Articles Tagged with User Experience

Why I Prefer A Full URL Slug

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Slug!Recently I noticed a difference in the way that the URLs of my blog posts were being generated and presented. Some of the ‘gubbins’ words such as “the” and “a” (I believe articles is the correct grammatical term) would be taken out when I generated a draft, so for example, for a post called “Why I Prefer A Full URL Slug”, instead of the URL being /why-i-prefer-a-full-url-slug/, it would be /why-prefer-full-url-slug/.

I checked my plugins, immediately suspecting that it was a change made to the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast (which is awesome, by the way). I couldn’t find anything related to it in its settings, so I let it go, manually ‘beefing out’ the URL each time I drafted a new post. However, a few weeks later, I checked Yoast SEO looking for another feature and came across this…

Yoast Permalinks screenshot(Click to enlarge)

This feature of the plugin “helps you to create cleaner URLs by automatically removing the stopwords from them.”

In the words of the mighty Partridge: “A-HA!” Bingo. Unticked. Job done. All is well.

Here’s the thing though… It’s ticked as the default, suggesting that most people prefer it this way, and/or that it is the standard as far as SEO is concerned.

Always enjoying an opportunity to be controversial, I disagree!

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Google Help Needs UX Improvements, A Content Audit & A Better Attitude…

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Help Wanted signAs someone who’s been doing SEO and PPC day in and day out for nearly 5 years, I’m no stranger to Google’s Help sections. While there’s a lot of great search engine marketing advice out there on other people’s blogs, sometimes it’s helpful to see what Google themselves suggest and recommend about Google-y things, especially if it’s a brand new feature or a confusing topic.

Of course, the info isn’t just intended for SEO and AdWords folk: it’s for your everyday webmaster (hence why one of their main Help blogs is called Webmaster Central). Your everyday webmaster (definition: the person responsible for maintaining a website) might be an individual working in marketing, web development or IT, however it might even be the business owner his/herself, especially if it’s a small business. Therefore Google should endeavour that all of its information is sorted in the best way possible for convenience and accessibility and that the sections in general are as easy-to-use as possible in order to reduce frustration.

…But that’s simply not the case.

What Google Help needs is:

  • UX (user experience) improvements,
  • A content audit, and
  • A better attitude…

Why UX improvements?

I had an incident recently that just screamed ‘frustrating user experience’ when I tried to contact the Google AdWords Help team, who – in their own words – are “here” and “love to help.”

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SEOno News & GB Posts: Part 2

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Following on from last time, just a quick update…

News

I finish my coursework at the end of this month, after which I’ll finally get on with the site redesign. I’m serious. I’m not kidding! I’ve been talking about it for well over a year, so it’s about bloody time I got it sorted. Seriously though, I’m marking it as a priority from September, even at the expense of writing less content until I get it done.

Speaking of content, I have some great posts lined up. I’m in the process of asking for people’s comments for a post relating to online marketing for live music, which will probably end up being one of my next posts. I also have half a dozen or so ideas for content – it’s just having the time write them that’s the issue!

Oh and I have a new job! I started my new role as an SEO Strategist for Box UK in July, as part of their new Digital Marketing division. Exciting stuff!

Guest blog posts

Not really guest posts per se, but 4 new posts on other sites…

Before leaving Liberty, I wrote a two-parter titled ‘What Is Keyword Research?’ The first part covers what it is, why it’s important and how to go about it. The second part covers a few common mistakes people make when conducting keyword research. I was supposed to have another post about PPC appear on a well-known PPC blog on behalf of Liberty, but I don’t think they ever published it unfortunately.

I’ve also helped to produce two posts for Box UK (already)! Before I’d even started, I was asked to write an introductory post, so I wrote a list of do’s and don’ts in carrying out SEO in 2012. I was also involved in an interview on SEO and UX (User Experience) with my colleague Chris from the UX team – we talk about how SEO and UX should work in unison and not be treated as separate entities.

I also have another YouMoz post in the works, which I submitted back in June. I wrote my first one a year ago, which seemed to go down well, so I’m very excited to have another post pending publication. Fingers-crossed this one makes it onto the main SEOmoz blog – I’d be absolutely delighted if that were to happen!

Facepalm kitteh

MSN Fail: Video Of Car Crash Injuring 10 People Is “Funny”

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Ok, so this is a bit off-topic for SEOno, but I’m wondering how long it takes before MSN UK realise the stupidity of what they’ve done and make the relevant changes…

This morning,  I logged out of Hotmail (yes, I still use Hotmail, and yes, it’s on my to-do list to do something about it) and saw this on my screen:

MSN homepage screenshot
(As an aside, I’m loving the juxtaposition of the Sky ad – “dim the lights – for full effect…”)

O-ho, a video! “Car crashes through front of supermarket.” Like William H. Macy’s character in Magnolia! Brilliant. I’m sure it’ll be… hang on…

MSN homepage close-up
Are those people in the way of the car, including a woman with a pram?!

If you are sadist enough (like me, apparently) to go beyond the homepage and actually watch the video, you’ll see it happen at normal speed and as well as about 4 different rates of slow motion. Tasteful.

You might also notice this:

MSN video page screenshot
Can’t see that? Let’s zoom in…

MSN video page close-up
Category: “Funny Videos”?!

Facepalm kittehOh, MSN… That’s pretty bad taste. Turns out 10 people were injured, including “3-month-old baby Tyshawn Davis, who was in the stroller visible in the video and escaped with minor injuries.”

Reminds me of the lyrics to the Faith No More song “Ricochet”:

It’s always funny until someone gets hurt…
And then it’s just hilarious!

At closer examination, it turns out that that “Funny Videos” link is at the top of every video on the MSN UK website, regardless of the content. But still – I was fooled by it, so how many others would be? I’d say this is a big user experience factor: that maybe MSN should consider not showing a link that says “Funny Videos” on a video that clearly isn’t funny, even if said link isn’t necessarily associated with it…

[Itty bitty kitty facepalm image credit: Robyn Anderson]