37Signals are like the MVPs of web developers. Not only did the lead developers here invent the Rails framework for Ruby, but they built a highly successful company out of it that even Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com loves! So what gets their product recognition?

Branding Similar Products

The one thing that 37Signals seem to understand more than anything else is that ‘branding’ a family of products makes them all that much more valuable in the long run. Take a look at the images below:

Although 37Signals have released several strong, unique products that stand alone, they all work together (look similar) and function similarly. Familiarity breeds loyal customers so when it’s time to turn your new app into a sister product, remember not to stray too far from where you found success the first time!

Incorporate the Explanation

Another thing you’ll notice is that all 37signal products incorporate the instructions right into the design of the site. Why ever consult a manual or customer service if your every question is answered before you ask it? This won’t work for every app but I think 37signals have pulled it off well in their product line.

Give the End User Freedom

Customers want to feel like they own the software and not the other way around. One way to do this is to make your application customizable or offer an API that allows users to incorporate your app into their site’s design theme. This versatility is key. Ass you’ll notice above, 37signlas recently began allowing for more customization of color and brand identity than they used to.

Quentin Muhlert - 5:03 pm

Q: I’ve got a question about internationalization: I have a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and I’ve registered these as such in Webmasters’ tools, will this be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning uk/us/aus?

Susan Moskwa - 5:16 pm

A: Geographic targeting doesn’t affect the fact that we only want to show one version of a piece of content in search results; we will still try to filter out duplicates when we serve search results.

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Oliver Gonzalez - 5:10 pm

Q: Is there any limit on the number of redirections 301, a Web site?. In a large site, if you change the URL structure, is the optimum time to do it with 301? or is best done gradually

Matt Cutts - 5:17 pm

A: There’s no per-page limit on the number of 301s you can do, so you could move 100K pages to 100K new location. However, if we see a really long chain of redirects, eventually we will decide to stop following the chain.

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Abhijeet Mukherjee - 5:18 pm

Q: Whats the average time after which the PR of a site gets updated?

Matt Cutts - 5:22 pm

A: We typically do pushes to the toolbar every 3-4 months, so it can take that long between toolbar data pushes.

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Andrew Evans - 5:11 pm

Q: Do 301 redirects send PR to its destination? I have several domains that 301 to 1 domain, and a couple have PR. Will it now send that PR to the 1 domain now that it is 301 redirected? Thank you.

Susan Moskwa - 5:27 pm

A: 301 redirects are the best way to let us know that you’d like a particular URL to get “credit” for factors from another URL; we’ll pass those signals across a 301 redirect as appropriate.

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Antony Johnson - 5:23 pm

Q: Hi Matt, Are there any guidelines available on keyword density we have pages that are about 1 single subject and the keyword density is quite high

Matt Cutts - 5:27 pm

A: Antony, you may not believe this, but we tend not to think much about KW density here at Google, b/c our algorithms handle it pretty well. My advice is to pull in an innocent/non-search friend and have them read the text. If they raise their eyebrow, …

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Quentin Muhlert - 5:29 pm

Q: Does GoogleBot tend to have a preference for long or short filenames/directory names?

Pedro Dias - 5:36 pm

A: Hi Quentin. No Googlebot doesn’t have preference on short or long filenames/directory names, usualy short names are preferred by users for usability purposes.

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Alan Rothstein - 5:31 pm

Q: When you use the robots.txt tool in Webmaster Tools does it abide by this case sensitive rule?

Maile Ohye - 5:36 pm

A: Hi Alan, yes. The robots.txt analysis tool is case sensitive in the correct areas. Directives like “disallow” can be lower or uppercase. Path and directories are correctly case sensitve.

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Rabin Acharya - 5:37 pm

Q: i have noticed multiple times that some of my competitors have multiple pages listed on certain keyword search. i believe google is trying to make sure only one page from a site is going to be listed. am i hearing it wrong?

Matt Cutts - 5:40 pm

A: Rabin, we’re typically happy to show up to two pages from one hostname in our search results. For a navigational search, it might not be bad to show more results from one domain. But we like diversity and try to preserve it.

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Michael Nguyen - 5:42 pm

Q: Does removing your site’s low value pages from the index help the other pages rank better?

Matt Cutts - 5:45 pm

A: If they are just regular web pages, I wouldn’t remove them. If they were really spammy or doorway pages and you suspect that it could have affected your site’s ranking or reputation, then I would remove any spammy pages.

1. Analyze your webpages. Different types of sites elicit different user behaviors, and you should tailor-fit your ad placement accordingly. However, the general rule is to place them as near to the primary content as possible. The video shows a heat map as a guide.

2. Set up custom channels. Create custom channels per ad unit to track their individual performance, instead of lumping everything together. This is pretty basic stuff which will give you many wonderful benefits down the line (and it’s a sin not to do it!).

3. Optimize your ad unit design and placement. One of the great things about this video is that it spills the beans on what specific ad formats advertisers prefer most, which also happen to be the top performing formats in terms of clickthrough rates and CPM. What’s more, it gives smart tips on optimizing the color palette to increase ad effectiveness.

4. Maximize revenue from multiple ad units. Cluttering your pages with ads will only turn off your visitors, so a better approach is to maximize the yield from the limited number of ad units allowed by Adsense. The video shows how to use the data from your custom channels to map out a strategy.

5. Track and measure your results. The last step is to take full advantage of the flexible reports generation feature of Adsense, and this tutorial tells you how. They also give further references at the end of the video.

I’ve used Adsense for some time and have implemented some of these suggestions before, but I still found it helpful with the little bits and pieces of information they were generous enough to provide. So do yourself a favor. Take a 10 minute break, drink your favorite beverage, and watch the video by clicking the image below. Cheers!

Gears. There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Gears support. Some people expect that this means Wordpress 2.6 will enable users to do offline blogging. However, it’s really there more to facilitating faster blogging by downloading static page content (like CSS, icons, etc) to the user’s computer. Since they will be locally available, there will be less server requests, which is great for people with slow connections.

Identicons. Administrators will have the ability to assign a default avatar from a wider range of choices, along with other options. One cool new addition is Identicons, a way to generate unique geometric avatars based on a commenter’s IP address. Let’s face it, even though Gravatars are fun, the vast majority of Internet users don’t have them, and having Identicons is a fantastic idea to bridge the gap. Look at the comments section of creator Don Park’s blog for samples.

wp-config.php. Soon, you’ll be able to move around wp-config.php up to one level above the Wordpress installation. This fueled speculation that you may do multiple WP install using just wp-config.php file. We shall see.

“Press This” bookmarklet. This useful but under-utilized feature disappeared from Wordpress with version 2.5, but it’s set to make a comeback in a big way. This bookmarklet can be used to “insta-blog” existing content on the Internet to make publishing faster and easier. Like if you saw a funny video on YouTube, a quick click on “Press This” will automatically configure a blog post with the embedded video. The same can apply to text and pictures. It will be interesting to see it in action, and it’s especially useful for live bloggers.

Post revisions. I tend to edit posts a lot, sometimes even long after they’re published (either because of typos, new updates, SEO tweaking, or just random stylistic revisions). If you’re anything like me, you’ll be happy about the upcoming post revisions management. And if you made a boo-boo accidentally deleting some parts, well, this feature can act like System Restore does in Windows. More details and screen caps here.

Word count. WordPress.com’s blogs enjoy the benefit of having a word count at the bottom of the post editor. It’s very useful for bloggers who have a word count quota to meet, or over-zealous ones that tend to ramble a bit (which happens to everyone at one point or another, I’m sure). This might just be added into the self-hosted WP 2.6 as well.

Checkbox selection. A nice usability improvement will be the ability to use Shift-Click in selecting/deselecting checkboxes for easier post, category, tag, page, comments and media management. Similar to Gmail in concept, choosing portions of a list for bulk editing becomes much faster. I’m thinking this will especially come in handy with comment spam, and thank goodness for that.

Of course, other than these, we’re all hoping for better security and closure with bug fixes. For a list of other things you can expect in this upcoming version, you can visit the Wordpress Codex. At the current rate of 9% completion, it’s still a long way to go. Thankfully, I’m patient.

“Well, publishers already in the FeedBurner Ad Network will continue to see premium CPM ads directly sold onto their content, but with the added bonus of contextually targeted ads that will fill up the remainder of their inventory. That means you get the best of both worlds: a dedicated Google sales force that knows how and why to sell onto your content, with the added revenue that full back-fill coverage provides. And with AdSense, you’ll know that your back-filled ads are using the strongest contextual ad engine, ensuring the most relevant and profitable ads are delivered to your subscribers. And yes, ads are also sold via Google’s AdWords program.”

To be able to use this new service, you will need to apply for an Adsense account. Ad management and tracking will be done through it. Other details like how to sign up for Adsense feeds will be announced when the full-scale launch is ready. I hope it comes sooner rather than later, because statistics show that more and more people are reading blogs offsite via feeds. A way to monetize this increasing offsite traffic is more than welcome.

Since most, if not all, of spams have links to other sites, why not remove the ability to leave clickable links in the comments section? Although spammers (and regular people) can still send in comments, they won’t be able to publish active hyperlinks. This can be done by accessing the server and configuring it such that all HTML tags from comment links are automatically stripped.

2. Use anti-spam plugins

If you’re using Wordpress, you can use spam filters like the popular Akismet which learns the more you use it. This ability to learn new spamming techniques via user input has been very effective so far. Another way is to utilize user validation plugins like Captcha to require commenters to prove they are living, breathing human beings, as opposed to spam-generating bots. You will either be presented with scrambled text on an image or an audio recording to listen to. Choose well because some plugins of this type are extremely hard to crack. If valid users fail to leave a comment on their first try, they might just abandon trying all together.

3. Block Googlebot from the comments

Rampant spamming can hurt your site’s SEO, so in the extreme case where you want to make sure this extraneous content won’t be indexed by spiders, use the robots.txt file to block their access to the subdirectory where the comments are stored. An alternate way is to use the meta tag to block certain pages by putting this inside the header:

4. Use nofollow tags

Make sure your comment links are padded with the rel=”nofollow” attribute. This bit of code will prevent the link from becoming a factor in PageRank calculation and your page’s relevance to keyword searches. Some blogging sites and CMS like Wordpress add this attribute to comment links by default.

5. Turn on comment moderation

However, the best way is still to play the vigilant cop in policing your site’s comments. It can be grueling if you get a lot of comments everyday, but it can also be rewarding because you get to interact with authentic visitors. Most blogs come with the option to hold the comments until you personally approve them, instead of automatically displaying these. It’s especially useful to guard against not only spammers but trolls – those who spew unnecessary hate for some unfathomable reason. I guess the Internet must have its downsides, too.

05. PSD Tuts (Tie)

Founder(s) - Unknown
History - PSDTUTS is a blog/photoshop site made to house and showcase some of the best Photoshop tutorials around. We publish tutorials that not only produce great graphics and effects, but explain in a friendly, approachable manner.
About the Brand - A strong thematic cohesiveness throughout their family of websites.
Alexa.com Ranking - 14,664
Other Properties - audiojungle.com, flashden.com
Ideas for Growth - Their team has successfully created a design and tutorial blog, the audio search engine and a monetized flash resource site. They should take the business model they used for Flashden.net and apply it to resources for AfterEffects or Premier. Alternatively they could create a portal for scripts like Hotscripts.com

05. Colour Lovers (Tie)

Founder(s) - Darius A Monsef IV
History - The founder says, “Our site is edgy, revolutionary, and works from the bottom up, not from the top down. It represents a new way to think about color and design. Our approach is based on the open source and common license concept. We gather creative professionals into an online community where they can share ideas about color and influence others.”
About the Brand - ColourLovers relies primarily on user generated content. It takes images uploaded to it’s service and parses those images for color data. Users can then share patterns, color palettes and monitor color trends of popular magazines. The brand is the application and the focus (color). The logo is basic and unforgettable otherwise. The ‘proper’ english “u” in Colour could be also be considered part of it’s branding because it’s distinct.
Alexa.com Ranking - 14,438
Other Properties - Colourlovers Store that sells t-shirts, NoteCards, MiniCards & Stickers
Ideas for Growth - Darius built a social network around one of the elusive aspects of design, color. He also made a useful resource for designers trying to come up with color schemes for their websites. He might try doing the same thing for fonts or extend his cadre of color enthusiasts into a network of fashion or product designers.

04. Brusheezy

Founder(s) - Unknown
History - Brusheezy is a website where you can find yourself alot of high quality Photoshop Brushes and Patterns too, there is also a resource section that points out books and other resources that are good for learning and enhancing the Photoshop Package itself. All Brushes should work on all versions of Photoshop unless otherwise stated.
About the Brand - The ‘eeZy’ brand is strong because it’s so unique, fun and recognizable. The slogan “Stupid name. Good ________” is equally memorable. All the sites in their network feature similar logos and similar designs which is smart. Unfortunately the owners don’t seem to understand branding web products, as it’s not always easy to get from one site to another without know what you’re looking for in advance.
Alexa.com Ranking - 9,293
Other Properties - vecteey.com, flasheezy.com, and fresheezy.com
Ideas for Growth - All of these offerings essentially occur in walled gardens. The Eezy Group may want to do the obvious and consider building a social network around their content. The apparent partnership with GoMedia is smart. If the owners of the Eezy brand are also the owners of GoMedia or partners in the company, they’ve got the right idea. They use free content to sell premium content. If I were them I’d work on building a cohesive brand for both divisions and expanding my offerings from just content for design programs to plug-ins and upgrades.

03. Smashing Magazine

Founder(s) - Smashing Magazine is maintained by Sven Lennartz, the owner of the Dr. Web Magazine and Dr. Web Weblog and Vitaly Friedman, the creator of The Web Developer’s Handbook and the book author of Praxisbuch Web 2.0.
History - Founded in September 2006, Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information for designers and web-developers.
About the Brand - Smashing Magazine is one of my favorite places on the internet. They offer great tutorials, articles, resources and information related to graphic design, web design, and typography. Their logo (a tilted “S” in a square) is strong, easily recognizable and memorable.
Alexa.com Ranking - 8,524
Other Properties - jobs.smashingmagazine.com
Ideas for Growth - Smashing already covers design and design resources better than almost any blog out there. The next obvious step is to try a printed publication along the likes of ComputerArt, Photoshop User or Layers Magazine. Or, perhaps, they might try similar product devoted to cinematography and filmmaking.

02. Mashable

Founder(s) - Pete Cashmore
History - Mashable is a social networking news blog. With allegedly over 5 million monthly pageviews it ranks among the most popular blogs on the Internet. Mashable regularly writes about MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Facebook, and Xanga, but it also reports on less high-profile social networking sites. The website also features its own social network, customized profiles, and MySpace layouts.
About the Brand - While Mashable has done very little to expand beyond it’s current offerings the name is probably one of the most easily recognizable on the web. Thanks to appearing in Mashable vidcasts, founder Pete Cashmore, has become something of a ‘web celebrity’. Partnerships with companies like Aux Interactive and ACS SEO make Mashable a great resource for companies looking to develop their ideas.
Alexa.com Ranking - 3,490
Other Properties - Mashmeets and Events, Mashcodes, fr.mashable.com, my.mashable.com
Ideas for Growth - Mashable is all over the place offering free software products, a thriving social network, design resources, social media news, industry information and a whole lot more. It seems that much like the Carsonified people, Mashable is targeting the event planning and tradeshow world next. What’s next? Mashable’s social network places an emphasis on user content and social links. I think they “get it” enough that they’ll target creating more social media applications.

01. Sitepoint

Founder(s) - Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle
History - SitePoint is a fast growing online media company and information provider targeting the Web professional market, specifically Web Developers and Designers. The company has five major revenue streams: advertising and sponsorship, content-based products both online and in retail, software, and more recently streaming video subscriptions and classified listings.
About the Brand - As you can see from their Alexa.com rating, Sitepoint is in the upper-echelon of heavily trafficked sites on the internet. Pulling four digits on Alexa equal hundreds of thousands, if not millions of hits, daily! Of course traffic alone doesn’t equal a strong brand. Sitepoint.com has created their brand by offering an easily identifiable site good advice, great tutorials and tips that range in topics from development, to operating a small business to design tips.

Their ‘Marketplace’ (think Craigslist for web developers) is one of THE most popular places for people to list jobs and recruit talent (for both longterm and shortterm projects). It’s also the #1 place to buy and sell web property. Their Marketing Kits (otherwise known as e-books) benefit users as well as generating some healthy revenue. Beyond that they’ve extended their brand offline with a strong publishing division. They recently spun off their marketplace for designers into it’s own site 99Designs, brilliantly giving it a slightly different look so as to appeal to creatives.

It’s one of those companies that pretty much does everything well to the point where each of their products are healthy competition individually as it they are combined. For that Sitepoint.com is given the undisputed crown!
Alexa.com Ranking - 1,817
Other Properties - 99designs.com, Sitepoint Publishing, Reference Point
Ideas for Growth - I can only dream of being in a position where I can make the decisions that move a site like sitepoint.com! Still there is one frontier that I think SiePoint is already well poised to exploit…. software development. If they could spin their huge userbase into a market for a web software product they’d be a HUGE problem. More likely though, they’ll next take their brands to the mobile market offering ebook downloads and streaming media.

This list was compiled and ordered by relevancy as well as their influence on the design community at large. I looked at each groups branding, site design, logo design, the strength of content and resources offered. I also looked at the number of properties each had. Alexa rankings were used to estimate site traffic although a high Alexa ranking did not always equal a higher ranking on this list. I did all this so as not to appear to be biased towards any particular blog or group.

To get on this list entities needed to be web based (so as to exclude existing magazines with high print circulation) and they had to be generally accepted by the public as being pretty damn awesome. This list by Just Creative Design is a more comprehensive list of everything that’s out there for designers. These sites are the 500-pound gorillas of the design community and are incredibly successful (and many of them are incredibly lucrative for the owners).

10. WP Designer

Founder(s) - Small Potato
History - Small Potato says “I started Wpdesigner.com back in May 2006 because I was not happy with the quality of free WordPress themes at that time and decided to learn how to create one for myself and release it for free. Gradually, Wpdesigner turned from a simple place where I release free themes into a blog, which covered WordPress tips, tutorials, and general web development topics. Along with more than 50 free WordPress themes, I managed to put together a series of articles on how to create a WordPress theme scratch, which is the most popular series of this blog.”
About the Brand - Wpdesigner.com was recently sold and the new owner Pawel Ciszewski better stay on his game because he could really ruin what has become an incredible resource for Wordpress Designers and users. The original logo was amateurish but the choice of colors and the design of the site is what branded it so well.
Alexa.com Ranking - 84,743
Other Properties - Theme Club upgrade that is $5 per year offers exclusives that normal users don’t get
Ideas for Growth - I’m not sure what Small Potato was thinking when he sold what had become one of the most well liked Wordpress theme sites on the net. He had a solid business model with the Theme Club and a lot of fans. I suggest the new owner focus on branching out into custom design and theme’s a-la-cart for purchase while continuing to release exclusive free themes to Theme Club members and free themes for the general public.

09. Design Flavr

Founder(s) - Andrew Greig
History - DesignFlavr is a breed of website that hopes to deliver the latest and freshest art and design straight to you with no frills and no hassle. The concept behind this website is to help support the vast and ever growing number of Designers and Artists that reside here on the World Wide Web.
About the Brand - The logo is one of the weakest on this list. They’ve got a leaf for their logo which initially strikes me as having nothing to do with the nature of their work. The minimalist layout, however, can easily be used to brand other sites.
Alexa.com Ranking - 102,463
Other Properties - none
Ideas for Growth - DesignFlavr should move into the niche network of DIY, aspiring fashion designers. Their UI would be great for rating outfits and fashion photography.

08. Bittbox

Founder(s) - unknown
History - Bittbox has been offering free resources for Photoshop for atleast two years now.
About the Brand - While Bittbox itself doesn’t have that impressive of a brand, the reach of the site and it’s impact on the design industry has been MASSIVE! A quote from one of the owners, “It’s always nice to see people put BB freebies to good use, but there’s no way to spot them all. I was flipping through Rolling Stone over the weekend and spotted some of my Illustrator brushes (teardrop foliage) in an ad for Bonnaroo 2008, a huge music & arts festival in Tennessee.”
I too hacve spotted their resources all over the place from flyers and business to TV commercials!
Alexa.com Ranking - 22,750
Other Properties - Outside of a solid Flickr Group, nothing.
Ideas for Growth - It’s unfortunate that the Bitt people haven’t expanded and if they have, it’s unfortunate that they haven’t realized the power of associating their other ventures with BB. Outside of the obvious (a Design firm) I suggest the Bitt people move into a land so far unknown to them….motion graphics. They could give away scripts and resources for Adobe Premier and other programs like Avid and FinalCut.

07. ThinkVitamin

Founder(s) - Ryan and Gillian Carson
History - I’m not sure how long it’s been around but in March 2007 Vitamin won the SXSW Award for Best Educational Resource.
About the Brand - Largely discusses web applications and the development of social media applications. The site has a very distinctive look much like all the work of the Carsonified design team does. Outside of ThinkVitamin the Carsons also coordinate the massive Future Of web conferences that happen around the globe and use content recorded there to create insightful and useful podcasts.
Alexa.com Ranking - 132,185
Other Properties - carsonified.com, futureofwebapps.com, futureofmobile.com, futureofwebdesign.com and dropsend.com
Ideas for Growth - The Carsons are already media planners, web developers, bloggers and event planners there isn’t much left they don’t do! That said, I think their inevitable next big push should be into Branding, PR and Marketing, after all, they’re already experts!

06. Behance Network

Founder(s) - unknown
History - unknown
About the Brand - Behance has created a solid brand around beautiful professional and minimalist design. The logo itself, is excellent looking somewhat like an element on the periodic table. They’ve got a web magazine, a new social network for designers and incredible shop of unique and well designed products!
Alexa.com Ranking - 117,857
Other Properties - behance.net (social network), creativesoutfitter.com (store), and behancemag.com (web magazine)
Ideas for Growth - If I were in charge of Behance my next target would be the fashion industry tapping my social network of designers for ideas similar to threadless.com

Read Part 2

The widget fits in to sidebars and other smaller areas of the page; it’s very self contained, so it should fit nicely into your page without breaking out of the box. Copying and pasting the JavaScript into your page will produce a neat little light gray box with some basic loan data inputs:

From here your visitors can easily experiment with different data, or do the same for a mortgage. Clicking “calculate” produces a clean thickbox-style gray box above the current page - you won’t lose any visitors with this widget. A neat dynamically-generated Flash chart helps users see what the output means and watch the progression of their loan configuration over time.

In terms of usability, this is one of those widgets that just works. I’ve had no trouble getting it to work or understanding how to use it, and the design is entirely idiot-proof. This is truly a drop-in-place widget - if it suits your site’s audience, you can simply find a good space on the page and add it in. Your users won’t need any instructions on how to use it, and they’ll appreciate the no-nonsense approach for the results page:

Under the hood, it’s a mini web application in itself, and uses jQuery and a Flash charting system to produce a simple, cross-browser interface. The script does talk back to the mlcalc.com server for some calculations and the chart, but otherwise it is largely client-side, and won’t burden your server with additional requests either.

The mortgage loan calculator widget is simple and effective. It does its job beautifully, and fills a highly approach niche for any current website aiming to be “with the times”. Whether you have a general news portal or a financial planning help site, this widget can just fit in; it will find a permanent home in your users’ favourites and keep them coming back for more.

Blurb. Although it seems obvious, many blogs don’t have a mini-profile blurb visible on all pages to introduce the author/site to first-time visitors. Worse, not everyone has an About page that to tell everyone

Template. Most blogging platforms offer ready-made templates for plug-and-play use. It keeps everything simple, but it also makes your blog look ordinary and dull. Chances are, visitors have already seen the same template elsewhere, and when they try to remember your site, it gets lost in the murky waters called “generic design”. Part of personal branding should consist of an eye-pleasing and functional template that goes well with your personality and the blog’s overall theme.

Words. Try to keep away from highfalutin words. It might’ve worked in you college class, but in the blogosphere, it’s much better to use the K.I.S.S. principle. This doesn’t mean you need to dumb down your blog, but rather that you speak the language of your intended audience.

Tone. Your writing should be casual and conversational. Draw your visitors in with entries that speak to them directly. Ask questions when appropriate to solicit comments.

Engage. Every time you get non-spammy visitor comments, answer them as quickly as possible. Other people who see your conversation’s thread will be more likely to say their piece, knowing they’ll get a reply. If they leave a link to their own blog, head on there and leave a comment as well. This will increase their chances of becoming regular visitors.

Any other tips you’d like to share? I’m all ears.