This edition of DTG’s Web Design Update helps close out the year with some sage advice, and a look at some new developments in the web designer’s world! Follow along :
[] The First Look at How Google’s Self-Driving Car Handles City Streets
[] Google Action Against Pregnancy Center Ads Stirs Confusion
[] 9 Simple Tips for Making Your Website Disability-Friendly
[] 7 Tips to Ensure Your SEO Strategy Supports Your Brand
[] In Google Authorship, the ‘Who’ Overtakes the ‘Where’
[] The art and science of great website color selection
[] Five SEO Steps to Take Before Redesigning Your Site
…. and the continuing online world
This edition of DTG’s Web Design Update helps close out the year with some sage advice, and a look at some new developments in the web designer’s world! Follow along :
[] The First Look at How Google’s Self-Driving Car Handles City Streets
[] Google Action Against Pregnancy Center Ads Stirs Confusion
[] 9 Simple Tips for Making Your Website Disability-Friendly
[] 7 Tips to Ensure Your SEO Strategy Supports Your Brand
[] In Google Authorship, the ‘Who’ Overtakes the ‘Where’
[] The art and science of great website color selection
[] Five SEO Steps to Take Before Redesigning Your Site
…. and the continuing online world
Five SEO Steps to Take Before Redesigning Your Site
Key reasons for a site redesign … Five essential steps to prevent post-redesign SEO losses … Why do people redesign their websites? Reasons are abundant, and here is a list of the most common ones. Modern look: You don’t want you site to look outdated, so from time to time you brush it up in line with the latest trends
More trust in the brand
Growing needs
Higher conversion rate
Increased user engagement
Better SEO and navigation
Do’ya feel lucky? Do’ya? 
Full story : Aleh Barysevich writes for Marketing Profs
Google Action Against Pregnancy Center Ads Stirs Confusion, But Does Not Signal Preference Or Policy Change
You may have read that some paid ads by pro-life oriented crisis pregnancy centers have been removed by Google after pro-choice political advocacy group NARAL claimed credit for getting the ads banned, as reported by the Washington Post. In reaction, outlets on the pro-life side have cried foul with headlines like “Google Bans Ads From Pregnancy Centers After Lobbying From ‘Pro-Choice’ NARAL” of abortion.
Google’s official response to the issue has been, “We’re constantly reviewing ads to ensure they comply with our AdWords policies, which include strict guidelines related to ad relevance, clarity, and accuracy. If we find violations, we’ll take the appropriate actions — including account disablings and blacklists — as quickly as possible.”
… And yet they continue to let the false advertising of the insurance search sites to continue to proliferate. They “continue to review” but they also continue to figure who pays them the most money. Full story : Ginny Marvin for searchengineland.com
The First Look at How Google’s Self-Driving Car Handles City Streets
The first rule of riding in Google’s self-driving car, says Dmitri Dolgov, is not to compliment Google’s self-driving car.
Google’s self-driving car project began in 2009. The vehicle’s early life was confined almost entirely to California highways. Hundreds of thousands of test miles later, the car more or less has mastered the art — rather, the computer science — of staying in its lane and keeping its speed. So about a year and a half ago, Google’s team shifted focus from the predictable sweep of freeways to the unpredictable maze of city streets. I was invited along as the first journalist to witness how the car is handling its new urban lifestyle. Full story : theatlanticcities.com
In Google Authorship, the ‘Who’ Overtakes the ‘Where’
This has been the year of significant adoption and impact of Google Authorship.
Beyond just being a social network, Google+ serves as a platform for authors to verify their contributions to a specific publishing domain. Rel=author markup allows publishers to post an author’s Google+ profile code to confirm who wrote the piece. The two sides match up and voilà! The result is bidirectional verification that an article was authored by a specific person. Full story : Tom Rusling — marketingprofs.com
The art and science of great website color selection
Website designers often struggle over the selection of colors. With roughly ten million discernible colors to choose from, it’s no surprise that the decision comes with a lot of angst.
While some designers have formal training in art and graphics and are comfortable with decisions about color, the rest of us are forced to struggle with it. We look for rules and guidance and are met with opinions and platitudes.Some decisions may seem obvious. Full story : SitePoint
9 Simple Tips for Making Your Website Disability-Friendly
The Internet isn’t always “one size fits all.” Every day, inaccessible web design prevents billions of people in the disabled community from an easy online experience.For those with visual impairments, learning difficulties, hearing loss and more, there are dozens of unique challenges waiting behind every URL. But building a disability-friendly site is a lot simpler than you might think.
Laurence Berry, a designer for UK-based design and tech organization FutureGov who has also written extensively about accessible web design, says the easiest way to build user-friendly sites is to figure out their key obstacles. Full story : mashable.com
7 Tips to Ensure Your SEO Strategy Supports Your Brand
SEO isn’t just about ranking for keywords. Many people fall into a keyword obsession rut and seem to forget that while keywords are important, SEO at its core is about indexation, crawlability, and creating a site that is effectively traversed by crawling search bots.
Many people also often forget how, when done effectively, SEO supports their brand. How your brand is displayed in search, as well as the many other online properties where you have a presence, is commonly forgotten in the race toward powerful rankings for desired non-branded keywords. Don’t get me wrong, I love to see non-branded organic visibility rise, but we can’t forget “The Brand.” Full story : searchenginewatch.com
MORE: Web Updates for Web Designers
And that wraps it for this edition of Marketing Update from DTG.
Don’t forget … we encourage you to share your discoveries from the world of publishing, media, online and creative. Just give me a shout!
Thanks for reading
Editor/Publisher : DTG Magazine
+FredShowker on Google+ or most social medias @Showker
Published online since 1988
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