43 free career-advancing courses you can take (and actually finish) this summer. Yes, summer is the perfect time to relax and recharge. But, it’s also the perfect time to pick up a few new skills. Put that relaxed brain (and work schedule) to good use! How accomplished would you feel if, when September rolls around, you could open up your resume and add another skill to it? Very, we’re guessing. Before you start stressing, know that we’re not asking you to sacrifice your summer nights to a droning professor, Instead, we’re suggesting devoting a few hours every week to advancing your career with an online class. To make the process easier for you, we did two things.
So, with no further ado, here are 43 classes you can sign up for today. Programming 1. As of Fall 2014, the on-campus version of this course was the largest at Harvard. Level: Beginner Duration: 180 Hours / 9 Lessons 2. This course aims to help students develop high-quality, working software that solves real problems. Level: Intermediate Duration: 16 Hours / 7 Lectures, 7 Labs 3. No programming experience? 4. Title Tag - Learn SEO. What is a meta title tag? A title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a web page. Title tags are displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) as the clickable headline for a given result, and are important for usability, SEO, and social sharing.
The title tag of a web page is meant to be an accurate and concise description of a page's content. Enter your title below to see how it would appear in Google's search results. For the most accurate results, view on a desktop browser. Code sample <head><title>Example Title</title></head> Optimal format Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name8-foot Green Widgets - Widgets & Tools | Widget World Optimal title length Google typically displays the first 50–60 characters of a title tag. Why are title tags important? Meta title tags are a major factor in helping search engines understand what your page is about, and they are the first impression many people have of your page. 1. 2. 3.
How do I write a good title tag? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey & Correlation Data. Every two years, Moz surveys the opinions of dozens of the world's brightest search marketers and runs correlation studies to better understand the workings of search engine algorithms. We gather this data to gain insight into the factors that may help—or hurt—a website's visibility in search engines. This year, Moz surveyed over 150 leading search marketers who provided expert opinions on over 90 ranking factors. In addition, the Data Science team at Moz, lead by Dr. Matthew Peters, ran an extensive correlation study to determine which features of websites and webpages are associated with higher search rankings. Note that these factors are not "proof" of what search engines use to rank websites, but simply show the characteristics of web pages that tend to rank higher. Social Media Marketing Society - Social Media Marketing Society.
Using Search Analytics in Webmaster Tools. Using Search Analytics in Webmaster Tools Monday, May 11, 2015 Graeme Watt After many months of Beta testing Google has now officially launched the all new search analytics within Google webmaster tools, much to the joy of SEO’s and webmasters around the country. Search analytics has replaced the search queries section within webmaster tools which was one of the most popular areas within the tool according to Google. The new shift to search analytics is to try and provide a more drilled down analysis of the search data around websites. I have been playing around with the tool for the last day or so and I thought I would report on some of the new features and functionality that new tool gives us. Mobile Vs Desktop The first feature is one which we could probably have guessed Google was going to introduce and that is the ability to directly compare search data with mobile and desktop, this ties in quite nicely with the recent Google Algorithm update.
International Comparison Search Type Report. Cool Tools. Gar's Tips & Tools - Issue #154 Gar’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales is published by Cool Tools Lab. To receive the newsletter a week early, sign up here. I was thrilled to discover this shout-out from Kevin Kelly in a recent Recomendo.
Maker tips: I continue to be impressed by Gar’s Tips & Tools, a newsletter that we co-publish with Gareth Branwyn. Every week Gareth scours the internets and the youtubes to find practical tips for makers of all stripes. His sources range from weekend crafters to hard-core professional workshoppers, from sewing cosplay to blacksmithing to woodworking. I got a big bump in subscribers after this. For years, I saw other people, like my pal Kent Barnes, recommending alignment dots for mindlessly mating a jack to a plug without having to align the exact location or figure out the plug orientation. One of the most-requested projects I get asked about are DIY rolly cabinets for storing portable parts organizer cases, popular among makers.
Reader Chuck writes: Track Santa 2013.
Fuel the Brain Interactives | View Number Line. Does using stock photos on your pages have a negative effect on rankings? The Hidden Cost Of Cheap SEO & Social Media Labor. Fact: All businesses, large or small, want to save money wherever they can. I understand this. I sympathize with this. What I don’t understand, however, is why so many businesses try to take the cheap route and cut corners in their online strategy— and then are dumbfounded when they get scammed/receive terrible results/get blocked by Google. I know how devastatingly costly it can be to launch, maintain, and grow a business. But there are certain aspects of building a business where it’s never okay to cut corners. So why would you trust your website and your online reputation— the very first introduction your customers will have with your business — to an inexperienced amateur or a too-cheap scammer? In life and online, you get what you pay for. Still not buying it? Image Credit: ByronShell via Flickr What Happens When You Try to Take the Cheap Route 1.
What You Get: Google Penguin. Google hates link spam. Don’t buy your links. 2. What You Get: Google Panda 3. What You Get: Errors. 4. 5. Social Media Software | Catchy Names | Business Naming & Branding | Strategic Name Development | Mobile Apps - Social Media Software | Social Media Tools | Social Media Apps. New Link Maps Feature. New Link Maps Feature By Dixon Jones November 7, 2012 Majestic has just launched a new “Maps” tab on Site Explorer to help you visualize where in the world people are hosting sites that link to any URL, Sub-domain or TLD. A literal “Link Map” if you will. A few years back we ran a competition to come up with good ideas for our data.
TLD hosting of sites linking to bbc.co.uk/news By default we take the top 1,000 links and represent them on a world map based on the longitude and latitude of the server hosting the link. I put bbc.co.uk/news into the system in the above example and we can see a surprising 34 TLDs originating from the Netherlands linking to the page, but only 11 from France. Interestingly, if you start to analyse different pages on the BBC, we start to see distinct differences in the world map. Links to bbc.co.uk/weather How does it work? When we crawl the web, we use an IP server look up system to record where in the world each website is physically hosted.
Are You Still Making These Six Senseless SEO Mistakes? How to Quote (and be Quoted) for Error-Free Attribution. User Experience (UX) Basic Training: Usability Week 2012 Conference. Focusing on user experience (UX) can differentiate a company from its competitors. In one day, we give you a thorough overview of the user experience field and its many components.
You will learn the importance of a user-centered design process and the benefit of incorporating UX activities at every stage of a project. This course is ideal for people who are beginning to work in user experience or have some knowledge of the field. It clarifies what UX professionals do, and need to do, to create good, usable designs. "As a newbie in the UX field, the UX basic training course had both breadth and depth of the specialty making it a great place for me to start. " Melanie Langmead CapTech Consulting Free Material With Course Attendance Report: Return on Investment (ROI) for Usability This 212-page report features best practices for increasing key performance indicators and estimating usability budgets through 72 richly illustrated case studies. Format The course also includes:
Link Building Tool Review: Ahrefs. Ahrefs is a suite of tools that contains “the largest index of live links.” There is a free version and a premium version, an API, and an affiliate program. They have their own index, putting them into the same arena as SEO Moz and Majestic, and they post some useful stuff on their internal blog digest. Pricing starts at $79 a month and goes as high as $499 a month for more advanced plans. All plans offer a nice discount if you pay for a year upfront. Now that the basics are out of the way I have to say that I absolutely love the Ahrefs tool. It’s fast and the graphical representations are very easy to understand (even for a novice I imagine.) In this suite you’ll find a Site Explorer, Keywords Analysis, Backlinks Report, Domain Comparison, Batch Analysis, and Competition Analysis tools. For our purposes here, I’ll be going through the Site Explorer, Backlinks Report, and Competition Analysis sections. 1. The Site Explorer gives you an overview of a domain. 2. 3.
Pros Cons Summary. Why Social Media ROI Can’t Be Measured – And Why That’s OK. “There are things we know that we know. There are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.” When I read this (slightly paraphrased) quote from Donald Rumsfeld back when it was first said in 2002, it sounded like total political gobbledygook.But I thought of it recently in a new context: social media ROI.
“Dark social” eclipses everything we thought we knew about social media ROI. What’s The True Value Of Social Media? Everyone else can keep fretting, but I’ve gotten to a zen place when it comes to social media ROI. It’s a shot to get on someone’s radar and let that person know you’re cool, smart, funny, interesting and valuable to have around. That’s the value of social media – the potential to create a new relationship where there wasn’t one before. Will this warm and fuzzy analogy get you to the bottom line number we’re all looking for? Knowing What We Can Know Awareness Reach Traffic Engagement Intelligence. Add anything from anywhere. Organize all your interests naturally. Explore your community of interests. Share all of this!