Having a couple of hours of free time on the holidays, (instead of having at least some rest) I decided to take time looking for the ways to brand my images and PDfs I spread online.

Basically I was looking for some basic tools that would place a cute watermark on any images I want and I can tell you, finding a really useful and usable tool was not easy.

Anyway, I figured that some of my readers might be interested in that too – so I am sharing my tips here: some free useful watermarking utilities to identify and brand your images and PDF files:

Watermarking PDF files

Most PDF editors and converters are paid, I was really happy to discover one which is free, feature-rich and bug-free: PDFill

Just download and install the tool (the tool requires Ghostscript but don’t worry, the tool will install it automatically if you allow to) and run it. You will be able to access its multiple features – among them: text or image watermarks:

The process of adding an image watermark is quick and easy:

1. Point the tool to the .pdf document you want to watermark;

2. Point the tool to the image that will serve as a watermark;

3. Customize the watermark settings:

4. Save the watermarked copy and you are done!

Watermarking Images (Free)

Free Desktop Watermark Creators

Fast Water Mark

(Free download here)

The tool allows to create a text watermark and adjust its font, color, opacity and position. It only processes one image at a time:

Photo Watermark

(Free download here)

This one does have the bulk image processing feature but is a bit more limited in look and feel customization:

Java Watermark

(Free download here)

Don’t be fooled by the simplistic interface: the output is not bad at all. This one creates image watermarks and can also process only one image at a time:

And here’s a short overview of the three tools listed above for you to quickly compare:

Free Online Watermark Creators

An online tool is only good unless you need it daily. When it comes to online watermarking tools, you won’t b able to find anything fancy but there’s no excuse for not checking one: they are all free and require no registration.

Let’s see how it works by trying one of them: PicMarkr

Select up to 5 images (either from your computer or from Facebook, Flickr or Picasa) and choose the watermark properties (text or image);

Click “Next step” and either download the watermarked image back to your computer or save the watermarked copy to your web album:

As far as you can see, easy, fast and fun.

Here’s the overview of best free online watermark tools:

Post image src: blogs.chron.com

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The common delusion (under which I’ve also been for some time) is that you can use any image you find at Flickr as long as you link back to it. Well, this is wrong. Let’s try to figure all Flickr image license types to see which images you are allowed to post at your sites and blogs.

You are only allowed to use (not all) images under Creative Commons with appropriate license:

Attribution License

You are allowed to publish the image (even for commercial use) and modify it (e.g. crop, resize, etc) as long as you link back to the author;

Attribution-NoDerivs License

Publish the image (even for commercial use) but don’t modify it and link back to the author;

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

No commercial use is allowed.

Attribution-ShareAlike License

You can publish the image (even for commercial use) as long as you link back to the author and to the license

Note: in all the above cases, when linking back to the author’s profile, you can use ‘nofollow’ attribute.

What is fair use?

Really, journalists and bloggers can take advantage of fair use that allows them to use any web content as long as they credit the original creator. Fair use would apply if you are making journalistic commentary on a particular image

But this fair use does not refer to the cases when you use images for decorating purposes.

How to search for images with appropriate license?

• Flickr built-in search engine;
• Creative Commons search;
• Compfight: the service lets you set the Creative Commons (’Off’, ‘Commercial’, ‘All’);
• FlickrStorm allows to search by keyword and /or by Creative Commons. The tool also has a handy flash-based interface:

Image credit: fair use classroom poster draft by tvol

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A few days ago I tested this blog homepage with one handy tool I recommend trying: Five Second Test. That was both fun and useful. Now what I did:

• got a screenshot of the blog home page;
• filled in the form;
• uploaded the screenshot there;
• posted the generated link at Twitter and asked my dear followers to take part in the experiment.

The participants were offered to look at the picture for 5 seconds and list max. 5 things they remembered.

Here is the screenshot I posted (click for the full-sized version):

Now the results (that were fun): 25 Twitteres took part in the test.

Most often mentioned page elements:

• Top post title (mentioned 10 times);
• Color – “red” (mentioned 10 times); examples:
  • red head;
  • red & white color scheme;
  • red letters, etc.
•  Top post image (mentioned 9 times):
  • cursive writing;
  • frosted glass;
  • window with signature, etc.
• SEO smarty (mentioned 8 times);
• SEO consulting (mentioned 7 times);
• My photo (mentioned 7 times):
  • your portrait;
  • Ann Smarty’s face;
  • author’s photo, etc
• RSS (mentioned 6 times).

The funniest result:

1: Red in top
2: SEO Consultants Signature – Whats your tactic
3: Damn…

Conclusions:

• SEO association ended up the most popular after all (together with SEO smarty and SEO consulting it was mentioned 20 times);
• I do realize the test was taken by people who knew me (as they are my Twitter followers) and most probably had already seen my blog before the test.
• The test is a good way to look at your own site “from outside”; so try it!

P.S. Guess what the trick with the post image is!

Post image: Infinite Usability Loop!

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You might have already noticed (after my color branding, SEO Slogans and branding outside SEO) that I’m particularly interested in overall SEO niche marketing and branding recently – well, that’s all because I am just starting promoting my brand and service and so the topic seems new and exciting to me. Today I am going to share my thoughts and observations on SEO logos and banners.

Now what is the purpose of a company logo?

• It gives visual representation of a professional SEO company service/product (and thus accounts for its positive associations);
• It establishes a brand identity (making it unique and memorable).

Most important logo features are:

• trustworthy (<= professional);
• catchy/memorable (<= unique);
• associative/symbolic (=> conveying feelings, and sending a message…);
• matching the overall design;
• clean and functional.

How Can SEO Be Graphically Described?

1) It can be represented as ‘growth‘ (e.g. growth in rankings, profit, etc).

Example: SeoDesignSolutions

(Note: I would have made it left-to-right growth though to make look more understandable for US and European people who are believed to think (as well as read) from left to right):

2) Uniqueness (the service that makes you stand out).

Example: SearchEnginePeople:

3) The high quality of the service itself.

Example: a star by AdvanceRankings:

4) High level of professionalism/expertise.

Example: (well, besides myself) SearchEngineJournal:

Except for describing the service itself there are other types:

Type	Example URL	Example Logo
Abstract graphic symbol	Distilled.co.uk
Unique well branded image	SearchEngineGuide
Domain/brand Name	ViperChill

Get Inspiration:

• 56 Most Creative Logos – lists great examples to follow.
• Logo collection – another list of creative logos.

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A movie poster usually determines whether or not I am going to watch the trailer or even go to the cinema. A website design is usually a crucial factor in making the decision whether a visitor is going to look through headlines and stay for some time to read the article or review the products or services. A movie poster is usually meant to:

• call to action – i.e. encourage to watch a movie;
• set expectations = find its targeted audience (e.g. people who prefer comedies to horror movies);
• establish the brand – i.e. make a movie name recognizable;
• start the buzz (e.g. “Have you seen that movie poster?“);

All in all, just the same what we want a website design to do. By studying the techniques behind creating a movie poster, we can learn some essential web design principles:

1. Don’t underestimate the power of colors. Dark neutral hues usually mean that’s a horror movie or thriller while bright colors always set expectations of an amusing comedy (same goes about a website design – color choice may determine what a visitor will first think about, his feelings and actions):

2. Focus on your product most powerful side = e.g. if there is a celebrity starring in a movie, its poster usually gives his/her image prominence. (Choose what you are going to focus on: brand your name or your image. Don’t try to do both – or you will frustrate your visitor):

3. Create and implement a catchy relevant slogan. Make sure it reveals your website content, catches attention and sticks in the memory:

4. Even fonts matter. Have you ever noticed that a fantasy film poster is usually distinguished by specific (usually orange or red) ancient-looking cursive fonts while psychological thrillers are usually depicted with the help of plain non-ornamented proportionately-spaced fonts? (Fonts should reflect the overall website style and content)

5. Add images that clearly describe what your website is about – a vivid image is what a person will associate with a movie. (Like we already know, images are not the first thing a visitor sees when entering a website; but that’s imaginary that can get a visitor interested and foster sticky associations)

6. Sometimes minimum of elements that makes your site stand out – don’t add to many elements; focus on what is really important.

7. Set expectations. Make sure your visitor will instantly understand what your website is about. Everything matters: the words, the colors, the fonts, the imaginary, the prominence of some elements, even the gestures of the characters:

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A while ago I posted an article on color branding categorizing some general color symbolism theory. It resulted in a discussion over at SU where I was (fairly enough) criticized for looking only at one side of the medal. Really color perception differs from country to country and from niche to niche. Color theory deserves the whole separate blog to cover it and I outlined only some main points. Well, these comments encouraged me to look further into the topic and while it isn’t directly related to SEO or social media I regularly cover, I figured color in branding and web design is an interesting topic worth sharing with my readers.

Color branding: geographic targeting

Color symbolism is very area specific. Color associations vary depending on the national history, traditions and religion. Here is a popular example demonstrating the importance of color research before targeting a new area: when United Airlines expanded the service to Tokyo, their brand color was white. But the company had soon to change it to red, because in Japan, white can be associated with death and mourning.

However not everything is that simple, even within one country one and the same color may evoke quite opposing associations (see ‘red’ that can have both positive and negative associations of courage and sin in the USA).

(Based on ‘Color Meanings Around the World‘ and Colour Journal)

There is no such a thing as ‘universal’ color. Even a positive color like green (associated with Nature and growth in most countries) may denote death in South America and countries with dense jungle areas.

The best (and proven) way to target a specific country is to use its national colors – that always evoke positive associations of something familiar and trustworthy. For example, in Argentina where beer is a very popular product, a company called Quilmes has quickly become #1 due to national color branding (compare) and a more successful Coca Colla competitor in Peru Inca Kola managed to outdo the universal monster only thanks to sticking to the country’s national palette.

Color branding: niche targeting

Color choice in your website or brand logo design may be determined by a niche you are targeting. Again, there is no clear line between using some specific color for a vertical worldwide. For an instance, ‘red’ associated with debt and crisis in the US (e.g. it denotes a drop in stock prices) and hence avoided in ‘finance’ niche, has quite opposite associations in Eastern Asia where it is used to denote a rise in stock prices.

(Based on ‘color meaning article’)

Color branding: mood

Colors and hues may create certain mood on a psychological level – this is most often a universal color effect used by prominent artists for a long time. The well-known master of playing with colors Vincent van Gogh said he didn’t like expressing what he saw directly, instead he used color to render the mood of the picture. Van Gogh’s painting The Night Café is the best example of the effect colors (and combination of colors) can make on a person:

‘In my picture of the Night Café, I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime.’

Here is the painting (do you feel what the artist tried to express?):

Now look what happens if we paint the same piece in blue:

See? There is no more depressing effect you might have felt with burning red and yellow contrasted to green hues. Blue instantly makes the atmosphere calming and refreshing. (You can try more color exercises here)

Some Fun?

Today as part of my traditional blog fun, I decided to share a few great color tools to play with.

• Create a color pattern (this seosmarty-header-like color pattern took me only 2 minutes to create):

• Generate a color palette (very helpful when you want to create a design around an image):

This post is intended to be part of Graphic Design Group Writing Project.

Post image: Autumn

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[Off topic] Mark Dykeman has just posted an interview with me so I decided to share it with my readers right away, please check it out: Catch the brainwaves with SEO Smarty!

My previous post on calls-to-action attracted a number of comments asking for advice on my readers’ current website design. I am not a professional web designer, so the only way I can find the best solution is by experimenting and testing. So I decided to review two simple methods that can help you identify who and where clicks your call-to-action button.

What encourages your visitors to act?

Google Analytics Reverse Goal Path (not very convenient for blogs, but works great with static (ecommerce) websites) can help you identify the (most popular) paths that bring people to your call to action and (possibly) tracks who actually acted.

While Google Analytics is great at showing the path that brings your visitors to the goal (content and internal structure analysis), the heat/ click maps can show you which visual elements of your design attract more clicks.

I’ve been doing this quick test with CrazyEgg: the ‘hotter’ the spot looks, the more links it has generated – as simple as that. Well, assuming that the reason behind my blogging was not to find new clients, I am doing fairly well at attracting feed subscriptions with my ’seasonal’ feed button (well, I should probably change it for something more spring-like soon).

If you are testing a blog (like me), don’t set the experiment length to more than 1000 clicks. With each new post (and hence the home page look change), the heatmap can also slightly change. For example, with my previous test when the top post contained a black-and-white image, the click rate to the post link was considerably lower – instead people clicked at the ‘free SEO consultation’ link and feed button.

Who acts where?

Crazy Egg has another useful feature worth playing with: confetti. The beauty of this statistics is that you can learn your heat map based on the referrer. What can (probably) interest my friends who come to my blog from SEOMoz? That be (1) my profile, (2) my feed, and my content:

Alternatively, people who are referred by my StumbleUpon profile page get more excited with ‘free SEO consultation’:

Again, for more accurate results you will have to run a few short tests and compare.

These tips won’t provide you with the exact picture of your visitors’ behavior (like any other statistics, heatmaps and Google analytics are subject to generalization and missing some important variables, for example Crazy Egg does not show the world map stats and there is no way to filter my own IP address – and I am guilty of visiting my own blog a few times a day ) but they offer you the way to see what works and how to make it work better.

Post image: swarm1

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More often than not, it is not enough for you that your visitors just come and go. You want them to do something at your site. Unfortunately usually webmasters pay too little attention to their calls-to-action focusing on design, content and SEO. It is sad to see truly good resources that are doing great in SERPs but fail to engage their visitors.

Calls to action may vary. You may want your visitors to subscribe, to register, to buy something, to bookmark your post, etc. With calls to action everything is important: the color of your buttons and supporting elements, the language you use to describe the action, the place on the page where you locate them, the additional elements that encourage people to act. All these elements should be consistent and support each other getting your visitors one step closer to their objective.

The Color Of Call-To-Action

Based on Which Color is the Right Color?

The Words For Call-To-Action

1) Your call-to-action should make it clear what the site is about.

I was browsing some non-profit organizations the other day and came up to a good example of how to use inappropriate vocabulary when talking about donating. Here is a nice site asking for donations to “make the world better”: if you want to donate money for a good cause, you need to (1) add your donation to cart, (2) view your shopping cart and (3) checkout. Do you still feel you want to make a donation? Me not. With words like these donation (that is supposed to make me feel happy for “making the world better”) gives me the feeling I am buying a bar of chocolate.

2) It may also be wise to scatter several calls to action throughout the site making the most of synonyms and encouraging words to:

• Explain how to make an action (e.g. “Click here to buy”);
• Use ’softer’ calls-to-action (e.g. “try it” instead of “buy it”);
• Imply immediacy of the action (e.g. “Buy now“).

! Important note: Using several calls to action is OK unless this tactic promotes FUD (i.e. fear, uncertainty and doubt) or distracts attention:

Where To Call To Action?

A great research by Marketing Experiments showcasing the landing page optimization suggests placing a call to action along the customer’s eye path (that you build by your design elements) through the page. Look here:

A Few Examples?

Two helpful links that can demonstrate the theory summed up above: call-to-action button collection and add to cart button collection (each linking to a merchant’s site); so see for yourself! (I personally find most of them painfully poor examples of calls to action.)

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Most bloggers [me being one of them] don’t have a clue what their website color scheme might be associated with. For me it has been enough that I “like” the overall site look. But as an online entrepreneur and consultant I felt that I needed to know at least the theoretical part [maybe I will come up with some testing in the future]. So being happy to enjoy a few days of free time during the holidays I did some research and got so excited with it that decided to share it here at my blog.

Color is a crucial element of a brand identity. I immediately associate skype with blue color StumbleUpon with green, Yahoo with red (due to its red Y letter in my FF search engine list). Website color scheme can make me to leave immediately or to stay for a minute if it looks appealing. Color evokes positive associations and thus forms my initial opinion of the brand. The choice of your brand color can thus stand for:

• your new visitors’ enrollment and participation (by attracting their attention);
• your brand awareness (by sticking into memory);
• your brand positive or negative associations (by boosting memories of what people like/dislike).

General “Color in Business” Theory:

[based on an article on brand colors and awesome Sensational Color blog]

Facts we should also know about colors:

• Color is a powerful promotional tool;
• Colors should be trendy and catchy (use “colors that pop”);
• Between 60% and 90% of website initial assessment is based on its color.

Here is also the graphical representation of how different colors are associated with trust:

Personal Approach to a Brand Color:

To me color perception is very individual. My favorite color is blue (more often that’s light blue but as a rule I like any variation). Whenever I see a blue thingy, I am going to like it. I don’t really think that’s the matter of “trust” or “security” associations. It’s rather the integral part of my personality. While I was searching for “color meanings” and “brand colors” I came across this pretty little color quiz, and I really liked what I got there:

You might also want to try this quiz and post here if what you got really matched your personality.

Modern Approach to Brand Colors:

Internet has got much brighter recently [have you also noticed that?]. There is no boring fixed color limitations (pink is not only for online women’s magazines and if you are running an online marketing blog, it is not a must that you should choose a dull dark scheme). With numerous funny “colorish” blog templates you browse daily, your eye is accustomed to bright colors and spotting a black and white design or a white-background template is somehow an unusual thing [ probably it can catch a visitor's eye even more effectively than a colorful website - that is merely my assumption, I have not found any research supporting it].

Web 2.0 (online video, photo sharing, social networks, etc) and blogging changed the overall web color scheme dramatically. Colorful logos and buttons have become a new internet fashion trend – sometimes the eye even gets tired, I would say.

What is the color of social networks? Blue? Red? Maybe the palette of all known colors!

Bottom-Line

I still don’t think choosing a brand color according to the theoretical approach described at the beginning of the article is the wisest thing to do (though it is worth testing). What is more important is to be consistent and original in colorizing your brand. People will remember your website at first glance if you put a little thought and effort in designing your website. What should be taken into consideration while choosing your brand color, you should remember:

• Color can get people interested in your website;
• Color will make people remember your website;
• Brand color can be a niche marketing tool the way a movie poster finds the movie audience:

Which of these two movies would you prefer to see?

P.S. Thanks to Funkyah for a nice post image.

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A few days ago I put a Christmas-like feed button on my site and today I discovered that it can’t be seen in many browsers other than FF. This fact came as a complete revelation to me. </shame> Honestly, I am having tough time starting my blog and going “social” and I did not even have time to test my blog design in different browsers! But that was a good lesson. Thanks to this shameful overlook, I found a great tool to test a website design (and not only that). By using a FF plug-in called user agent switcher you can quickly:

• Test your web forms in different browsers;
• Check your website with the user agent being Googlebot, for example;
• Avoid browser specific blocks; etc

Download and install this handy plugin here (compatible with Firefox, Mozilla, Seamonkey and Flock). Then go to user agent list (xml file) and import it into your user agent switcher:

And you can play with the plugin to your heart content.

Many thanks to Tom who discovered this tool for us at SEOMoz. The post is of a great interest to me as it shows how many minds produce knowledge: when no one could guess what was wrong, Tom came up with a simple and genius solution!

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