Writings on web design and higher education from Missoula, MT

Just last Friday I gave a presentation to the admissions staff at my university about search engine optimization, and of course I outlined the ever popular Miserable Failure Google Bomb, only to read this weekend that Google announced that it changed its algorithm to remove the common ones. I had to send out an email of retraction of that information, but I am glad Google has improved its search once more.

As far as I can tell, the extent of the algorithm change is minimal, and only affects true Google Bomb search queries. Linked text keywords are still an important aspect of setting up your site for proper placement in search engines.

I highly recomend going over to Google’s webmaster, Matt Cutts’ website. He has a post on the subject of the algorithm change. Most useful are the comments of the post, specifically Matt’s reply to requests on feedback of rank changes.

I don’t know about you, but when I am testing a website I sometimes find it difficult to find every kind of user that will be using it to test with and get feedback. This is especially true in my field of Higher Education, where the prospective students simply are too young to be in my circle… I usually have to make do with some work study students (whose opinions have helped me greatly).

The types of users I have trouble with are the disabled ones. Not so much the blind users, as I can easily test my designs using a screen reader myself. But the colorblind user isn’t something that I traditionally could test myself, or go back to some theory that I learned back while reading A List Apart. That all changed when I found a great site called the “Colorblind Web Page Filter.” It is truly a resource I can’t be as effective with without.

One thing that I will add as a tip on this is that you can test an image of your design prior to building it (or sending it as a proof too). If only I could find a way to make designing for cognitive disorders so easy.

Tips for a better design review process - Kieth wrote a great article that all designers should read. Nothing ground-breaking, but a great review. I am looking forward to the discussion in the comments.

Microsoft takes email back 5 years - I don’t regularly read this site, but all of us that do web marketing need to be aware of the rendering changes in Outlook. Go figure, as the webmail clients get better, the desktop ones revert. The world is out to get us, I am sure.

Letterpress Squid Cards - Amazing printed cards! My birthday is the 29th of this month, anyone want to get me a package or two? [hat tip]

It’s another year, and another chance to try to reinvigorate this blog. I just thought I would update everyone on what is going on, and what to expect.

Working on new brand

As with many young designers, I am having some difficulty in defining my brand… certainly that includes the sites look and feel, but there are other things to consider as well. Some time in the first quarter of the year, you can expect a better defined northlander.org website, with a clear topical emphasis, and unified look and feel.

Podcasting

I have some new hardware support for podcasting, so at some point in the first half of the year I expect to add podcasting to my lineup. Rather than a single long running podcast, there will be several mini-series podcasts covering specific niche’s.

Topics in the Queue

I also wanted to let you know of some topics in the queue for the blog. I’ll be addressing many topics this year, with specific focus on SEO, Freelancing, CSS, design, and Higher Education web development & marketing. If you want to suggest a topic for a post, leave a comment or contact me via email, or the form on the contact page. I will reward your suggestion with a link in the article to your site.

Also expect a series of focused tutorials, designed for the basic to the advanced users. These take a while to write, so they will be in the distant future, and fairly spread out.

Working on a book

That’s all I am going to say for now.