I was in the middle of graduate school when I first found CKMG. Boy, was I thrilled to take a break from the full-time grind of academic study. However, after a year-long hiatus, my unfinished business is looming and it's time to get back to the books, at least part time.

Which brings me to the point: education is a continuous process. In order to stay sharp in your chosen field, it's necessary to exercise and enhance your skills. Always look for ways to build on your existing level of expertise. I'm a firm believer in furthering education to meet the demands of this fast paced world.

Further Your Education With Online Courses

Online classes are a flexible option for those juggling various obligations. You have the convenience of learning what you want, when you want, from the comforts of your own home.

Attend a Local Workshop and Further Your Education

In many cases, you don't have to be a traditional student to take advantage of the resources offered by the school. Look for courses in the extended learning program at your local community college or university. This is a great way to enhance your skills and stay up-to-date on the latest advances in your field.

The results that come up for a google image search can often be surprising, confusing, and sometimes cosmically hilarious.  Usually, though,  it seems that the images that come up from an image search are not as equally relevent as the web sites that come up when you do a web search. This is because images are not being optimized to the same extent that websites are. This allows many to seize the opportunity of focusing on optimizing their images for an image search and see more substantial results because of less competition. Keep in mind,  Google image searchs can bring the same amount of traffic to your site as the regular google web search.

One crucial step in optimizing for Google's image search specifically is utilizing the enhanced image search specifications under the google sitemaster's tool. You will need a Google account to access these tools, but it'll be well worth it because in this section you can categorize your own images to match the way in which Google sorts and categorizes the search results.

Upload your images to be as large as possible. Having bigger images that link from thumbnails can greatly increase the preference for that image amongst Google's spiders. Bigger pictures are given more priority over smaller ones.

Utilizing particular characters within your image's title can affect how Google interprets it. If you use dashes, Google will translate each dash as a space. A word with one dash will be read as two words by Google's spiders. This can help better match your image to a potential search.

You can also check to make sure that Google has your image files indexed, and take steps to resubmit them if they aren't showing up. You can view the images for a particular site by using site: http:// [desired website address] within Google's search field.

Other methods are  utilizing all relevent html tags (i.e. alt and longdesc) and  making sure to give a relevent name to the the image ( see more on this in my previous post).

I came across this interview I did early last year and thought it would be helpful to share with everyone... The Topic was "Content Development & Strategy".  The interview was for a super affiliate education center my friends over at MarketHealth.com were creating to help their affiliates become better internet marketers. 

Content Development and Strategy

In the online world, the mantra of “content is king” continues to hold true. The key to building a successful and long-lasting website is to create top-quality content that draws in viewers, improves online visibility, and establishes your site as an authority within your industry. How can you ensure that your website content is achieving these goals? Tom Elliott, CEO of Content Kings Media Group (www.ckmg.com), was kind enough to answer some burning questions about content development and strategy.

Q: What factors should a developer consider when planning and creating Web content?

TE: “Listed in order of precedence:

1) Demographic Identification - Who are you targeting?

2) Content Channel Creation - What are your navigational tabs going to be?

3) Content Acquisition - How are you going to get your content?

4) Content Management Solution - How can you manage your site with minimal time and staff?

5) Daily Content Maintenance - How are you going to update your site on a daily basis?”

Q: Are there any elements that are more important than others?

TE: “The proper identification of demographics is the most important piece as it will be the basis for all content decisions. Similar to how a television network targets a specific audience. Take Spike television for instance; the majority of their shows have a common theme with a target audience in mind. By honing in on demographics, it allows you to provide optimal real estate opportunities for select advertisers. If you’ve ever watched the television shows within Spike TV, you will obviously recognize it’s a network geared towards men, and when you see the commercials that are chosen, you will also recognize how intelligent the advertisers are with their placement.

Once you’ve identified your target audience, you can develop an intelligent group of content channels that will serve as your primary and secondary navigation links within the portal. Each channel will contain subcategories which will intern provide the base for unique articles and content.”

Q: Content developers need to strike a balance between satisfying user needs while still generating great search results. How can content developers balance SEO and user needs?

TE: “Great question, and one that long deserves clarity. First things first, you can develop all the content in the world, but if you are integrating this content into a site that hasn’t been properly architectured, your efforts will go down the drain. What I mean by that is this: there are basic fundamentals that must be applied to each page of your website from the top level down. Each page must be unique and easy for the search engines and users to differentiate. Once you’ve learned the fundamentals of how to architecture a website, there are golden rules I recommend you follow when achieving balance with Content and SEO:

Rule No. 1: Users Come First - I hear people say this all the time and I feel like people say just because they’ve heard it somewhere else… (the buzzword phenomenon). The reality is putting your users first will in return provide you with long term success. Think about this; why do you think companies like MySpace or YouTube developed such a large following so quickly? They put their users first and constantly asked their users to assist them with making their online brands better. You may not have the lofty goals that a YouTube or a MySpace had, but treat your business with the same respect and you will see results.

Rule No. 2: Develop Themes - Each page within your site that is optimized for a keyword or two should have a theme, right? Once you’ve identified the theme for each section, search the web for the most relevant information that you can consolidate into your web page without over-cluttering. The goal is to make that page the most relevant for a keyword. Just because you have a unique article with the proper title and meta information doesn’t mean you deserve to rank number one for that keyword. Ask yourself this question: How else can I help the user gain the information they are looking for when typing this keyword phrase in?

Rule No. 3: Content Housekeeping - Always be improving your web pages. If something happens in the industry you are involved in that directly affects your users or your business you need to cover it. There is always something to write about and if you don’t do it, someone else will. By doing this you are showing that you are one of the most up to date and relevant resources of information on the Internet, which will in turn assist you with achieving top organic rankings.”

Q: How does content development affect online brand recognition?

TE: “Brand Recognition and Content Development go hand in hand. The quality of your content and the frequency of your unique content creation affect how users, publishers and advertisers see your brand. Think about it like this; if a user visits your site and doesn’t find your content compelling, why would they bookmark you, buy something or share your site with a friend? Why would a publisher want to link to a stale site or a site that doesn’t at least provide weekly updates?

If you look at the publishers that generate the largest amount of volume for their advertisers you will notice they are updating their online brands with information on a daily basis.”

Q: What do developers need to do to create a content strategy to enhance their online branding?

TE: “The quickest way to refresh a content strategy is to gather your team together around a white board and brainstorm. Have people throw ideas out for new content channels; as many as possible. Don’t disregard any idea until you have the white board covered with topics. You’d be surprised how much of an impact a simple brainstorming session will have on your content strategy. Too many publishers and affiliates attempt to copy their top competitors rather than develop their own unique strategies.”

My advice: Break the mold and be bold. Forget about what your competition is doing and target your audience with information you know will attract new searchers. Think about how you can separate yourself from everyone else and develop your own niche.”

Q: Are there any content development tools or resources that you would recommend?

TE: “Yes, and they are all over the place. I get ideas from TV, Radio, Newspapers, Restaurants - any form of media that captures my attention. Think about why it captures your attention and what advertiser is placing their brand in front of you. The faster you catch on to understanding the human psyche and how it works the quicker you’ll understand how to develop an online brand that not only generates revenue but attracts the eyes of advertisers looking to get a piece of the action.”

If your website design looks like a 14-year old's MySpace page, you're gonna run into some trouble. Too often, online businesses will try to go over the top with backgrounds, graphics, splash pages and overly-designed sites. If you want your website to be effective, you gotta keep it simple.

Start With An Optimized Site Architecture

Before you start putting together a flashy design for your site, start with the fundamentals. Create a site architecture that allows you to optimize for specific keyword phrases. Your goal should always be to help users (and search engine spiders) track down relevant information in the clearest possible way.

Organize your top-level navigation bar with tabs that point to your most important content pages. Incorporate a left navigation that helps users find what they are looking for quickly. Once you've established a solid website architectural foundation, you can start sprucing up your design.

Flashy Splash Pages Do Nothing For SEO

If you've created an entire flash-based site or an intro splash page that animates images and text into a crazy multimedia presentation, you may be losing valuable opportunities to optimize your site properly. A little bit of flash design doesn't hurt, but if all of your content appears in an image-heavy flash presentation, your content won't get properly indexed by the search engine spiders. Your keyword-rich text will be lost if it appears as a flash image. An all-flash site won't have an optimized URL structure and you'll lose valuable interlinking opportunities. When it comes to using flash on your website, keep it simple and remember, less is always more.

Let The Content Speak For Itself

We live in world full of multimedia-rich outlets, but throwing up tons of graphics and images can detract from the real meat of your site -- the content. Your multimedia design elements should supplement your content, not vice versa. Well-written content that offers users the information they're searching for will always win out over flamboyant images and graphics.

So before you try to make your site look like an explosion of pictures, moving images, graphics and flash presentations, remember the basics. Create keyword-rich content that helps people and couch this content in a visually appealing, but not overly distracting design. Simplify the content finding process, and you'll get love from users and search engines alike.

 

--Chris Stout

I was contemplating a ham sandwich the other day and was reminded of the Internet. What does a ham sandwich have to do with the Internet, you ask? The answer is simple. Whether it’s a sandwich or a web page, it may look like what you want on the outside, but what’s inside is not necessarily for everybody.

Keywords Are Key

When writing a blog post or an article for the Internet, keep in mind your audience. Keywords are a double-edged sword. The more of a certain word or phrase that you put in your article, the more people who are interested in that particular thing you are going to attract to your site. There’s a school of thought that says any traffic is good traffic. On some level that’s true, but you shouldn’t post about Nazis on your corporate blog too many times unless you’re prepared to have a lot of German history buffs visiting your site.

Traffic Begets Traffic

Not that there’s anything wrong with German history buffs. But if you get a reputation for drawing individuals and groups to a site that isn’t really relevant to them, it won’t be good for business. If a site provides useful, relevant information related to their keywords, word will get around.

The Internet is smaller than you think. Traffic begets traffic.

If someone hits up their search engine looking for ideas about getting good traffic to their site and they find this blog post, they’ll be happy. They’ll remember CKMG and want to come back here, where they’ll learn even more techniques for optimizing their relationship with search engines that will make them even happier. On the other hand, if WW2Expert55 and his pals keep getting directed to a marketing strategies corporate site, they might spread the word and get that site known as a spam site or black hat site and then nobody’s happy.

And isn’t the whole point of the Internet to make more people happy?

 

--Craig Berger

When it comes to Website development, creating an "About Us" section might be among the last things on your to-do list. Just don't skip it. Your "About Us" section should include pertinent information about the background of your company and concept, in addition to personal profile pages for you and your staff.

Company Background

Remember to include details about your company. Identify relevant details about your concept, goals and important successful milestones. What important steps went into conceptualizing your company? What is your mission? What sets you above the competition?

Writing Personal Profile Pages For Your Website

Potential clients want to know something about the people with whom they are about to do business. Illuminate your education and professional experience in the field, as well as what makes you a trusted expert. Consider this your opportunity to brag.

It doesn't hurt to add a human touch when creating your personal profile pages. People want to connect with a personality. Blend the professional aspects of your bio with a few tidbits that people can relate to, such as hobbies, interests and dislikes. Keep it small and tasteful, focusing on professional attributes, adding in a little color.

 

--Keion Moradi

This week I watched an interesting Frontline documentary on PPS called Growing Up Online. The program examined the many ways in which the Internet has fundamentally changed how kids grow up these days. This program really got me thinking about how the latest generation of young'uns really don't remember what the world was like in the days before the web. 

Unfortunately I had to attend my Aunt’s funeral on Tuesday. While this was a difficult time for my family, it also provided some reflection time which I think is much-needed for all of us amidst the hustle and bustle of our daily lives.

613

During the Minyan, a traditional Jewish prayer service held at the home of the mourners, the Rabbi gave a brief speech in which he talked about the 613 “mitzvot,” or good deeds, that are part of the Jewish faith. “Why so many?  No one could possibly do all 613,” he asked.

One a Day

The reason, he explained, was not so that one person could do all of them, but so that everyone could do at least one. The idea was that anyone who made any effort to be a good person couldn’t help but do at least one good deed, and that knowing that one can be a good person so easily inspires more good people doing more good deeds every day.

Using the Internet for Good

The Internet provides a similar opportunity. With all the functions and possibilities that the Internet allows, one only has to want to use it for something good to make that happen every day. Whether it’s sending an e-mail to a good friend you haven’t had contact with in awhile, ordering flowers for one's mother or circulating a petition to help protect the environment, the Internet can be an unending source of good for society if we just let it.

What will your e-Mitzvah be today?

--Craig Berger

Excerpts from an interview I did with a one Mr. T. Montana:

--Morgan Greenhalgh