Wednesday 6 February 2013

10 Tools for Creating Infographics and Visualizations


Hello there! I'm Miranda Rensch, Product Manager at SEOmoz and lover of visual communication. Communicating visually is one of the most effective ways to explain complex concepts and relationships, and can be a great way to explain your services/products and create valuable site content. I often use diagrams and whiteboarding in order to communicate new features and concepts internally with my team.
I've compiled a list of tools you can use to create visualizations, or simply use to communicate visually with your teammates. Enjoy, and feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments!

Tools for creating simple infographics and data visualizations

1. Piktochart

Piktochart is a web-based tool that has six decent free themes (and a whole bunch more for the paid version) for creating simple visualizations. You can drag and drop different shapes and images, and there is quite a bit of customization available. You can also add simple line, bar, and pie charts using data from CSV (or manual entry). You can export to PNG and JPG in either print or web quality. Note that with the free version, you get a small Piktochart watermark on the bottom of the PNG / JPG downloads. 
 

2. Easel.ly

Easel.ly is another free web-based tool for creating infographics. You cannot create graphs using real data with this tool, but its really good for conceptual visualizations and storytelling. It has a beautiful user interface and the themes you can start with are gorgeous. The themes support many common purposes: map, flow-chart, and comparison/relationship graphing. This tool has the best selection of well-design objects (people, a bunch if icons, landmarks, maps, animals, etc.) and backgrounds that I've seen throughout this list of tools. Additionally, you can upload your own images with the free version. You can download a web-quality version as JPG. This tool is still in beta, but it seemed to work pretty well to me!
 
easelly-infographics

3. Infogr.am
Infogr.am is another free, web-based tool with some really nice themes and a great interface for creating simple infographics. This option also allows you to create charts using real data. There are 31 chart options that offer some really cool displays, like a radial bar graph, scatter charts, bubble graphs, and map charts. You can also add your own images and video. When you're done creating your infographic, you can embed it on a website and publish it to the infogra.am site (I wasn't able to find a way to download). This app is also in beta, but again, seemed pretty solid to me.
 
infogram-tool
 
  
 

4. Visual.ly

Visual.ly (I know, these visualization tools love their '.ly's!) has some simple free tools worth mentioning, many of which integrate with social networks to analyze Twitter and Facebook data. You can create fun Venn diagrams, Twitter account show-downs, visuals that analyze hash tags, and a few others, but there's almost no customization available. However, they offer a marketplace where you can get connected with visual designers and motion graphics artists who specialize in infographics. The site itself also has a ton of great info graphics to inspire you or your designers. There is some serious data visualization eye candy in there, people.

5. Tableau

Tableau has some free tools for creating data visualizations. It is not web based, so you have to download the software. Once you do, you can upload a spreadsheet or CSV and create a variety of interactive data visualizations types, including heat maps showing density of an activity by location, Venn diagrams to show associations, bar charts, line graphs, and others. This tool is for Windows only. See Tableau's gallery for examples of the types of visualizations you can create or learn more about how it works.

Tuesday 5 February 2013

Link Building Build Links Like You’re Popular–and Get Popular

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/build-links-like-youre-popular-and-get-popular/57898/

We all remember what it is like to either watch the cool kid in school or even be the cool kid. You remember high school when the cool kid rolled up in their BMW, was surrounded by the most beautiful of ladies, and always threw the most talked about parties. Well, today, you are going to realize how emulating that kid (that you could have very possibly loathed) can be a great philosophy when it comes to building links and reputation on the Web.

Saturday 2 February 2013

The Ultimate Guide to Advanced Guest Blogging

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-advanced-guest-blogging

With “content marketing” being the indisputable SEO buzzword of 2012, we can expect 2013 to see an onslaught of marketers trying to build links with guest posts. The growth in this market will cause some sites to lower their guest posting standards, others to raise them, and still more to stop accepting them altogether. Google will target low quality guest posts with increasing zeal, and it will get harder to see results if the effort and strategy aren't there. We're going to help you combat this by sharing how we got posts up on ProBlogger and Search Engine Journal, and by introducing you to our strategy for success with our clients.

Friday 1 February 2013

SEO Smackdown Round 2: Old vs. New Search Engine Optimization

SEO Smackdown Round 2: Old vs. New Search Engine Optimization

I recently re-read this great quote from a book entitled “Algorithms in a Nutshell.” To summarize, the authors wrote:
“… A good way to solve problems is to start with the big picture… [because if you don’t understand the big picture] you may solve the wrong problem, or might not explore other—possibly better—answers.
I thought that idea neatly summarized the perceived battle between “new” SEO and “old” SEO. Search optimization professionals should know and understand the big picture before they define and tout the “new” SEO.
Instead of focusing on flavor-of-the-month/day/year optimization tactics, what are the big-picture items SEO professionals should always keep in mind? Does each flavor-of-the-month tactic support the big picture… or is it merely a flavor-of-the-month tactic that can largely be ignored or discounted?

Thursday 31 January 2013

The Link Shrink Is In: 3 More Crazy Assumptions About Linking

The Link Shrink Is In: 3 More Crazy Assumptions About Linking

Building on last month’s column, Five Linking Myths That Need To Go Away In 2013, one of the best and worst things about the Web is the never-ending supply of absolutely horrifying bad information that must be clarified. This helps keep people like me in business. I feel like a link doctor. A Link shrink. So thank you to all the folks who love to make completely unsubstantiated claims about links and linking strategies.

Wednesday 30 January 2013

What Skills Do SEOs Need In 2013?

What Skills Do SEOs Need In 2013?
2013 is a lot different than five years ago when it comes to SEO. Think about what we have much more of now. We have social, deeper localization, Panda, Penguin, EMD, and tons of other Google updates. We have analytics certification, we have content marketing, conversion optimization, and so so much more. It is not just about creating as much content as possible and as many links as possible.

SEO Tips: Top useful SEO Sites

SEO Tips: Top useful SEO Sites

Search engines are the most important source of traffics for all blogger, without a good place in Google majority of Blog will never be visited. This is why you mast take same time to optimize your blog by using same SEO (search engine optimization) tips.

 17 useful SEO sites

Why to Choose Dedicated SEO Experts or a Dedicated SEO Team

http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-to-Choose-Dedicated-SEO-Experts-or-a-Dedicated-SEO-Team&id=7088748 Search Engine Optimization is fast growing as one of the most preferred ways of attracting traffic towards your website. However with passing time the complexity in this field has increased and performing an SEO task is not a simple thing to do. Because of this many business organizations are opting for hiring dedicated SEO services because of the benefits it provides to its customers.

Google Launches Streamlined Image Search

Google Launches Streamlined Image Search

Like how Google Image Search works on a tablet? Good news, then. That simplified experience is coming to Google Images on the desktop.

Google Promoting AdWords Express In Google+ As Way "To Get More Followers"

Google Promoting AdWords Express In Google+ As Way "To Get More Followers"
This weekend, DejanSEO noted Google may have stepped up its promotion of its simplified SEM offering for small businesses, AdWords Express, in Google+ as a way to “get more followers.” AdWords Express has now been around officially since July 2011. However, it has seen a number of changes and refinements.

Friday 18 January 2013

Post-Penguin Anchor Text Case Study

It's no secret that Google's Panda and Penguin updates caused a lot of panic. SEOs and marketers were FREAKING out and honestly, I got tired of reading about it - I'm sure most of you did too. Although I'm pretty turned off to information about these updates, I've been really interested in the anchor text issues surrounding the Penguin update. If sites that have over-optimized anchors lost traffic due to the update, it seems to make sense that sites can move up with relatively few (or without any) anchored links. I wanted to test that idea and decided that it was time for a good, old fashioned case study.

Designing the Case Study

Instead of trying to sound cool and acting like I designed a super professional case study, I'll just tell you how it really happened. I simply wanted to know if I could take a brand new domain (with no links obviously), and get it to rank for a decently competitive term, in an oft-spammed niche by getting links (mostly non-exact match keyword anchored) from relevant pages of relevant sites.
Finding the Keyword Phrase

So I wanted to use a semi-difficult keyword phrase that was in a spammy niche. That way the case study would be more conclusive. I looked at a lot of different options for keywords - most of them were in the finance vertical and were based on credit cards, loans, or credit. I decided eventually that I would try to find a credit-related keyword. That way, I wouldn't end up with a ranking for a loan or credit card keyword, without being able to provide the actual loan or credit card the searcher was looking for. Credit keywords, on the other hand, are informational in nature and fit better with the content (which is admittedly ghetto right now) I could produce. The phrase I ended up choosing is '650 credit score'. Using the SEOmoz Pro Keyword Difficulty Tool, the phrase has a keyword difficulty score of 50, which is in the range I wanted. It's difficult enough for a good test but not difficult enough to make getting results impossible. Here's what the phrase looks like:

Setting Up the Site

On August 14, 2012, I set up the site on a brand new domain - Doctor650.com (not going to link from here because I don't want to compromise the case study). I used WordPress as my CMS and wrote six articles about having a credit score in the 650 range. The content is passable but honestly, not amazing. I do know a lot about credit and have improved my own credit score from under 500 to over 800. I was also personally in the 650 range for a while. On top of that I spoke with a loan officer to get information about getting loans with a 650 score. That said, I didn't take 10 hours to write each of the articles. The site design is horrendous (not my strong point).

I'm fully aware that the site is not the 'ultimate resource' on this topic, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the site had 'Panda' issues at some point. My bounce rate is ridiculously high. The keyword phrase I'm going after is on the home page twice - once at the top in a heading, and once as a label for the comments. I'm not using spammy linking strategy inside the site. All of my articles are linked to from the sidebar but I've used anchors that don't contain the exact phrase, on purpose.
Linking Strategy

I wanted to get relevant links from sites that either were exclusively about credit or credit scores, or already had a lot of information on one of these topics. I wrote guest posts for sites that I found in the Finance category of PostRunner (a guest-posting community/portal that I co-founded) as the source of all of the links, with the exception of one link that I got from making a cheesy video that I posted on YouTube (not my greatest accomplishment). This link is of course no-followed like all links from YouTube. Here are the anchors for the links that I used in the case study, in the order that I got them:

    here
    Doctor 650
    my site
    Dissecting The 650 Credit Score
    here
    Doctor650.com
    here
    http://www.doctor650.com/ (no-followed link from YouTube)
    resource on 650 credit scores
    Doctor650.com
    clicking here
    Doctor650.com
    650 credit score

As you can see, I got only one exact-match anchored link but I did get three that contain some version of the phrase.
Results of the Experiment

On Oct 6 - 53 days after I 'launched' the site - the site popped up at #4 in Google for '650 credit score'. It also ranks pretty high for a lot of related terms. It has steadily climbed from where I first saw it (in the 80s) without any major jumps. It's moved a few positions at a time, for the most part. I found it interesting that the site seemed to drop a few positions each time I acquired a new link, and would then come back stronger than ever after a few days. As of today, the site ranks #2 (it's been moving up and down between #2 and #4). Here's the ranking analysis from the SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool:

 As would be expected, my domain is by far the weakest in the top six, in fact it's the weakest in the top 20. The site only has 13 links and they are from good sites that aren't exceptionally strong.
Probable Conclusions

    It's possible to positively influence rankings using significantly few exact match anchored links if they are from highly relevant pages on relevant sites.
    It remains possible to rank for fairly difficult phrases quickly with a brand new domain.

Things I Wish I Had Done Differently

    I wish I had NOT used the main keyword in any of the links. Now I'm interested in designing a similar case study that doesn't use any exact-match anchored links. My thought process in using one was that this site doesn't have the necessary swag to get some on its own but now I'm wondering where the site would be ranked without that link.

The Future Of the Case Study

Right now the case study is in a holding pattern. It's still moving up even though it hasn't had any new links since mid-September (that I'm aware of). It might get to #1 on its own but it might not. If it doesn't move up in the next month or so, I'll get a few more links that aren't anchored with keywords. I'm also interested in expanding the site into a more valuable resource, one that can better stand the test of time. To be honest I'm not sure exactly what the searcher who searches for this phrase wants, so I'm going to have to figure that out. If you have ideas that can help me turn this site into a better resource, I'd love to hear them. You and I both know that it needs help.