As the web constantly changes and evolves, one of the most challenging aspects of my job is staying up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices. I’ve compiled my list of 21 blog feeds that I daily read which cover almost every aspect of internet marketing from social media updates to organic search engine optimization. I’ve added and removed a number of blogs as I find them valuable or not valuable and these are my top choices that have remained. If this seems overwhelming and you’re interesting in just the most interesting and important updates, I regularly retweet that information on my Twitter account @CodyMWard.
I’ve submitted over hundreds of stock photos to my ShutterStock and iStockPhoto accounts in the past few years and I thought I’d share my three top performing photos. One of a wet golden retriever on a dock has recently become popular this summer, one of a female model holding a pocket PC with a stylus has been popular across multiple stock sites, and finally a photo of a clubhouse down in Florida has been downloaded dozens of times. It’s interesting what people are using them for and I’d love to stumble across a derivative of these photos someday. Thanks for reading!
I’ve recently been up in the northwestern area of Illinois this summer and had the opportunity to shake some dust off my camera. There’s so many subjects in the Galena and Apple Canyon Lake area that I could take a variety of macro and wider angle shots. There’s a couple photographs of macro flowers but my favorite is the close-up shot of a small white caterpillar. No joke, he was only a centimeter in length. Thanks for visiting and if you’re interested, explore some more of my photo galleries.
It almost seems like a day doesn’t go by without another video spreading like wildfire through social media. Here are a couple links to some of the latest.
So it’s been a little while since I posted on my blog. I’ve got a lot going on and unfortunately this has taken a back seat. But now I’ve got something cool to post. I just got back from a spring break trip to Bonita Springs Florida and brought my Canon 20D along to take some photos. Hope you Enjoy!
One of my latest projects is BuyerDude.com. The idea behind this site is to reduce the time and money spent by people when shopping for anything online. One major problem with shopping online is finding the lowest price as well as getting the best product for the value. If you’re looking for an MP3 player, you have literally hundreds to choose from. You can go with an expensive iPod with all of it’s accessories or you can go with a limited but cheaper off-brand. Either way, you have a great deal of research ahead of you. Websites like CNET offer great reviews on some products but you can’t find these reviews on the store you purchase the goods from. When you finally do choose which product you want, it’s then important that you get the best price. This is where services like Google Shopping, or Price Grabber, become useful. They compare prices from dozens of stores and usually highlight the lowest price. Even with all of these great websites out there there is no site online that combines both the product review services as well as the price comparing. BuyerDude.com will have numerous useful services all provided free to visitors. If you visit the site you can view the top products reviewed by category. For example, you can view the top 5 MP3 players, or the top 10 Sport Watches. Along with the comparing of products by category, the prices are listed for every product. This way, shoppers will get the best product and the best price every time. Along with these features, the site will also offer coupon codes from the affiliated stores. Every product and store will be connected to coupon codes that will offer additional discounts usually around 5-15% off. Finally, each category will provide a link to additional products to purchase from selected stores. Please feel free to check it out at www.BuyerDude.com. Technorati Profile
I finally got the chance to get outside and take some winter photos with my macro. Although there weren’t as many icicles as I would have liked, I still managed to capture the snow on some trees. There are also photo macro photos of Christmas ornaments on the tree.
I found this online the other day and thought it was pretty funny. How can you not laugh at the concept of a bunny holding two snowman hostage with a blow-dryer. Great winter comic for the holidays.
kay, so you’ve done all the work. It’s taken you a while but your shiny new website is finally online. You’ve put the finishing touches on it and are ready for some visitors. A day goes by and your analytics software shows nothing. That’s okay, just check where you’re at in Google. You’re not on the first page for your topic. No problem, second page is still good. Not there either? Third page. No. Fourth? Okay, type in the URL in Google. Not there? Surely you should show up for that.
You’ve now determined that Google isn’t finding your website. Easy, you have two choices. You can either submit your website URL to be indexed and after 6 or so months and you’ll show up… or you can find a site that is already indexed, get your link on it and when the search engine spider crawls that page it will follow the link to your site. You start emailing webmasters. You search “links page” in Google, look up the email address of the owner and compliment them and request a link exchange. After about 30 or 40 you get a reply. Great! The site has a Google Page Rank of 3. It’ll be indexed in the next week or so and Google will see your site.
Uh oh, what will Google see? You never realized that Google needs to be told what your website is about. But how do you do it? You need to focus on four main things. The Title Tag, the Description Tag, the Image Alt Tags, and finally the Body Content of your page.
Title Tag – This is the tag in your html that looks like this… <title>This is where your title goes</title>. It tells search engines what your page is about and is what is going to be displayed on the search engines results page with a link to your site. It is important to include keywords about what the page is about. It should be 7-10 words.
Description Tag – This is the tag in your html inside of your <head> and </head> tags which looks like this…. <META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”this is where your description goes”>. It is displayed under the title on the search engines results page and should hold important keywords about the page’s content.
Image Alt Tags – These are html tags that should be added to every image on your website. They should describe what the image is to the search engines and should include important keywords.
Body Content – Search engines love content and rank pages accordingly. If you build a website with fresh content that is updated continuously and includes many keywords related to what people will be searching for your site, you’ll do well.
Now you’ve optimized your Title, Description, and Image Alt tags and have written all about your products and/or services. You’ve included your keywords occasionally throughout the text and are ready for Google to see your pages. A week goes by and you do a search on your URL. You’re there! Now that you’ve done everything right you search one of your medium important keywords… and your #9. Well at least your on the first page, but how do you rank up?
To boost your website you need to become popular on the web. Every link pointing to your site counts as a vote and you need more votes that your competition. You search for more links pages, you search for related pages, you search through more links on those links pages. Next, you go to http://Del.icio.us, signup, and bookmark your site. You start creating content using blog services and http://Technorati.com it. You create and RSS feed for it. You http://Digg.com your story and try and get the word out. You email all your friends to go. Months go by and you’re constantly adding your website URL to everything online. You start writing press releases and distributing them for free on the internet with your URL tracing back to your website. You request links from everybody and build and build…
It’s been 6 months and you look at your analytics software. You’ve got a steady stream of visitors.
You keep your content fresh, don’t stop your link building campaign, make online partners… and it really starts to grow.
kay, so you’ve done all the work. It’s taken you a while but your shiny new website is finally online. You’ve put the finishing touches on it and are ready for some visitors. A day goes by and your analytics software shows nothing. That’s okay, just check where you’re at in Google. You’re not on the first page for your topic. No problem, second page is still good. Not there either? Third page. No. Fourth? Okay, type in the URL in Google. Not there? Surely you should show up for that.
