limit your meta description to no more than 155 characters. Search engines can display only a limited number of words on the SERP. If your meta-description is longer than this, it will be cut off in the middle of what you have to say. I bet this is not a desired result.
Include a CTA: if you want your description to work better for you on the SERP, add a short CTA (Call To Action) to it. ‘Read more’ or ‘Find out more’ would suffice.
Use a unique description: go for a description that has not been already used, otherwise you may run into serious duplicate content issues and your content will be ignored by search engines.
Include keywords anyway: although Google doesn’t rank for keywords in meta-description, they are highlighted in bold on the SERP. This means that users will pay more attention to your SERP entry if you include a keyword to your article. See an example below:
They Are Still There: Keywords Metatag
I may say that currently Keywords metatag is passé and is completely ignored by search engines (except for Bing that looks on them just with the purpose of penalizing spammy websites). How did this happen?
As keywords are the core of search on the net, Keywords metatag became an easy abuse target. In the past, website owners, eager to boost their SEO rank and traffic, ‘stuffed’ absolutely unrelated (but popular on the net) keywords for their article. For instance, they inserted ‘Rihanna’ as a keyword to a page about spare parts and fooled search engines by this.
At present, search engines got wiser, and completely abandoned Keywords metatag to avoid all sorts of ‘keyword stuffing’.
How Does This Metatag Look in HTML?
Keywords metatag has the following appearance in an HTML document:
How to Optimize for Keywords Metatag?
There is no need to care for this metatag any more. Some SEO experts say it’s totally OK to leave it out completely, others advice to still go for a couple of keywords, ‘just in case’. It’s up to you whether to provide keywords in this metatag or not, but don’t ponder over this question too long.
Conclusions
To boost your on page SEO, its important to pay careful attention to such page head elements as title tag and meta-description. Make sure you use your focal keyword in these elements and keep close to the max length limit for the elements, but do not exceed it. Regarding Keywords metatag, it’s kind of passé, so the need for its even minimal optimization is dubious.
If you want to learn more about SEO optiomization of a website, get hold of the following insightful free e-book:
