Learn SEO from your competition, analyze them! Article reviews

Understanding what your competitors are doing online is a must and absolute priority when launching a new website that is entering a competitive space and also when established websites want to keep an eye on their competition. In this article via searchenginejournal, there are some interesting tips on how to learn even from your competition:

SEO Competitive Intelligence: learn from your SEO rivals

• Identifying the Competition
  - Affiliate sites are your competition
  - Offline competitors
• On-Site Competitive Intelligence
  - Site URL Structure
  - Site Development and Coding Structure
  - Use of Analytics
  - The directory files and URL structures of listings pages
  - Page Title and META Title Review
  - META Tag Review (Description / Keywords)
  - Navigational System Review
  - Broken Links
  - HTML Code Validity
  - Design & SEO Integration
• Offsite Competitive SEO Elements
  - Local Listings
  - Number of Inbound Links
  - Linkbait or Viral Marketing
  - Social Media
  - Blogging
  - Paid Link Research
  - Site visits and Traffic
  - Page Rank and other Metrics
  - Competitive Rankings
  

These bullet points are just the titles/ideas - read more in this thorough article via sej about some SEO Competitive Intelligence: learn from your SEO rivals

free/premium fonts AND better photoshop performance - article reviews

There are a lot of websites offering either free or paid fonts, but here are some, in this article - Finding Fonts: Free and Premium Resources - that would help you find that perfect little font in the massive swelling cyber sea... I have listed just the names/some names of these sites - all the credits go fuelyourcreativity for the listings and descriptions...

Finding Fonts: Free and Premium Resources

Free Fonts

• 40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design
• I’m Just Creative
• The League of Moveable Type
• Exlijbris Font Foundary
• Font Squirrel
• Urban Fonts
• etc
  

Premium Fonts

• 30 Fonts That All Designers Must Know & Should Own
• 13 typefaces for graphic designers
• 17 designers favorite fonts
• 80 Beautiful Typefaces For Professional Design
• FontShop
• etc
  

Read the entire list, with samples and explanation, online here.

Photoshop: we all work with this great paid tool, either with an older or a newer version of it. Below are 10 Simple Steps to Better Photoshop Performance by smashingmagazine.

10 Simple Steps to Better Photoshop Performance

1. Adjust The Number Of History States
2. How Many Cache Levels Do You Need?
3. Keep An Eye On Your Memory Usage(Efficient Use of Memory)
4. Use Proper Scratch Disks
5. Turn Font Preview Off
6. Use Thumbnails In Your Palettes
7. Learn How To Use Purge
8. Set Maximize PSD And PSB File Compatibility to Always or Ask
9. Don’t clutter your Photoshop
10. Reset Default Settings
    

To view more details about these tips of better the Photoshop performance, read the article online - 10 Simple Steps to Better Photoshop Performance.

free tools for your website AND about a great blog design - article reviews

Someone actually put that effort in to compiling 99 Plus Free Tools For Your Website - thanks to wildlysuccessfulmarketing - This list of 100 free tools to track everything on your Web site will get you though until you can get an IT guy on the phone.

• Web Site Statistics and Counters(Ritecounter, GoStatis, Who’s.Amung.Us, eWebCounter, etc)
• Surveys, Blog Tools and Web Site Communication Gadgets(Feedburner, Woopra, Enquisite, 4Q, etc)
• Technical Web Site Stuff for Smart People(Web Page Analyzer, Netcraft, DNS Stuff, JAWStats, etc)
• Analytic Programs for Web Sites(blvd, Google Analytics, Slimstat, etc)
• Help for the SEO Impaired(Majestic SEO, Google Trends, Search Engine Position, Spider View, etc)

Continue to read this article - 99 Plus Free Tools For Your Website - online.

On the other hand, there are some characteristics of a great blog design - 10 Important Traits of a Great Blog Design(ten essential characteristics of a solid weblog design).

1. Good readability
2. A strong focus on the content
3. High findability
4. A great comment section design
5. Tight integration with social networking/media sites
6. A memorable header
7. The use of effective visuals in the content
8. A semantic HTML structure
9. Logically and coherently organized content
10. A good headline/post title design
    

Read more about each of these traits online - 10 Important Traits of a Great Blog Design.