Analyze

If you haven’t yet, install Google Analytics and track your blog in detail. Which sites refer visitors to your site? Which pieces of content that you’re putting out are garnering the most traffic so you can better plan your future content? Use Google Analytics to answer these questions and more to hone in on how to streamline your site for the most traffic.

Socialize

Connect, connect, connect. Link your blog to active Facebook and Twitter accounts to grow your follower base. Many more people have these accounts than blogs, so this will definitely allow you to reach a larger audience. As you grow these accounts, also consider opening other accounts that will expand your base like accounts on YouTube and Flickr. This will also improve the diversity of your content – see “Visualize” below.

Visualize

Including visual content on your site through photos and illustration can have a profound impact on your site traffic for several reasons. One reason is that visual content engages the viewer and makes your site more exciting. This will almost always keep visitors on your site for longer periods of time. Another reason to do this is that content from your site will appear on Google Image search result pages. This creates another avenue for people to visit your site with content they are specifically looking for.

SEO-ize

Probably the most obvious of these suggestions, making your content SEO friendly will go far in garnering traffic from search results. There are loads of strategies that will make your blog more search engine friendly and differentiate yourself from the pack. SEO Book has some great tactics here that will boost your SEO in no time.

Socialize (Part 2)

In addition to having an active presence on multiple social networks, having a social presence in real-life will also go a long way. See what events are being held in your area and meet up with other tech-savvy bloggers, entrepreneurs, developers and designers to really promote your blog to others who have a strong online presence.

What are some of your ideas for increasing traffic for your blog? Let us know in the comments! 

Simple Reorganization

The new reorganization of Webmaster Tools features greatly increases its usability and overall flow. According to Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, Tools’ features are now organized as such:

Configuration: Things you configure and generally don’t change very often.

Health: Where you look to make sure things are OK.

Traffic: Where you go to understand how your site is doing in Google search, who’s linking to you; where you can explore the data about your site.

Optimization: Where you can find ideas to enhance your site, which enables us to better understand and represent your site in Search and other services.

Another feature that should prove to be very helpful is the new compact layout of the dashboard. As in Gmail, you will now have the option to view the sites you manage in a roomy or more compact format. This compact option should make managing sites easier in general, especially for people who are managing many sites at once.  If, however, for some reason you prefer a larger format, there is an option for that as well.

Site Summaries

Again, very useful for people who manage multiple sites at once, the site summaries feature will come in extremely handy. Upon logging into your Google Webmaster Tools account, you will have a brief summary of the status of all of your sites. This feature will allow you to check all of your sites in one glance and be immediately alerted for problems so that you can troubleshoot more effectively.

Message Prioritization 

Finally, every message you receive will be automatically sorted and prioritized. This will further increase productivity and overall flow of management since your most important and pressing tasks will be given precedent over ones that are less important.

We would love to hear your thoughts on the new Google Webmaster Tools features! Let us know what you think in the comment section!

Plug it in!

The most common form of backing up – simply grab a USB stick or an external hard drive and dump your data. While this clunky method is quickly being outpaced by sexier technology, you’ll have the piece of mind of having a copy of all of your important data right there with you.

Nearlining

A hot word in backup these days, nearlining is the practice of backing up your data to a storage site connected to your computer or in the same network. A service like this can immediately restore files right back into your computer to the exact location where it was before. Some great examples of this type of backup are  Carbonite and Druva.

Remote backup

Remote backup allows your to store your data on a server (surprise) remotely. As unlikely as it is, if something happens to your computer and your external hard drive, you’ll be happy you took this special precaution. Check out Barracuda Networks or Iron Mountain to start backing up your own data remotely.

How do you back up your PC? Let us know in the comment section!

Want us to cover a certain topic in next week’s digest? Tell us in the comments, and we’ll get on it.

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See you all on Monday!

We’ll begin by talking about strategies and products to help you back up your Mac. There are three main ways to go about this, and to be on the safe side, you should employ all of them.

Online backup
With online backup, you can get all your files up and running without any additional software or any real hassle. In the event that you lose your data, you can reboot your computer and start working immediately. Have your stuff saved periodically with automated backups using programs like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!

Nearline backup
Nearline backup means automated backup to another device that is attached or is in the same network as your computer. Nearline backups add some additional benefits to the mix as well, such as compression and incremental updates. Check out these Nearline backup providers that will do a great job at protecting your data: Time Machine and Retrospect.

Remote site backup
Finally, in the event that a tornado tears through your house or a similar geographically-focused disaster, save you data on some servers that are nowhere near you. Although this type of backup can be slow in getting you and your computer back on your feet, you never want to risk losing your data for good. Check out CrashPlan and Dropbox as good resources to back up your data remotely.

What strategies do you use to back up the data on your Mac? Let us know in the comments!

Today we’ll continue our two-part summary post on our favorite posts from A List Apart. Check out these great articles!

CSS Floats 101

This useful post provides some advanced tricks of the CSS trade to show how to create “floaters” that is, a box that shifted to the left or right of a current line with the option of having content flow along its side. Sound like something you could use for your site?

Future-Ready Content

How do you ensure that your content will be able to respond to advances in technology? After all, the internet is constantly evolving and adaptation is necessary. Despite these changes, however, there are a number of strategies to stay on top of your content game while planning for the future.

Getting Clients

Getting clients as a web developer or designer is not always easy. Sometimes you must resort to some classic tactics to get people to seek you out for their projects. This excerpt from Design Is A Job by Mike Monteiro is a fantastic resource for both designers and developers. Try out some of these methods to really get noticed and grow your client base!

Pricing Strategy for Creatives

How do you get the most out of your clients while still keeping them happy and giving them reason to come back? This is a dilemma faced by many designers and other creative types. This post offers some useful tips on how to maximize the quality of your and your client’s experience, from first meeting to final product.

Find anything else on A List Apart that’s noteworthy? Let us know about it in the comments!

Dive Into Responsive Prototyping With Foundation

This post introduces you to the new and powerful tool for website mockups: Foundation. This powerful, yet incredibly user-friendly tool generates just enough code to save you immense amounts of time, while still keeping you in control of the final design. Check out the screenshots below for a good idea of what Foundation is all about.

Audiences, Outcomes and Determining User Needs

This useful post successfully instructs you how to pair the needs of your users with your goals as a brand. While this may seem like an obvious relationship, connecting the two may be more difficult than you would think. This process involves building a healthy conversion rate for your visitors, while at the same time using the collective of their experiences to understand their needs. This information, when applied, encourages additional conversions and the process repeats itself.

A Primer on A/B Testing

You have probably seen many different tutorials on A/B testing since it’s one of the most common practices in fine tuning your CRO strategy. This article takes matters a few steps further by showing you examples of creating personas that fall in line with the metrics of your users, allowing for a more personalized and visual approach to your conversion goals.

Personality in Design

This dynamite post is a must read for anyone involved in the branding business. Using case studies from the VW Beetle to the MailChimp Monkey, this article shows you the vast and lasting importance of creating a (sometimes even anthropomorphized) personality for your brand. Make your product or service really come to life with these great tips!

Click around on A List Apart and see what useful articles you can find! Come across something interesting? Let us know in the comments!

Thinking about launching a site or a revamp of your existing one? If you don’t quite have the skill to produce a look for yourself or want something more unique than a generic template, you’re going to need a designer. Below are some tips to help you find the perfect person for the job.

Know the distinct difference between designers and developers

Developers and designers can almost be compared to architects and interior designers. One’s job is to handle the functionality of a site, the other’s is to make sure everything looks nice. Very few web professionals have extensive experience in both fields, so be skeptical when someone claims to be highly skilled in development and design.

Seek out designers with diverse portfolios

This is one of the easiest ways to gauge if the potential designer is up to snuff to design your site. Don’t look for a designer that only puts out designs that all look the same. Even if that design is the look you’re searching for, the possibility that the designer will be able to skillfully deviate from the style is slim. Look for designers that have a plethora of designs in their portfolio for you to sift through. Chances are designers like this will be able to produce exactly what you want with much more skill and flexibility.

Look for a flat fee for an entire project as opposed to pay-per-page

You obviously want to keep things as cheap as you can, and this is a great tip to stay within the lines of your budget. Pay-per-page developers often end up costing much more than a flat rate project fee. A one-time project fee will also remove some of the guesswork in budgeting and remove some stress.

Check out reviews or get personal recommendations whenever possible

Ask around! Keep an eye out for websites that match the look you want and email the people who hired the designer or designers. Ask about pricing, customer service and the timeline of the project. Also check out online reviews of designers. Finally, many of the biggest freelancing development sites have review sections for your potential web professionals, so be sure to check those out if that is an option.

Look for comprehensive and straightforward proposals

As with any contract work, be sure your designer gives you a comprehensive and straightforward proposal before agreeing to work with him or her. As mentioned above, make sure you are paying for the whole project at once rather than paying per page. Also be sure to have a detailed timeline prepared so you have an idea of the designer’s progress throughout the designing process. In addition, don’t pay for anything you can get for free. Some bells and whistles like “premium search engine placement” you can get for free with Google.

Ready to get searching? Check out these great sites and job boards featuring some fantastic web designers:

The Smashing Magazine job board

Freelance Switch

37 Signals

Do you have any helpful advice for people looking for talented designers? Share them in the comments!

Also, we’d like to thank everyone who participated in our Content Survey earlier this week. We’re still curious to hear your opinions, so we’re making it available to you over the next few days. Click here to check it out.

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HostNine Newsletter: Volume 2, Issue 4

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Reseller Hosting Best Practices

5 Tips For Using Stock Photos

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We’re sure that some of you have a photography budget so that you can pay someone to take just the pictures you need to make the images on your blog fit exactly the way you want them too. For the rest of us, we often resort to stock photos. But even this has some rules the need to be followed. Don’t worry, we’ll guide you through the process.

If there’s anything we miss, or if you have some great tips for using stock photos, please leave them in the comment section.

1. Remember Your Brand
This is the first rule because often we get excited about a new medium, a tip we learned, or an opportunity to try a new procedure. In doing so, we sometimes stray from our original brand. This is something that you should consider from the beginning. If you’re putting forth a serious face for your company, maybe cats in straw hats aren’t the best photos for your column. On the other hand, if you are a fun and upbeat company be sure that the photos you use represent that. Use fewer corporate executives in suits and more, well, cats in straw hats.

2. Use Photos Properly
You know you shouldn’t just grab a photo from a Google image and plop it into your blog, though a lot of people do just that! You want to use photos that have a Creative Commons License. What that means is that, as a photographer, you want to allow people to use your photos but you don’t want companies to be able to sell them. What the photographer does want is credit.

You can find photos with a creative commons license using many different sources. We use Flickr and choose the advanced search options to look for photos with the creative commons license. Then, we just link the photos back to their source.

3. Common License Photos Don’t Have to Be Common
If you need a photo of a monkey, don’t choose the first one you find. Or even the first 10 you find. Dig a little deeper. Most photo sites rank according to popularity, which means that the first round of photos are the ones others are using. That group could be your competition!

Go a little deeper in, find something with a little more individuality. But you don’t have to stop there. Alter the photos that you do use. You can crop them, or change them to black and white. There’s no limit to what you can do. Just be sure to check the license of the photo to be sure alterations are allowable.

4. Make Sure the Photos Fit the Topic
Just because you CAN use a photo doesn’t mean that you SHOULD use a photo. Not only do you need to make sure your image fits your brand, but it needs to fit your subject as well. A confusing picture will leave your readers scratching their heads.

5. Don’t Use the Same Boring Images
We’ve seen enough families running on the beach, or two executives shaking hands, or a woman holding her baby. These images are as cliche as Star Wars quotes. Be creative and come up with something that will grab the reader’s attention and offer a little entertainment value.

Need some more? Here are a few links that will help you!

Flickr
This is the Advanced Search page of Flickr. You can find just about anything you need.

 Creative Commons Search
This site is free and actually allows you to search for photos and music using multiple sites.