Digital Amuse-Bouche: April 2016
I’m trying this new thing I’m dubbing Digital Amuse-Bouche, a monthly curation of some favorite articles/reviews. A vote, if you will, for work I find intriguing, fresh, educational, inquisitive, or inspirational.
Digital, because that’s what I’m writing about. Amuse-bouche because it’s one of my favorite words I learned as a loyal fan of Top Chef. Literally translating to, “entertain the mouth,” amuse-bouche means a bite size of something, just enough to give you a taste or a glimpse of some culinary genius. So basically, I’m giving you delightful, appetizer-sized digital nuggets every month.
Fair warning, this will be heavy on SEO, but to me that just means a lot of user experience, content, digital design, etc… all of which contribute to SEO success.
Onward, to the first edition:
- The Joy of Micro UX: 18 Delightful Examples – a selection of tiny interactions designed to delight but also be helpful (imagine that!). Things like autofill suggestions, adorable animations that are triggered by the user’s input, visual indications that a user has already visited some piece of content. https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/07/the-joy-of-micro-ux-18-delightful-examples/
- How to Create Infographics that Drive Traffic – infographics used to be all the rage. Lately, not so much. This art form has seen some beautiful visualizations, but also some pretty crappy ones. Here are some tips on how to create an infographic that is both visually stimulating and actually informative. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/essential-guide-creating-infographics-drive–traffic/158281/
- SEO experiment to make titles stand out in Google results – Check out the top result on this page to see what I mean. Would that entice you to click? Here’s the really quick writeup: https://www.seroundtable.com/utf-8-characters-in-title-tags-google–21950.html
- Intersection of SEO and UI Goals for Mobile Users – More than half of all Google searches are from mobile devices. Largely in response to this trend, Google updated its algorithm to incorporate “mobile friendliness” as a ranking factor. Things like page load time, designs that don’t require pinching the screen just to read or click a link, etc. This is just further proof that success in search hinges on collaboration between SEO and UX experts. https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/26/the-convergence-of-seo-and-ui-goals–for–mobile–users/