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7 Content Optimization Tactics to Avoid Common SEO Mistakes

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help to attract more traffic to your site. SEO has proven to be more effective over time, and the stats bear this out. At least 70% of marketers prefer to use SEO than Pay-Per-Click (PPC) strategies. However, for you to attract more users every other day, you need to ensure that you are using the proper optimization strategies. With digital content increasing every other day, ranking on top search results is becoming complicated by the day. Other sites are deploying efficient strategies in a bid to get an edge in search results. There is a good chance that proper optimization strategies will give you an edge, given the fact that at least 15% of the billions of searches daily are new. Therefore, taking action well in advance could be the secret to getting more clicks, visits, and traffic to your site. Implementing key optimization strategies can help you to attract more visitors, but avoiding mistakes is the only thing that can keep you on an upward trajectory. There are some SEO tactics that you can use that will help you steer away from common pitfalls. Some of the tactics to use include: Using internal linksUsing keywordsTracking progress over timeUsing subheadingsWorking on your bounce rateUse relevant visualsLook for gaps

1. Using Internal Links

Internal links are those that point visitors and readers to other content within your site. When creating your content, you must add links that lead visitors to more information related to the topic. This is also an organic way to improve your ranking on search results. A fundamental mistake occurs when you use external links while you have related content on your site that you can link to. Internal linking means that visitors will click these links and visit other pages within your site. Search engines like Google are also able to pick up the relevance of the article, which helps to enhance your site’s ranking in search results. Using internal links or back-linking to other webpages on your website also works to reduce your bounce rate. It is worth noting that at least 91% of all pages do not get Google’s organic traffic for the primary reason that they do not have any backlinks. In all respects, not using internal links is a losing strategy when it comes to SEO. A comprehensive internal linking strategy steers you away from mistakes like external linking. You should also do moderate linking to avoid cluttering the content.

2. Using Keywords

One of the main aspects that determine rankings in search results in search engines is keywords. Traffic to your site will depend on the keywords you have used. Keywords help to improve the visibility of your content to search engines. This makes it possible for your site to rank when people search for specific keywords that may relate to your website and its content. Source: https://www.cminds.com/seo-competitor-analysis/ When you do not use keywords and phrases in your site, it becomes difficult for search engines to familiarize themselves with the content on your website. The process by which Google and other search engines rank results depends on a process of searching for relevant terms and phrases, and return results based on their occurrence and count. By using keywords appropriately on your site, you avoid churning out flat content that might not get picked up by search engines.

3. Tracking Progress Over Time

It is essential to measure and track the results of the tactics that you apply as far as your SEO strategies go. Tracking progress helps you determine what works and what doesn’t. This presents you with a unique opportunity to rectify faltering parts of your optimization strategy. The digital world is fast-changing. This means that what was relevant yesterday might be obsolete today. This is the case with SEO strategies. You need to ensure that you track the progress of strategies you have put in place, so you do not become obsolete. This will also allow you to improve. A sizeable portion of website and content managers do not actively track the progress of their SEO efforts. This blinds them to what is happening. When you routinely monitor results, it becomes easier for you to know where to work on and where to be comfortable with.

4. Using Subheadings

Web crawlers parse content on the web, and for the process to be easier, the organization of content is key. These crawlers easily sift through broken down content, especially content that has subheadings, short sentences, and paragraphs. Organized content is also easy to read through. This means that more readers will be inclined to read such content, thus improving its visibility on search engines and improving the ranking of your site on search results. When the organization of your content is in a block format, it becomes hard for crawlers to sift through it and readers to read it as well. This works to your disadvantage. Renowned writing services at GrabMyEssay and Studicus also advise on content organization for easier and seamless readability.

5. Working on Your Bounce Rate

You need to create incentives for readers to visit other areas of your site apart from the page that brought them there. The bounce rate assesses the number of users that visit one page on your website vis-a-vis those who visit other pages on your site. Improving your bounce rate is a key organic way of improving your site’s ranking on search engines. Source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/13-ways-to-reduce-bounce-rate-and-increase-your-conversions/ More traffic to your site works to your advantage. It improves your ranking on search engines, and this becomes a plus to your SEO efforts. When the readership on your site increases, it becomes easier for search engines to pick it up and list it at the top of search engine results. Low bounce rates mean that readers cannot get a reason to be enthused with other pages on your site. It could also be a sign of low or no calls to action. These are some pitfalls that can cost you massively as far as SEO goes. Statistics show that the top four ranking factors in search are website visits, time on site, pages per session, and the bounce rate. With these numbers in mind, you might want to relook your bounce rate issues. You need to take proper action regarding calls to action and other elements that could help you improve your site’s bounce rate.

6. Use Relevant Visuals

In today’s digital world, where most folks grapple with information overload daily, many users prefer some visuals to enhance their reading experience. Images help to improve the overall quality of the content. The numbers indicate that people like to read content with visuals compared to that without. Using informative visuals especially helps to improve the quality and the appeal of the article to the readers. For a long while, many users have had a preference for content with visuals. This means increased readership. Increased readership makes search engines to pick up on it and rank it highly in search results. Using light images that do not lead to lags when loading makes the experience even more seamless. Failure to use visuals comes with its costs. Content that doesn’t have visuals gets little readership. It also does not rank highly in search engine results, and if it does, it is the exception rather than the norm. Further, it is worth noting that Google Images relies on images from articles on the same topic. If you are not using visuals, then you are making a grave mistake. This is so because you deny your site the opportunity for more traffic. The numbers show that images are returned for at least 22% of search queries on Google. This means that in this age, you are seriously under-strategizing if you are not giving images a fair level of attention when it comes to SEO.

7. Look for Gaps

The digital field is crowded today. There are probably dozens of articles that relate to what you are planning to write. Some of these articles could already be high on search engine results, and out-competing them would be an exercise in futility. In this regard, looking for niches can be a good move. You might want to explore areas that are not well catered for. This way, the chances of your content ranking highly on search results are high. There are alternative avenues that are arising as far as content promotion and SEO goes. Social media can come in handy here. You can leverage social media platforms as a launching pad. Posting content and links on social media that direct to content on your website can help improve traffic, which can help improve your site’s ranking on search results. The numbers indicate that slightly over 50% of visits from social media sites come from Facebook. In this regard, it might also be a good idea to leverage Facebook in the scheme of things, since the content you share on Facebook could be a pivot towards traffic on your website. Source: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/social-media-marketing-statistics/ In summary, deploying proper SEO strategies can be the game-changer for your website. It all boils down to the traffic. When you set out to create content and share it on the web, you intend to get wide readership and viewership as possible. Therefore, you need to ensure that you use SEO strategies that will help you to outmaneuver other sites’ strategies. Using SEO strategies that have the double effect of improving your SEO rankings and guiding you past pitfalls can also help you immensely in getting the ranking results that you want. Many websites fail on their SEO strategies, and this becomes the key reason that contributes to low readership and viewership, thus poor overall performance. Some websites get their SEO strategies right but end up making SEO-related mistakes that end up costing them big time. Deploying the right mix of SEO strategies depends on carefully choosing strategies based on the content that you write. Read the full article

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10 Best Tools for Time Management

We all know time is money, no matter if you use it for business or personally but this doesn't prevent us from wasting it in the most inefficient ways. Even if you consider yourself pretty organized, you can bet your life you are not managing your time and tasks in the best possible way. Of course, if you don't want to change, nothing will help you, but if you are becoming aware of the problem and are looking for ways to solve it, time management tools can be of big help. There are many varieties of time management tools – from simple To Do applications to complete packages that track every minute of your time. Some of these tools are free, while others are paid but if you are serious about managing your time, the price of the paid ones is not a problem. Here are 10 tools that can really help you use your time in a more efficient manner.

1. RescueTime

RescueTime is one of the most complete time management tools you can find. It allows you to precisely track your activities and see where your time goes. It's a great choice if you spend most of your time on the computer/mobile because RescueTime tracks everything you do – how much time you spent on a task, how much time you were browsing a website, etc. It's so precise, you might feel like RescueTime is your boss! In addition to activity tracking, you can use RescueTime to set alerts, set limits for time you spend on distracting sites, see charts and graphs of the time each of your activities took, etc. RescueTime comes with a free and paid ($9 a month) versions.

2. Chrometa

Another complete time management package you might want to check is Chrometa. It's somehow similar to Rescue Time but instead of a free version, it comes with a free trial only. Chrometa is available for PC, Mac, and smartphones and it automatically tracks the time you spend for various activities – business calls, coding, browsing for fun, etc. This is an application you can use for business, too – you can use it as a basis for billing and since Chrometa has support for teams, you can use it for everybody in your company.

3. Klok

If you are looking for a time management tool for business purposes and the first two applications are not what you want, you might want to give Klok a try. Klok has a free version, which as you can expect is kind of limited in features and a paid one that costs $19.99. There is also a team connector you can purchase for $99.99. In terms of features, Klok is similar to the other two – it tracks every minute of your time in front of the computer or on the phone. What's different about it is that it can be integrated in Basecamp and other team work and invoicing software, such as FreshBooks, Harvest, Paymo, and Asana.

4. Google Calendar

After the three comprehensive time management applications, let's go on with some simpler ones because actually very often you don't need all the features a full-blown time tracking and management system has to offer. There are numerous simpler time management tools and one of the post popular is Google Calendar. Google Calendar is very simple and straightforward – it's just an online version of a piece of paper with dates and times where you fill in your appointments. You can enter your appointments, save them in your Google profile and they are accessible from everywhere, including your mobile.

5. Remember the Milk

What could an app with this cute name be about? If you didn't know it had anything to do with time management you would hardly guess but even if you know, you might not be able to figure it out quickly. Remember the Milk sounds like a good name for a reminder app but it's also cute for a To-Do manager as well. Unlike most of the other apps up to here, Remember the Milk doesn't do a gazillion of jobs. It does only one – helps you manage the tasks you have to do. What's special about the app is that it's available for numerous platforms, such as Android, iPhone, Blackberry, email, Evernote, Twitter, Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, etc. As for price, there is a free version with a lot of functionality but if this is not enough to meet your needs, you can upgrade to Pro for $25 a year.

6. Toodledo

Toodledo is one more To-Do lists tool worth trying. It's free and it has a lot of features beyond a simple To-Do manager. You can also use it to store your ideas, notes, and outlines, even your life goals and see how you perform over time. You can use Toodledo standalone or deploy it on your team's devices. The lists you create are easy to share with friends, family, co-workers and who not. You can also use the Tracker to track the time you spend on a task but if tracking is your primary concern, there are better tools for the purpose.

7. Ronin

If time tracking and invoicing are the main reasons you are interested in time management tools, then you should check Ronin. You can use it to track actual time spent on a task or for preliminary estimates you send to the client to approve before you start work. Ronin is most useful for teams or for individuals who are freelancers/creative professionals. Ronin has 3 paid plans and one free, so no matter what you want to use it for, they have a plan for you.

8. Toggl

Toogl is yet another time tracking tool. It boasts with its simplicity – you just add a new task and it tracks it. The problem is that it's not automated – this is a huge difference for any absent-minded individual who can easily forget to click for a start/end of a task. Toggl has nice reporting features and is available on multiple platforms – Web, desktop, mobile, as well as for teams.

9. MyLifeOrganized

The name of this tool is probably the dream of a lot of people out there! MyLifeOrganized might not make your entire life as organized as you would like it to be but it can certainly help you find how you are wasting your time. This application is a task management tool – it has To-Do functionality (i.e. lists) you can turn into task hierarchy. You can enter the tasks manually or you can send them via email. One of the cool features of MyLifeOrganized, though certainly not unique to it, are the so-called Location Based reminders. These allow you to group your tasks based on the location where you will perform them. For instance, if you have 10 tasks to perform in the office, 5 at home and 2 at the mall, all these are grouped and when you get to the let's say the office, you see all these 10 tasks, then at home you see the 5 that are to be done there, etc. MyLifeOrganized is available for Windows, iOS, and Android. The mobile versions have a free and a paid version with a 45-day free trial, while the Windows version doesn't offer a free account.

10. Nozbe

Nozbe is very similar to MyLifeOrganized. Again, it's a task management application. In addition to To-Do lists, it also has a calendar, reminders, syncing capabilities, integration with popular software, such as Evernote, Dropbox, Google Calendar, etc. Nozbe has location-based tasks and teamwork features, too. You can comment on tasks with text, images, videos, etc., as well as receive email updates on the progress of your team members. Nozbe is available for Mac, Windows, Web, iPhone, iPad, and Android. As you can expect, it offers free and paid accounts.

Conclusion

These time management tools vary in terms of complexity and price. Some are small, free, and suitable for a single task only, while others are full-blown time management packages. If you are a business, time management tools can drastically improve your workflow and maximize your profit. If you are an individual, time management applications might not do miracles for you but if you start using them, at least one excuse for wasting your time is gone. In either case, you lose nothing if you try them but if they manage to help you waste less time, the benefits could be substantial. Read the full article

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Introduction to Schema.org and Rich Snippets

Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process, and it involves quite a big number of variants and factors that you need to consider or take care of. For instance, there are sitemaps to be submitted, crawl errors to be fixed, social networking integration to be dealt with, and so on. Most of the time, there are ready-made plugins and extensions that help you deal with such basic tasks, no matter which platform you are on, be it WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla! However, there is one basic factor related to Search Engine Optimization that rarely gets the attention it rightfully deserves: schema.org markups. Yes, simply by using schema.org markups, you can help your website stand out from the crowd. However, due to its obscurity, not many websites make use of it to the fullest. So what can schema.org markups do? Heard of Rich Snippets in SERPs? Right, that is scheme markup for you! In this article, I will be introducing you to schema.org markups, and ways in which you can use them to boost your search rankings and performance.

Using Schema.org and Rich Snippets

What Are Rich Snippets? So, what exactly are rich snippets? While nearly all search engines have their own mode of operation and each differs from the other in terms of algorithm and search results, there are certain key points which are common to nearly every major search engine on the internet. Among such points is the fact that all search engines attempt to offer the search results on the basis of relevance, which is often decided by virtue of how good or bad the given content might be. Thus, your website may have better content than your competitor’s, but if the search engine algorithm begs to differ, your search rank will suffer. Now, in order to make the SERPs more fruitful and meaningful for the users, search engines nowadays tend to display additional information too. This is where Rich Snippets come in handy, as they can provide extra info alongside search results. Rich Snippets can be of various types: video, people, places, products, events, and so on. Remember Google Authorship snippets (that are now defunct, though)? Those were Rich Snippets too! What Can Schema Do Here? A schema markup can be used to populate Rich Snippets. In fact, it consists of a hierarchy of the various markups that are recognized by search engines. So if you were to write a review about a book, you can use schema markup to help search engines identify the book and its author about which your review talks. So we can say that schema markup is used to “enhance” the quality and appeal of our website’s search listing in results. This has a direct effect over the user experience, as users are more likely to click on a search listing with additional information rather than a plain one. This in turn enhances the CTR of your website, and increases your traffic. How Can Schema.org Help? Schema markup, in easiest terms, is special microdata that is used to inform the search engines about additional information that can be displayed in search results, alongside the usual text and heading. Thus, if you are keen on including Rich Snippets for your search results, you need to employ schema.org markups to inform search engines of the same. In fact, while there could have been various ways to implement Rich Snippets, most major search engines (including Google, Bing as well as Yahoo!) have opted to rely on schema.org framework. As a result, no matter what search algorithm a given search engine is using, Rich Snippets fields are populated using the standard schema.org markup everywhere. Quite obviously, schema.org markup is something that you should seriously consider implementing as part of your SEO strategy, as it can give a big boost to your website’s CTR and overall search engine rank. How About An Example? So, you wish to implement schema.org markup for your website but do not know where to start? Well, there are many plugins available for most CMSs which will help you do just that, but for the sake of clarity, let us discuss the process as if we were doing it manually. We need to place the special microdata inside common HTML tags. Here is how we are going to do it: Let us say our website in question is about a person. This is how the plain HTML excerpt will look: Hello! I am Sufyan, and I like coffee. I can play Chess all day, and I think HTC phones are pretty cool. Now, let us use the ItemScope to add a schema.org category to our excerpt: Hello! I am Sufyan, and I like coffee. I can play Chess all day, and I think HTC phones are pretty cool. The above excerpt will now tell search engines that the given content is about a person. Now, in order to make our markup more meaningful, we need to add extra details: Hello! I am Sufyan, and I like coffee. I can play Chess all day, and I think HTC phones are pretty cool. The above excerpt can now tell the search engines that the text is about a person named Sufyan. You can find additional such properties for the Person type here. Conclusion Too busy to do it all by yourself? Have no fear! Like I said, there are several plugins that will take care of this task for you. For instance, WordPress users can utilize the All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets plugin to take care of everything related to schema.org markups for their websites. Once you are all set and done, you might want to test your markup just to be sure that everything is in order and setup the way you would want it to be. For that purpose, Google has a handy tool to help you test your markup and verify that search engines can properly index your Rich Snippets. That’s all! By proper use of Rich Snippets, you can help your website stand apart from the crowd in terms of search results and improve your SERPs as well as gain extra traffic. Since SEO is nothing more than a combination of several measures to help you stay ahead of the curve, investing some time and efforts in understanding schema.org is well worth the trouble, because it can genuinely boost your website’s SEO ratings. Do you use Rich Snippets and schema.org markups for your websites? If so, share your experiences with us using the comments below! Image Credits: Eyal Sela Read the full article

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Tools every email marketer should have

People assume that email marketing is dead as social media marketing has grown so incredibly over the years and allows for crazy levels of personalization. But having said that, if you look at the real numbers, email marketing still contributes a big number and it's life is far from over. Obviously the preference of the users as well as the way they engage with content has changed with time. To be a successful email marketer you have to get the customers pulse right, and ensure your content is of value to the receiver. It also becomes super important to gather as much data as possible and constantly analyze trends and patterns, to be able to quickly adapt and respond to data pointers. Now it is equally important to have good content and having the right tools and resources. I have compiled a list of top tools for email marketing that includes both paid and free options to help you optimize performance. Free & paid tools necessary for email marketing 1. Testing Emails Before you send out email campaigns it is essential that you test out how the content renders for your recipients and also to ensure optimization. There are tried and tested tools out there helping you perform render testing and making sure that your content creative is optimized for popular devices. The paid and free options listed here allow you to test many clients and devices with the ease of a click. Paid email testing tool : Litmus Free email testing tool : PutsMail 2. Landing Pages A successful email campaign depends on creating a good email journey with valuable touch points for the recipients. Hence is it important that you have campaign specific landing pages to help in conversions. The options listed here don't require you to be a programmer. You can easily setup landing pages quickly choosing from the wide range of templates and integrates well with many of the emailing software systems. Paid landing page creator : Leadpages Free landing page creator : MizoAI 3. Image & Banner Creator It is a given that you need eye catching as well as meaningful images whether it is an email, landing page or a website. A powerful tool that can help you create your own images/banners without being a Photoshop expert, does help. The tools listed here help you create your own graphics using images, templates from their repository or even upload your own. Image and Banner creator : Canva , Stencil Both these tools provide enough functionality within the free tier to help create your own graphics. But you can also make use of their premium images and paid tier, to have enhanced capabilities. 4. Email Automation Email sending software have evolved from transactional email sending to a more sophisticated triggers based automation. In simple terms it means you can configure rules for your campaign so that emails are triggered based on recipient actions like email open, clicks, attachment download etc. There are many players in this space now with differentiators of their own. I have listed out the most prominent two that gives you the email sending core and a bit of everything else Email Automation Software : Mailchimp , MailerLite 5. Email Address Health Check Irrespective of how good your campaign content and plan is, it wouldn't amount to much if you have a bad emails database. Hence it becomes decisive to detect temporary emails and validate emails to remove invalid ones from the list. Some of the services also help to track IP health to weed out spam and scam users right at the source. Email and IP Health Check Tools : Antideo API, Verifalia To sum things up, the core components going into a successful campaign are a clean email list, laser focused messaging, optimized layout and an effective email automation strategy. There are a number of other tools and API's that would let you go pro when it comes to email marketing, but the tools listed above would get you started on the right note. Read the full article

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International PPC: How To Make Your Brand Global?

Do you have a dream to build a successful international business? You can make your dream come true by using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Do you know little or nothing about international PPC? No worries, we’ve got you covered. In this article, we will discuss the most important aspects of international PPC. Also, we will give a few tips on how to avoid common mistakes when building and implementing your global marketing strategy. Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay  Are you ready to take your business global? Before we start talking about international PPC, let’s discuss the reasons why you want to make your brand global. There are three basic reasons to enter new markets: The domestic market is highly saturated. You have no opportunities to grow your business locally, so you have to enter new markets to keep your sales growth.There is a high demand for your products overseas. Consumers are already interested in your goods and services.You have already had foreign customers and want to make your products more accessible to them. For instance, your website is designed to target the U.S. audience, but 15% of your customers come from France. If you use PPC to target the French market, it’s highly likely that you will double your sales. If none of these reasons resonate with you, you should think twice before entering a new market. You should conduct in-depth marketing research and analyze the costs and risks associated with the business extension. However, if the decision to build a strong global brand was a well-informed one, you are moving in the right direction. Now let’s learn more about the peculiarities of international PPC. Start with new markets that are easier to expand into Don’t try to enter all existing markets at once. It will not help you to achieve international success faster.  To avoid mistakes, you should penetrate one new market at a time. And if you start with the countries that are similar to your domestic market, you will ease your way to success. If there’s no language barrier, and if local culture is reasonably close to your own, you will face fewer challenges in setting up your PPC campaign. Let’s say you own a business in the United States and consider two markets to enter: Australia and Japan. Australia is a better option for you because of the same language and similar cultural elements. The Japanese market has nothing in common with the U.S. market, so if you choose it, you will have more things to consider. Focus on localization When it comes to international PPC, translation to a new language is not enough. If you want to grab the attention of the local buyers and build trust with them, you should develop a strong localized digital marketing strategy. Every culture is unique. And the better you understand the peculiarities of every country and needs of local buyers, the better the strategy you will build. The trick is that even if overseas customers speak the same language as you do, you still need to localize your ad copy and be very careful when choosing keywords. Why? Because even native English speakers from different countries name the same things differently. Here are a few examples for you. “If you want to reach local buyers, you should conduct in-depth international keyword research. You should find out how your prospective customers formulate search queries when looking for products similar to yours,” says Hilary Black, a localization expert at PickWriters. However, the keywords are not the only thing that requires localization. If you want your ad copy to appeal to the local buyers, you should also double-check to the correctness of spelling that may vary from region to region. Create a locally informed copy Now let’s talk about the technical aspect of ad copy translation. When writing an advert for international PPC, you should take the character-count restrictions into account. As you know, most of the words have different character lengths when translated into foreign languages. And that makes it impossible to use direct translation. Here are a few examples that demonstrate why you can’t use the same ad copy when targeting different markets. If you translate the phrase “buy now” from English into Filipino, your ad copy will get longer by 12 characters. And if you translate the same phrase into Thai, it will get shorter by two symbols. It’s a challenging task to create a compelling ad copy for a foreign market, so don’t hesitate to hire local experts. Get professional help from native-speaking localization specialists, and then the results of your PPC campaign will not fail to disappoint you. Wrapping it up Do you believe that it’s time for you to make your brand global? Do you have enough funds to cover advertising and localization expenses? If yes, you can start building your international PPC strategy today. Feel free to use the tips given in this article. They will help you to avoid common mistakes and maximize your marketing efforts. Also read How to Use Localization for Global Ecommerce Brand Building? . Read the full article

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How To: jQuery Add CSS and Remove CSS

There are multiple ways to add and remove CSS styling using jQuery. This is a quick tutorial to show you how. Sometimes you'll have a need to, for example, have an element on the page change or disappear when the user performs an action, such as clicking or hovering. These are common tasks that frequently arise in web development. All of this can be achieved with just a little jQuery. If you need an introduction to jQuery, check out this post. We also have an introduction to JavaScript. Using jQuery css() to Add or Remove CSS Let's say you have two buttons on the page and you want them to change the background color of a different element when they are clicked. This is how you do it with the jQuery css() function: The HTML... The CSS... The JavaScript... And the jQuery Add CSS Demo: What we're doing here is whenever an element with the red-button class is clicked, the elements with a class of info-box have their background changed to red with this line: It's that easy. Any CSS property and value can be added with this method. You can also change multiple CSS properties at once, using a slightly different syntax: We are able to modify multiple CSS properties with the click of a button. The red button now changes background color, the color of the text and the padding. The blue button removes the extra padding and changes the color of the text to black. Adding A Class Using jQuery's addClass() Function Now let's accomplish the same task but let's do it using jQuery's built in addClass function. This will require some changes from the start, but it will also allow our project to scale as we add more elements to the page. Our HTML will stay the same: We add two new classes to our CSS. We will use jQuery to add these new classes to our element at the appropriate time. And we have a handful of JavaScript changes that need to be made: We are using the jQuery addClass function to, as it says, add a class to the selected element. In this case we are adding the red class to the info-box element whenever the button with class red-button is clicked. We do the same with the blue-button button and the blue class. And our demo looks like this, but if you try it you'll see we have a small problem: Since all we are doing is adding classes, then each time a button is clicked, a class is added (if it doesn't already exist). This means if you click both buttons then the info-box element will have both the red class and the blue class. Since .blue comes after .red in the stylesheet, it takes precedence, leaving us with a blue background everytime. Let's fix this... Using jQuery's removeClass() Function All we have to do is add two simple lines using the removeClass function to remove the opposite class from the info-box paragraph when a button is clicked. This can be shortened using jQuery's Chaining: And here's our final demo: If you have any questions or comments, please let us know in the comments below. Read the full article

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12 Free PSD UI Kits for 2020

While I know designers who rarely use PSD UI kits in their work – just a sketch of the interface is enough for them and/or their clients, I presume the majority of designers do use UI kits because they make one's work so much easier. If you belong to the second group, here is a selection of 12 free PSD UI kits you might enjoy and use. There are different types of PSD kits and while it's not possible to include them all, I've tried to include kits from different categories, such as mobile, flat, minimal, etc.

1. iOS13 GUI PSD

iOS13 is the latest and greatest from Apple and as such, it is very popular among designers of mobile apps. Because of this, you might enjoy this iOS13 GUI kit. It includes various UI elements, such as quick reply for iMessage, quick reply for Mail, new Springboard features, etc.

2. iOS12 UI PSD Kit

iOS12 might slowly be becoming history but still the majority of devices in use run it, so an iOS12 UI PSD kit is everything but out of date. The kit includes multiple UI elements, such as Menu, Button, Switch, Tab, Toolbar, List, Navigation, Sliders.

3. Android Pie UI Kit

Since Android is the most popular mobile operating system, there is no way I don't include an Android UI kit. The kit itself is pretty good, though it's slightly outdated – it's for Android 9. The design elements are optimized for 1080x1920px (i.e. Nexus 5) but since it's vectors, this can be easily modified to fit almost any resolution. In addition to standard Android elements, the kit includes camera UI with all the filter and setting icons, pixel perfect shapes, and well organised layers.

4. Android 10.0 UI Kit

After I included an Android Pie kit, let's honor Android's latest version (10.0) as well. It's not that there are no PSD kits for Android 10.0 but because it's relatively too new, there aren't many good options. One of the Android 10.0 kits I liked is this one. It includes a number of elements and it's available for Sketch and Photoshop. The kit itself is free but you need to register in order to download it.

5. Flatastic Mobile UI Kit

Flat design is popular for both Web and mobile and this is why I really liked this UI kit – it's both flat and mobile (and beautiful at that). It's a huge kit with hundreds of mobile UI elements – both icons and actions. The UI elements can be used for both Standard and Retina Display. The kit is free but it requires attribution and a link, which isn't too much to ask for, having in mind the hours a fellow designer has spent designing the elements.

6. Robotic UI

Robotic UI is one more flat PSD UI kit. It has been created as a template for a music site but with some minor modifications you can use it for an entertainment, or a tech site as well. Probably this isn't the largest UI kit but it does contain quite a lot of elements, such as media icons, menu, button, slide show, weather, calendar, video, social network, Google map, etc.

7. Transparent UI Kit

If you are looking for a PSD UI kit that is both flat and transparent, here is one. It doesn't have as many design elements as the other kits but it has at least the bare essentials, such as buttons, login screens, homepage, download, even some graphs, etc. You might need to design a lot on your own but even if you use it as a basis only, it's still good.

8. Flat UI Kit

The list of flat UI kits continues with a flat minimal one. Again, there are definitely kits with more design elements than this one but it does have all the basics (and beyond). In my opinion it's most suitable for a blog but you can also use it for other types of sites where minimalism is important.

9. Blog/Magazine Minimal UI Kit

Now here is a UI kit that is especially designed for a blog/magazine type of site but you can also use it for an online store. The kit has all the elements you will typically find on a blog, including social functionality, about us sections, sidebar, etc. The kit is sleek and even though it isn't truly minimal, it's everything but cluttered. On the contrary, there is a lot of air in it because of all the white space the designer provided around the elements.

10. Responsive UI Kit

If you are into flat design, here is one more . In addition to being flat, this kit uses a limited number of colors as well, so if this is something you like, you will appreciate the effort the designer put into creating this kit. The kit offers many forms and buttons, as well as complete pages.

11. Designer Portfolio App UI Kit

Displaying the portfolio is one of the most effective ways for designers to showcase their creative prowess. We have included a beautiful piece on portfolio creation and a list of some of the most popular design portfolio examples out there.

12. Edge Web UI Kit

The Edge Web UI kit is one of my favorites because it is not only very beautiful but it also has quite a lot of elements. Additionally, it can be used on almost any type of site. It's not possible to list all the elements because there are 500+ of them. In addition to this huge pool of elements, it has 50+ icons, 100+ templates, 10 content categories and is vector-based and retina-ready. The best is that all this is free, though you do need to provide your email in order to get the download link. Even though I tried to include a selection of PSD UI kits in different areas, there are many more I couldn't include. Hopefully this list will be a getting starting point for you. Maybe they will have some practical value to you as a source of inspiration. Read the full article

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How to Use Localization for Global Ecommerce Brand Building?

Going global means that your target audience will speak more than just one language. Consequently, you'll need to adapt your e-commerce business. Did you know that: 80% of decision-makers in the marketing community of the US, the UK, France, and Germany state that localization is a must when entering new markets. Over 50% of Google searches are in a language that is not English. Around 72% of users will stay on the website longer if it is in their native language. 78% of online customers claim that it is more probable that they will make a purchase online if the store is localized. These statistics reveal how important localization is for growing your brand in the global market. The relevance of localization is indisputable but the process itself can still be complicated to some. For that reason, here are a few helpful tips that will give you some explanation of how to use localization for global brand building of your e-commerce business.

Explore the Target Audiences

Localization is a form of personalization. It adapts the content to the audience. As in any type of personalization, there is one key aspect – knowing your target audience. How can you localize if you don’t know who are you localizing for? Almost half of US marketers believe that the content they create should be more relevant and targeted localized content that will comply with the needs of different audiences, markets, and geographies. You don’t want to have these regrets and that is why you need to do the research. Assuming that you already know the markets you are targeting, you now need to discover the following: the languages which are used cultures that are present in those areas demographic of your target audience in those countries For example, if your e-commerce store is selling exercising equipment you need to do some research about the demographics of people who make the majority of buyers of exercising equipment in that country. Based on your findings you’ll know who you are targeting which will ease your branding efforts.

Work on Localizing the Shopping Experience

The best way to ensure a good reputation and spreading brand awareness is by providing customers with a seamless shopping experience. Your local customers might be satisfied with your services but now it is time to adapt to the global customers as well. This brings us to the localization of the shopping experience. To localize the online shopping on your website, you’ll need to handle several aspects of your business: Offer customers a choice to browse through the website in their native language (localize the website) Showcase products based on local preferences and trends (check out the difference of product recommendations on landing pages of Chinese Amazon, American Amazon, and German Amazon) Display pricing in local currencies Adapt paying methods to the target market Transparently show important information such as shipping costs, duties, estimated delivery date, and potential hold-ups (customs) The customer experience in their shopping journey is the way they will perceive your business and envision your brand.

Be Careful with Translation

Localization of your content and website won’t be complete without accurate translation. If you make rooky mistakes in the translation, all the changes and adaptations will fall in the shadow of poor translation. How you present the content will help you build a presentable image of your brand. You need to do more than just translate the content word for word. What you need is to consider the cultural context. “The mistakes that are most often seen in the translation are the misuse of idioms, phrases, and slogans. You must adapt every aspect of your content to the target language,” says Amanda Willis, a translator at TheWordPoint.  The quality of translation and localization of content will affect your brand's reputation. If you consider the region's norms and context you will be able to fulfill their expectations.

Use Translation Plugins

Ease up the process of translation by using translation plugins. If your e-commerce website is hosted on platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, or BigCommerce, there is a variety of translation plugins that will help you with localization. Some of the best translation plugins that you can use are: Weglot (WordPress, Shopify, BigCommerce, and others) WPML (for WordPress) Polylang (for WordPress) LangShop (for Shopify) Langify (for Shopify) There are two ways of adding the plugin translation: Through native platform plugins – If your platform has one you can add it without coding. Just download it from the dashboard. Through JavaScript integration – When there isn’t a native plugin, you can add translation capabilities by copying and pasting a JavaScript snippet to the website.

Produce High-Quality Content

In case your e-commerce business offers blog content or some other type of additional written content such as to-do lists, pamphlets, tutorials, and others, you need to adapt that as well to your target audience. Instead of opting for quick translation, think about producing some new content that will be specifically targeted for a certain target audience. Additional content such as blog posts can play a huge part in building your global brand because it will make your e-commerce business more discoverable. To create targeted content it is best that you cooperate with local writers. You can find freelancers for short term projects on online marketplaces such as Upwork or Freelancer.

Localize Social Media

Social media can also help you with building a global brand. Social media networks can spread brand awareness, emphasize your brand's personality, help you create a relationship with users, and increase your sales rate. For social media localization, you can use existing features such as Facebook’s Global Pages or Instagram’s geotags that will attract the attention of the local audience. Another option is to create different social media accounts for different countries or languages. What will you choose depends on the regions on which you plan to spread. If there is a big cultural difference it is better to create different accounts. In any case, you need to respect the cultural norms of the region and adapt posts accordingly.

Some Final Thoughts

Branding demands devotion and dedication. Each of these steps shows you how localization can help you with establishing a global brand. What you probably already know is the key ingredient – persistence. Besides applying these methods you should also perform periodical analysis of your conversion rate, customer engagement, social media popularity, and so on. This will help you to keep track of your activities and make changes based on real results. Read the full article

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How to create a website - Web Basics 2020

Anyone can learn basic Web development skills, even with very little technology experience. Whether you're hoping to simply manage your own website or want to create sites for other people, you first need to understand a few basic concepts which we will run through in this tutorial. In the next part we will explore website building, including basic HTML.

Domains

One of the first steps in creating any website is choosing a domain name. The domain name for a site acts as is its address on the Web. As you may know, visitors use the domain name to access the content of a site. However, the underlying implementation of Web addressing is a little more complex. Website content is stored on Web server computers. Computers are assigned IP (Internet Protocol) addresses in order to connect to the Internet. This includes Web servers hosting the content of websites and the computers accessing that content through Internet connections, for example your own PC, smartphone or other device. In reality, your IP address may change each time you connect to the Internet - this is managed by your ISP (Internet Service Provider). An IP address is a string of numbers. Since it would not be feasible for users to type the correct IP address into the browser whenever they want to access a site, the Domain Name System (DNS) translates between the IP address and a more human-readable string of characters - the domain name. When you type a Web address into the browser, a name server looks the domain up in a database and connects you to the site at the relevant IP address. Domain Name Syntax As you may have noticed, a Web address is made up of a few sections separated by dots and slashes. Look at the following example: http://www.w3.org As you will know from browsing the Web, you don't normally need to add the "http://" part (the protocol) in order to visit a site, however, you will need to include it when you build HTML links later. In most cases you can also ignore the "www" when visiting websites, since the communication between your Web browser and the name server will resolve the domain you entered to a relevant IP address. The main part of the address that you need to consider when setting up a new website is the "w3.org" section in the above example - this is the domain name. The ".org" part of the domain name is referred to as the top-level domain name. Every domain within each top-level extension (".com", ".net" and so on) must be unique. This ensures that when anyone types a domain name into their browser, they will be connected to the correct site. When you choose a domain name for a new site, you therefore need to find one that is not already in use. To use a domain name, you must register it through a domain registrar. You can register a domain name directly with a registrar yourself or can do it through your Web host. Before we move on, take a look at another address: http://validator.w3.org/ This address includes a subdomain: "validator". When you create a new website and choose a domain name for it, you will have the option to use subdomains to organize the parts of your site into logical sections. You can also include sub-directories within a site - you can structure Web addresses to link directly to the files and folders within your website as you will see in the next tutorial.

Web Hosting

To create and manage a website, you need to purchase a Web hosting package. (There are free ways to create a site, but they don't afford you full control over its content.) When shopping for a hosting package, you will see that there are lots of options in terms of the services you can have. If you just plan on hosting a single site, or are looking for a basic service to start learning Web development, you can choose a starter package. If you plan on creating multiple sites for other people as a commercial service, you may need a reseller package. With the advent of Cloud Hosting that enables you to utilize the power of a cluster of virtual server resources, you can find economies of scale i.e. you can host multiple sites within the same account making it easy to manage. Also scaling on cloud is pretty easy ensuring that you do-not overspend on underutilized capacities. Before choosing a host, it's well worth comparing the available options and of course reading any reviews you can find. There are a few basic features to check for in any prospective package you consider. Storage space and bandwidth: Your Web host will provide set amounts of storage space for the content of your site and bandwidth to accommodate the data transfer that occurs when users view it. Support: If your site encounters problems you may need technical support, which varies from host to host but is often available through email, telephone and live chat facilities on the host website. Payment options: You may be able to pay for your hosting on a monthly or yearly basis. Domain registration: Many Web hosts provide domain name registration as part of their hosting packages, including the ability to use subdomains and email addresses in association with a domain. Technologies: Although you may not need it at first, your host may offer support for particular scripting languages as well as the ability to manage databases for your site. Most of the vendors now offer several CMSs, frameworks out of the box or a "single click to deploy" options making the services very non tech user friendly. So you need to ensure the hosting provider is optimized for the technology you are looking to use; for .e.g. Bluehost is optimized for WordPress and is an ideal fit for Websites based on WordPress Site management tools: Other tools you may benefit from include control panels and Content Management Systems for administering the content of your site. If you choose a Web hosting package and later decide you have additional needs, you can generally upgrade without too much hassle.

Web Browsing

Before you start the process of creating your first Web pages, it's vital to understand exactly what happens when someone visits a website. The user visits a Web page either by typing an address into their browser or by clicking a link in another page, including search engine results pages. The Web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari etc) sends a request for the page. The server responds to the request, normally returning the content of the page, which is then displayed in the browser. When the server hosting a site receives a request for a page, a number of things may happen. The simplest case is where the content of the Web page is saved on the server in a file with ".html" extension. In this case the server simply returns the content of the page to the browser. The browser is able to process the HTML structures in the file in a way that renders the content (text, images, media and so on) to the user in a readable way. The content saved in a file stored on the server in this way is referred to as static. In this scenario, the content served to the user's browser will remain the same until someone edits the file and uploads it to the server again. In the past, Web pages tended to be static, but with the advent of new Web technologies, alternative ways of serving content to website visitors emerged. In contrast with a static page, a dynamic page is built when the user requests it. These pages typically use server-side scripting in programming languages such as PHP. When a user requests a dynamic page, a script on the server runs, writing out the content of the page and returning it to the user's browser. The content received by the browser (the client) is typically still structured in HTML markup code, so from the client point of view nothing is different. The difference between static and dynamic websites relates to what happens on the server. When a server-side script runs, it can fetch data from a source such as a database, writing the retrieved data into a Web page. This means that a dynamic page can potentially be different each time someone browses to it. Many automated Web authoring tools such as Content Management Systems also use server-side scripting.

Next Steps

Now that you have explored the basic principles on which Web development relies, you can begin creating your own pages. Some of the concepts outlined above will make more sense to you then, so don't worry too much if you find any of it confusing at the moment. In the next part we will look at some of the ways you can manage your website content and will also get started building HTML structures. Continue To: Introduction to Web Development – Building Websites with HTML Read the full article

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The Art of SEO Basics - Updated for 2020

What’s SEO all about?

These days it’s important to optimize your content for search engines thanks to the ever evolving indexing algorithms. Everyone talks about SEO (search engine optimization), but what is it and how can it help you? A good SEO strategy takes effort and requires long-term commitment. But let’s start with the basics! Search engines want to know which sites offer the best value to users based on their search queries, so they use spiders to crawl billions of sites to index key phrases and better present accurate results to the user. SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your website and content so that it is more easily found by users who are searching for the content you provide. It’s about enhancing your chances of discoverability and not just leaving it up to chance!

The Basics

There are two types of traffic that can lead visitors to your site: organic traffic and paid traffic. In this article I’ll mostly focus on organic traffic, which are the results search engines offer up when a user searches for content similar to yours. First off, it’s important that all pages on your site be optimized for SEO. This means that you need the following at least: Every page needs its own title (in the content you should provide ALT attributes to images, and links as these are very useful for SEO. This would ensure the search engines are able to attribute keywords to your images; especially useful when someone does an image search with the associated keywords) Think about your URLs (use relevant keywords in your URLs, instead of www.example.com/blog/postid=23, use www.example.com/why-seo-matters) SEO Description (you should have an SEO description for at least the key pages of your site, in some instances it is better to leave this area blank as Google will create its own description after crawling the site) SEO Keywords (these are the SEO bread and butter!) Meta tags are important because they show up as your search engine snippet: Search Engine Snippet

Digging a little deeper

  There are other items that have a significant affect on SEO that you might want to think about, you can take care of these items while you are still in the web development process, don’t wait until all is said and done to then worry about SEO! The earlier you start thinking about it in conjunction with your site design and development phase, the better off you’ll be. Items that should not be overlooked: Social Media: mentions and links on social media promote your content, increasing your ranking Laying out your content correctly and using proper

tags and tags where required Provide relevant, fresh content, do not just throw a bunch of keywords throughout your text! Think about your content! Be thorough and detail oriented: use image captions and ALT text. Try to avoid linking to words like Click Here, instead be descriptive and include a call to action such as: To read more, visit our site. Link building: link to other trust-worthy sites that have relevant content to yours

WordPress and SEO

Google loves WordPress and WordPress has a host of features to help you with SEO. There are countless SEO plugins that make optimizing your site easily. Here is what I consider to be the best SEO plugins for WordPress at the moment: All-in-one-SEO-Pack It is one of the most popular SEO plugins and offers a multitude of tools to add SEO title and meta tags, open graph meta tags, XML sitemaps, image sitemaps, etc. WordPress SEO by Yoast This is another popular plugin and I personally use it, so I can really vouch for the reliability of the plugin Schema – All In One Schema Rich Snippets This is essentially a quick snapshot of your page in the search results of the different search engines and sometimes in the News feed of Facebook in a good looking format with star ratings, author photo, image, etc. Redirection Google hates broken links, this plugin helps in ensuring the redirects are enabled at appropriate places. This plugin has been in use for over 10 years and works like a charm, and it's free WP Super Cache This tool helps you cache a static version of you website which is what 90% of your visitor really need instead of processing the much heavier and expensive WordPress PHP scripts. This in turn reduces the site load time and also ensures less database calls are made Once you install and activate these plugins, they will add custom areas for you to update your SEO information. Here is the overview of a post in a WordPress site with the All-in-One-SEO pack installed Post view of SEO categories in All-in-One-SEO Pack plugin Here’s a more detailed view of the SEO section inside the post page: All-in-One-SEO-Pack plugin inside the post page Here’s an overview of a post in a WordPress site with the WordPress SEO plugin: WordPress-SEO plugin inside a post, choose your focus keyword! It forces you to chose a focus keywords and it will guide you on where to place those keywords so that you can appear higher on search results. Using an SEO plugin will save you time in optimizing your site.

Following Through

Ideally, you should keep up with your SEO strategy and review keywords every 6 months or so to make sure they're still on target with your content or service. There are several tools available to help monitor your SEO rankings. But of all the tools out there if you only have time for one, use Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a robust tool that will help you track key characteristics of your site data, such as: Audience demographic (new and return users) How many users come to your site via a mobile device or a desktop Bounce rate of your site (why users leave and which specific page they bounce off of) There’s just one caveat: as of September 2013 Google has started to encrypt organic search tracking. So unless you want to pay to get your keyword data (with Google Adwords and other tools), if you want to find out the search terms that drive organic traffic to your site, you’ll have to dig a little deeper. For example: Look at the top landing pages of your site in Google Analytics Consider using Google Webmaster Tools for more refined analytics Use other SEO tools, mentioned below In case you want to do some more in-depth SEO research check out these tools/services: HubSpot – With HubsSpot you can track your competition, research keywords and review your analytics data via a user-friendly interface. cognitiveSEO – cognitiveSEO lets you analyze your links data, guides you in optimizing your link-building, and let’s you “spy on your competitors and get insights on their link building strategies” SEMRush – SEMRush is a powerful tool for tracking your competitor’s organic’s positions, performing keywords and ad research

Additional Tools for your SEO arsenal

Wordtracker – Discover high-performing keywords SEOQuake – A Firefox add-on that collects search engine statistics Ahrefs – It is a popular alternative to SEMRush and offers a lot of similar tools and features including keywords research, competitor analysis etc Google Webmaster Tools - Google Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google. HitTail – HitTail has a powerful algorithm that reveals real-time keywords used in searches Search engine optimization is a critical component of any website project. The algorithms lay a lot of weight on relevance and trust-ability of the content; which essentially trickles down to DA (Domain Authority) and PA (Page Authority) so building the authority of your site is paramount. You have to get the basic's right and at the same time working on creating quality content that gets picked up by other trust-able sites which would push up your own site's trust-ability. These tips can help you get a head start when it comes to having the basics covered. Read the full article

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30 Sites to Get Free Images (updated for 2020)

There are probably hundreds of sites with free images out there, yet when you start searching for that special image you want to use in your design, you might end up spending lots of time in vain. In order not to waste your time, here is a selection of some really good sites with free images. In addition to sites with free images with some restrictions in their use, the list includes many public domain image sites as well, the images of which generally can be used in any way you deem fit. As with all free stuff you find on the Internet, if you plan to use it for commercial projects, always read the license first because some sites, or some pictures on an otherwise free site, are free for personal use only and/or require attribution. I know, it's boring to do it but this is the price of free stuff.

1. Sxc.hu

Of all the sites with free images, this site with a totally unpronounceable name has been my favorite for years. The reason is pretty simple – it has a wonderful selection of images in almost all niches. The interface of Sxc.hu doesn't look very exciting but this comes second to the rich choice of images they offer.

2. Deviant Art

Deviant Art offers much more than free images. For a designer, this is a site to check daily because it's one of the best galleries on the Net where designers all over the world showcase their talents. The site isn't dedicated specifically to free images – whether an image is free to use commercially or not depends solely on its author, so when you pick an image you'd like to use, check what uses the author allows. Some authors release their images in the public domain, while others don't allow any commercial use.

3. Flickr

Flickr is another popular destination when you are looking for free images. It has a vast selection of images, not all of which are licensed for commercial use. As with the other sites, you need to check if a particular image is licensed under a Creative Commons license and if yes, which version of CC because this defines what you can (and can't do) with this image.

4. Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia is another huge source of images licensed under a Creative Commons license but the allowed uses vary from one image to the next, so again, check in advance the restrictions applicable to that particular photo you like. Wikimedia Commons has images in any category imaginable and generally their quality is good or even superb. In addition to still images, it also offers videos.

5. pixabay

Unlike the other sites, pixabay is an image search engine. It lists results to many public domain images as well. Depending on the niche you are searching images in, the number of retrieved results varies drastically but even in narrow niches you can still find lots of stuff.

6. Public Domain Pictures

As the name itself implies, this site is dedicated to free public domain pictures but as the site itself states, some images might require a model or property release, so check this before you use an image commercially. Most of the images are large in size and with good quality. The site is free to use but downloads require registration.

7. Public Domain Image

Public Domain Image is another site with images in the public domain. This isn't a site with millions of images but the ones it has across numerous niches are of good quality, so they deserve your attention. The size of the images varies but many large images can be found on this site.

8. Pexels

No list for websites with free images would be complete without Pexels. They have one of the biggest collection of curated stock images on the web and is of the most sought after providers for free stock images. They have even started providing stock videos, exciting isn't it?

9. pdpics

The list of sites with public domain images goes on with pdpics. Unlike the other sites with public domain images that have gathered such images from all over the Net, or have scanned them from old sources, the images on this site are taken by their in-house photographers. This gives more assurance that the images are really in the public domain and that they are unique. Additionally, here you can find really huge images, which go well for print, not only for the Web. The site asks for a link back, so if this is not a problem for you, you can link back to them.

10. The Photo Section of All Free Download

There are many nice photos here, though the site is not dedicated to them only. All Free Download is another site I frequently visit because they have many free goodies a designer loves. The quality of the images varies but generally it's good enough for use in commercial projects. On this site I've managed to find many images in narrow niches that were hard to find even on stock photo sites.

11. morgueFile

morgueFile is one of the oldest sources of free images and its collection is pretty impressive. There are lots of large images here and as a whole, the quality of images is more than decent. In fact, there were times when I stocked myself with free images mostly from here, though in some niches the choice is somehow limited.

12. Free Stock Image Site

This is one more site with free stock images that can be used in both personal and commercial projects. There are many images across various niches and their overall quality is quite good. The description of images includes some technical data, such as the camera model, aperture, etc., as well, which is good, if technical data is of importance to you.

13. Unsplash

Unsplash can boast of 325000+ great quality images and they have over 60000 contributors across the world. They obviously donot compare to some of the other sites that have millions of images but they do real justice to the the quality of images that are offered. 8 out of 10 times you would find a good fit for your need here.

14. Free Stock Photos

Free Stock Photos doesn't have the largest collection of images but it does have some really cute ones in many categories. One of the things I don't like about this site is that very often the largest image size is quite small for many purposes (like 800x600 pixels) but if you need it for an online blog or for a site, this size is quite OK.

15. Picdrome

Picdrome is one more site with public domain images. The number of images is kind of modest but if you find what you are looking for, numbers don't matter. In terms of image size the choice varies – from what I browsed I think most images are quite small in size (1000x1000 pixels or less) but for many uses even this size is OK.

16. Stock Free Images

This is one more site with free images but it is powered by Dreamstime. The negative is that you will see links to stock images on Dreamstime all the time, but the on the positive side, the partnership with one of the leading stock image sites is great because the quality (and topical diversity) of the images on Stock Free Images is really good.

17. Free Digital Photos

Free Digital Photos has a huge collection of images but I doubt this will be your first choice, if you are searching for free images because there is a catch. Only the smallest sizes, like 400x300, are free and they do require attribution. If you want larger photos, you need to pay. Still, if you are OK with small sizes and you find an image you like, this site is not totally useless.

18. Open Clipart

There are two kinds of designers – one who like clipart, and one who hate it. If you are in the first group, then you will certainly appreciate this site. Open Clipart is one of the largest clipart collections on the Web. Additionally, all its images are public domain.

19. Pikwizard

Pikwizard has an enormous number of images across a variety of different categories. And apart from the usual stuff you find on most of the free image providers, Pikwizard also has a good arsenal of image editing tools. Obviously they have a free tier that provides you the basic set of features to fulfill the humble needs. But they have a paid version with a whole suite of tools for the users who are hungry for more power when it comes to editing images online.

20. Clker

Clker is another site with tons of clipart and photos. The arrangement of stuff is somehow peculiar – they do have topical categories but many images are classified under a color category (i.e. pink, red, green, etc.), which is cute, if you are more interested in the color of the image than in its contents and not so cute otherwise. Aside from this, Clker is a great site with lots of unique images.

21. Reusable Art

Reusable Art is full of vintage stuff - free drawings, paintings, and illustrations from old print materials. Many of the images there are more than a century old but they are still usable. Again, if you hold vintage art to modern graphic standards, the quality might seem too low but since this is vintage, you'd better enjoy its value than be picky about the sharpness of the outlines, for example.

22. 1 Million Free Pictures

Despite its name, the site hardly has 1 million free pictures but this is not what matters. What matters more, is the quality of the images and here you will find many high quality photos. Some of the images are in the public domain, while others are just free, so always check what rules apply to the particular image(s) you have chosen.

23. Unrestricted Stock

Unrestricted Stock offers lots of free photos and vectors. Here you can find textures and patterns as well. There are also many hand drawn images, as well as a couple of free PSD files. All in all, this site offers really good free images.

24. Free Range Stock

Compared to the other sites with thousands or even millions of images, this one looks like a poor relative but if you can't find photos you like on the other sites, it won't hurt to check this one, too. If you want to download images, you need to register.

25. Foter

If the number displayed on site is correct, this site has about 230 million free images. This is pretty impressive! However, when you pick images, pay attention to the license because not all images on this site are free for commercial use.

26. Reshot

Reshot is really a great community of people looking to help out each other; essentially you have photographers who would like to share their creative work on one side and on the other side people who are looking for such creatives. The whole community is free but that doesn't at all undermine the quality of the creatives and the list is curated too.

27. Rawpixel

It is pretty evident that Rawpixel has one of the most diverse set of images or stock photo collections on the web that spans across vectors, PSD mockups, and some of the public domain content too. Apart from the free stock images/photos they also have a paid images, and it is great to know that a part of the proceeds received goes as a contribution towards 'Hope for Children'

28. Canva

Canva is more popular as an image editing tool (and is pretty good at it) but they do have a humble repository of stock images and photos that can be used. You can even just get the stock image edited right there on the platform to create a completely new and unique image for your usage.

29. Crello

Crello is similar to Canva being an image editing tool, but again Crello also provides a repository of free stock images and photos that you can choose to customize using their suite of image editing tools.

30. Google Advanced Image Search

This one might be a surprising one on the list, but is evidently by far one of the most powerful options in the list. Google's image search has it's own algorithm and set of search tools that can help you find free to use images across the web pretty quickly If this list seems a long one to you, trust me when I say there are many more free image sites that are not included in this list. We have updated the list taking off the ones that are no longer active and adding some of the new ones that have gained a lot of popularity over last few years. But I guess I probably have missed some major ones, too – I apologize for this but these 30 sites that made the list are the ones I think are really good and worth browsing. Follow my blog with Bloglovin Read the full article