Whatever the most important element on your page is, you want to make sure it is above the fold, which means what the user sees when they first enter the page. So no scrolling or anything.

Because many users leave if they don't see anything interesting, check that your call to action or something eye-catching is in that first view. And with that, Google's new browser size tool will help you.

Google Browser Size is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For example, the "90%" contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger. - How browser size tool works

With this tool you can ensure that majority of your visitors see the most important parts of the page. If a important element, like "buy now" button is only visible to 80% of the visitor, that means 20% of the visitors cannot see it when they first enter your page.

It's free and it's very easy to use: Just enter your URL at http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ and you'll see nice visual like this:

Browser Size tool will show you what your visitors see when they enter your website, depending on their screen / browser size. The tool shows what percentage of the users (on average) see what.

For example from the picture we can see that ~90% of the visitors to this blog see the "follow me on Twitter" button, but only about 80% of the visitors see the whole RSS Subscribe icon.

Check out the Browser Size tool at: http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/

Here's hoping this will help you find the right place for the most important elements on your blog and perhaps gain extra subscribers, or even better, more sales because of checking the design.

Source and more information: Google Code Blog - Introducing Google Browser Size

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Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Check What is Above The Fold with Google Browser Size Tool

Images are great way to spice up your blog posts, eBooks and other websites. Using attention capturing image on a blog post can greatly increase the chances of your visitors to check out that post. The usual options to get images, like stock photos or shared images from services like Flickr are great, but occasionally you might want something different.

Let me introduce you to Wordle.

Wordle is a tool that you can use to create "word clouds" from text that you provide, either by typing or copy-pasting text to the tool or inserting an URL address. You can use Wordle to create UNIQUE images for your blog, blog posts, eBooks or even T-Shirts.

Word cloud? Well, similarly to a tag cloud you might have seen around in blogs, Wordle weights how frequently words appear in the source text and wary the size of the words based on that calculation, and generates a "cloud" out of the words.

You can tweak and customize the settings, select the font to be used, colors, how many words to use, manually remove some words, etc. Or you can use the randomize option to "browse" through the different options until you see something you like.

I could write a tutorial on how to use Wordle, but it's so simple, that it's best that you head out to http://www.wordle.net/create and give it a try.

Wordle generates word clouds from Delicious tags too! Just enter your (or some other users) Delicious username to Wordle. The above image is my Delicious tag cloud

How To Use the Images Created With Wordle?

Wordle is a Java application and you can not directly save the images it generated, but there are several ways to get the images to your blog or print.

1) Take a Screenshot and Use Image Editor to Save It

Generate a word cloud and tweak the settings as you want.

After you've finished, take a screen shot, open the screen shot in image editor, edit the image if needed and then save it.

If you want to use the image on your blog, upload it and add it to a post. If you use Wordle generated images like this, you must give attribution to Wordle.

Taking a screenshot and saving the image on Windows

1. Press Print Screen key on your keyboard
2. Open your favorite image editing software (even "Paint" will do)
3. Paste (the screenshot)
4. Adjust size or otherwise edit the image
5. Save

Taking a screenshot and saving image on Mac

1. To capture the entire desktop, press Command-Shift-3.
2. The screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop.
3. Open, Edit and Save the PNG file in Image Editor

Source: Capture a Screen Shot With Mac OS at About.com

2) Make the Word Cloud Public on Wordle and Link Directly

You can save the image to Wordle and display it on any website with Wordle Applet.

If you do this, the image is freely available to everyone based on Wordle license.

After you have saved the cloud to Wordle public gallery, copy the code Wordle provides and paste it to your blog or any web page.

Of course, you can also browse the gallery and use other users' word clouds if you want.

3) Print Your Word Cloud

This is the easiest way to get your word cloud to your wall - just use the "Print..." function on Wordle application.

Not very useful for getting pictures to your blog, but you can use this to create inspirational images to your wall or even for a T-shirt using those services that take any picture, scan it and print it on a shirt. Of use the tips below to ensure quality of the image.

4) Other Options for Getting Your Word Clouds Out of Wordle

Print as PDF

• After your word cloud is finished,
• Use the "Print..." function on Wordle.
• On the Mac
  • Select "Save as PDF" from the print dialog.
• On Windows, third-party software must be used.
  • If you want to have your word clouds as PDFs on Windows, check out the How to Print to a PDF File on Windows -tutorial from How-To Geek.

Print as SVG

Get a printer driver that generates SVG. Or print as PDF like above and use free vector graphics tool like InkScape.

Source: http://www.wordle.net/faq

All images on this post and the word cloud images on this blog have been generated with Wordle.

You can find Wordle at http://www.wordle.net/

There you go, give Wordle a try and tell me what you think about it!

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Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Create Free Images For Your Blog With Wordle

Why You Should Use Google Webmaster Tools

Firstly, everyone should use Google Webmaster Tools, because it's free and the Google Webmaster Tools are very useful in lots of ways as I'm about to show you.

Secondly, Google Webmaster Tools are great addition to the website traffic and statistics you get from Google Analytics.

Thirdly, you utilize this free information provided to you after you've done the initial steps and use the data for search engine optimization and make your site even more search engine friendly.

Now - Watch this video to get a good overview and brief explanation of what you get when you add your site to the Google Webmaster Tools:

Watch the video YouTube: Google Webmaster Tools

How To Add Your WordPress Blog to Google Webmaster Tools

If you have not added your site to your Google Webmaster Tools and claimed the site with the verification code, here's how to do it.

To make things really easy, set up Google Analytics account, if you haven't yet, and add Google Analytics to your blog. Then...

1. Go to Google Webmaster Central
2. Sign-in with your Google Account
3. Once inside, Click Add a Site
4. Add the information about your site
5. Use the "Link to your Google Analytics Account" to verify your site
6. And you're done!

Using the Google Analytics verification makes the process super simple.

Alternatively, you can also use the file verification or add the verification meta tag into the <head> of your site. But actually, you shouldn't. Instead of adding the verification code to the theme's header.php file, use a plugin to add the code.

Several plugins have the ability to add verification code without manually editing the php-files, for example the WordPress SEO -plugin which offers verification support for Yahoo Site Explorer and MS Webmaster Portal, in addition to the highly beneficial SEO features it also has.

After your site is verified, go ahead and generate a XML sitemap and add that to the Webmaster Tools. This will help to get your site indexed in Google fast.

Do this for all your websites (if you have multiple ones), even for those 1-5 page mini-site of yours - When you submit sitemaps you ensure the pages are getting indexed, or at least see if they are not indexed and why. As you see the search engine data in one page, you can easily use the information to improve the SEO of the site(s) further.

What You Get From Google Webmaster Tool

Let's recap - the main reason to use Google Webmaster Tools is to submit sitemaps, see indexation and crawling errors, and see how users are reaching your site, see how Google sees your website and in the process, make your site more SEO friendly.

You can...

• Get your site indexed faster
• Add your XML sitemap(s) directly to Google
• Get detailed information about
  • How and when your site is indexed
  • How high/low your site is ranked for keywords
  • Which keywords are bringing in the most traffic
  • Google search engine crawl reports, statistics and errors
• See the number of links back to your site and individual pages/posts Google has found
• Get reports if there are problems with indexing
• See on what search terms your site turns up and how much clicks those views are getting
• ..and much more..

The backlink data or the search engine statistics are not 100% correct, but on the other hand, it doesn't get much easier than this. In fact, it doesn't get easier than this to get that data! And all that in addition to the really important stuff like submitting your sitemap and seeing how many pages and posts from the sitemap are indexed.

Updates / Version History

• Updated on 2010-11-04: Added video. Re-worked the post.
• Originally published on 2009-08-10

Summary

Because there are no disadvantages, unless your some kind of anti-Google person (in which case I'd recommend forgetting Internet business and blogging right now) and you get all the info for free, using Google Webmaster Tool for all your websites is a no-brainer.

If you haven't already,

• sign-in to Google Webmaster Tools now,
• claim ALL your websites now by adding the verification code to the header section of your website,
• submit the XML sitemaps, and
• check in the data once or month or so (at the beginning you can check more often).

Then you can utilize the information to easily optimize your site by correcting indexing errors or warnings and checking if you could make you can optimize your content for search engines.

Thanks for reading and feel free to ask any questions in the comments!

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Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
What Everybody Ought to Know About Google Webmaster Tools