Guidelines

These guidelines were developed to help curators create high-quality ZEEF pages and increase positive perception of these pages by the visitors.

  1. Be useful. ZEEF is not only for collecting the links, but also for helping people searching for information. Before creating a page think first and answer the following questions: “Why would people use this page? What is the added value of the page? What problems will it solve?”.
  2. Diversification is important. The links on the page should lead to many different sources (not only one corporate website, for example).
  3. Use different tools to find the links. Don't only use personal bookmarks and Google, but also other search engines, curation platforms, etc. The page may be created during a couple of hours, but it should be regularly updated with new links. A perfect ZEEF page is NOT the one that was created once, it is a continuous process of collecting the links.
  4. Update your page regularly. Nobody is interested in outdated and irrelevant information. Update your page at least once per several weeks - especially if the topic requires regular updates (these topics may be travelling, events or shopping - due to regular changes in sales, dates of events, seasons, etc).
  5. Your visitors are your colleagues. Ask for a feedback from the visitors and take into account their recommendations for improvement of the page.
  6. Look professional. Upload your professional photo in order to make the visitors see you as trustful expert.
  7. Praise yourself. Do not afraid to tell people that you are the expert! Write concise and relevant description of your expertise and/or experience.
  8. Be self-critical. Critically review your personal information: would you trust the person on this photo, and is there enough information about your background and expertise?
  9. Be concise. The page should be concise and not very big - otherwise the visitors may easily get lost and feel that the curator himself doesn’t know which link is the best.
  10. Be objective and open. Do not rely too much on your personal experience of a website. In order to be as objective as possible, remember that the websites you have used before are not necessarily the best. Be open to new sources and be ready that there are better websites than the ones you got used to.
  11. Find nice and relevant pictures. In order to make the page more pleasant and lively use relevant pictures as headers of the blocks. Avoid disturbing or unpleasant pictures - if you have troubles with finding good images - better create blocks without them.
  12. Use links to trustful and credible resources. If you are not sure whether the information on the web page is true, relevant and trustful, better don’t include it into your ranking.
  13. Name links properly. The names of the links should be readable and informative. Try to come up with such a name of the link, which makes visitors click on it. It is of your interest that the visitors click on the links, so name them appropriately!
  14. Everything is always ranked. The first links should be of higher quality than the last ones. Always remember that the majority of visitors think that they are ranked!
  15. How to rank? Always take into account the following ranking factors (they are more important for the visitors): relevance of the content to the topic, completeness, correctness and up-to-dateness of the information, credibility of the source and low amount of advertisements on the web-page.