Andrew Melchior

2-3 weeks ago I had the chance to do an interview with a writer, Adam Sutton, for Marketing Sherpa.  He regularly contributes to the blog and newsletter content on MarketingSherpa.com.  The interview was about Image SEO and the different techniques you should use to optimize images for search within the major image search sites such as Google Image Search and Yahoo Image Search.  The article is really good with some very helpful insights related to Image SEO.  He and I met for about 30 min. and discussed the topic and I am mentioned in the article for this quote:

“I don’t think I can remember an instance where we’ve met a client and done a site analysis, or looked at an image gallery they have, and they had all the alt tags filled out. Literally never are the alt tags filled out.” Andrew Melchior

Anyway, I thought the interview was great and the article was great as well so I thought I would post about it here real quickly.  You can find the article here: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31221.

Here are my suggestions for basic steps you want to take for high-quality Image SEO.

1. Name the image file something relevant to the search term you are targeting.
2. Insert a proper Title and Alt tag for the image related to the search term(s) you are targeting.
3. Include related content around the image that is related to the search term(s) you are targeting.
4. Link the image to another page on your site that deals with the topic.
5. Include an image caption using the target term(s).
6. Tag the image if possible.

Those simple steps will really help your images get found in search.

The other day I was sitting with my wife talking about shopping (yeah go figure), we were talking about something that I hate talking about and something I hate spending time dealing with.  Especially when it comes to shopping for clothes.  The discussion we were having revolved around the difficulty that women have, in today’s society, finding clothing that is attractive, yet modest.  She has explained to me on many occasions that she had found something she really liked, but that the one thing wrong with it was that it just showed a little too much skin for her to feel comfy in.  I think this is a reality for many women; at least from what my wife said.  This problem facing many women has brought to light this “modest clothes movement” and I found it interesting.

Well, just so happened that after having that conversation I had a similar one with a friend of mine and he recommended we check out Blend Fashions for modest clothing.  That’s exactly what my wife did and she is now a raving fan!  She told me that Blend has the perfect mix of modest clothing that is also considered modern clothing as well.  Here is a glance at the items they carry:

Undertease Brand: Long Camisole, Modern Apparel

The Mod Bod Brand: Modest Womens Clothing, Modest Cami

Blend Brand: Modest Swimwear, Modest Dresses

Privacy Wear Brand: Jeans, Modern Clothing, Modest Clothing

In the past couple of weeks I have had a few friends ask me what all the junk is on my Facebook wall.  By junk they were referring to all the @replies, RT’s, and shortened words and abbreviations that I use on Twitter.  I really don’t have time to stay plugged into Twitter, Facebook, and all the other social sites I play on.  So, to help me share my thoughts on the many networks I post to, and stay in touch with friends with out having to actually sign into all of them, I use Twitter Apps and feed readers to pull my Twitter updates into my other accounts.  This makes it simple for me to update the accounts I really care about by really only having to update Twitter.  BTW, you can follow my on Twitter once you have an account at http://twitter.com/atraine.

From my Facebook Wall -- See all the JUNK?

For those of you who don’t know what twitter is, here is a definition:

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Wikipedia.

You can visit Twitter and sign up for an account in only a few seconds and then you can start micro-blogging too…along with updating your Facebook account, or using the Twitter Facebook App to update your Facebook account automatically.

There you have it, my short explanation of what all that so called “junk” is on my Facebook page.  Sorry if it’s been confusing to you.