Welcome to my blog

The purpose of this blog is to cover topics such as: the latest trends in the creative world; the job market and keys to finding a new job; Direct Marketing; updates on projects and people; and even allow you to view and comment on my work. So, if by chance you’ve stumbled upon this blog, please take a look around, I think you’ll gain insightful information. If however you are here because you wanted to gain some information on a specific subject matter, take a look at the tag cloud to the right to see what’s popular. I’ve attempted to highlight sound bites of useful information that is easy to absorb and remember.

Please share your thoughts, suggestions for additional topics and leave me a comment. And of course feel free to subscribe or enable the RSS feed.

Career Tests Help You Determine Your Perfect Job

All too often career choices don’t lead to personal happiness on the job or to maximizing one’s potential. Most people stick with certain jobs or careers because it’s “what they know” or what they think they’re good at. Sound familiar?

Have you been bored, unsatisfied, or worried that your current job might be eliminated and found yourself wondering…”is this all there is?” Or maybe you’re out of work and in a rut? Perhaps now is the time to start exploring a different career. But with so many different types of jobs and careers, how do you figure out what’s right for you?

Taking career assessment tests can open up possibilities by helping you uncover the tasks, experience, education and training needed for your next career move. This enables you to make better career decisions and market yourself to your best advantage. Working in an unsatisfying career can dramatically reduce happiness, productivity, self-confidence and self worth.

Check out new fonts from MyFonts in the last 50 days http://ping.fm/pPpLb

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist

Below is a comprehensive SEO Checklist of core components any new or current website should take into consideration when thinking about organic search engine rankings. This SEO Checklist covers all the core elements and gives a few high-level guidelines / hints. The SEO Checklist is meant as a starting point, a truly comprehensive SEO strategy involves a great deal more detail and involvement.

Search Friendly URL’s: Avoid dynamic URL’s, URL’s should contain keywords when relevant and have a consistent flow, use hyphens instead of underscores. For example: example.com/music/artist/artist-name.php

Meta Keywords: Don’t use more than a dozen keywords, keywords should revolve around page content, avoid continuous repetition.

Meta Description: Don’t use more than 225 characters, avoid continuous repetition of keywords, describe content on page.

Title Tag Optimization: Avoid continuous repetition, limit yourself to no more than 120 characters, order keywords by importance.

On-Page Content: More content on a page the better but use at least 300 words, content should contain relevant keywords, but do not overdue it.

Header Tags: Use keywords in header tags (<h1>, <h2>) to show importance and theme of a page – <h1> is the most relevant keyword, <h2> is the next…etc.

Robots.txt: A robots.txt file should be used to tell search engine crawlers what content you do not want crawled.

HTML Sitemap: Link to from footer, add links for primary and secondary content pages.

XML Sitemap: submit directly to search engines.

Images: Image file name should describe what image is (e.g. cape-cod-beach.jpg), use image ALT tags for relevant keywords.

Redirects: use 301 redirect on old / unused domains.

Code: Avoid heavy use of JavaScript, I-Frames, AJAX and other non-SEO friendly code.

Domain: When possible use a domain that has a search engine presence and contains relevant keywords.

Linking: Linking, both internal and inbound, are core to SEO success. Develop a comprehensive linking strategy that focuses on cross-linking within a website, within a network of websites and from external relevant websites. Link using keywords related to the page within the anchor text. In regards to inbound links it is quality over quantity.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist

Below is a comprehensive SEO Checklist of core components any new or current website should take into consideration when thinking about organic search engine rankings. This SEO Checklist covers all the core elements and gives a few high-level guidelines / hints. The SEO Checklist is meant as a starting point, a truly comprehensive SEO strategy involves a great deal more detail and involvement.

Search Friendly URL’s: Avoid dynamic URL’s, URL’s should contain keywords when relevant and have a consistent flow, use hyphens instead of underscores. For example: example.com/music/artist/artist-name.php

Meta Keywords: Don’t use more than a dozen keywords, keywords should revolve around page content, avoid continuous repetition.

Meta Description: Don’t use more than 225 characters, avoid continuous repetition of keywords, describe content on page.

Title Tag Optimization: Avoid continuous repetition, limit yourself to no more than 120 characters, order keywords by importance.

On-Page Content: More content on a page the better but use at least 300 words, content should contain relevant keywords, but do not overdue it.

Header Tags: Use keywords in header tags (<h1>, <h2>) to show importance and theme of a page – <h1> is the most relevant keyword, <h2> is the next…etc.

Robots.txt: A robots.txt file should be used to tell search engine crawlers what content you do not want crawled.

HTML Sitemap: Link to from footer, add links for primary and secondary content pages.

XML Sitemap: submit directly to search engines.

Images: Image file name should describe what image is (e.g. cape-cod-beach.jpg), use image ALT tags for relevant keywords.

Redirects: use 301 redirect on old / unused domains.

Code: Avoid heavy use of JavaScript, I-Frames, AJAX and other non-SEO friendly code.

Domain: When possible use a domain that has a search engine presence and contains relevant keywords.

Linking: Linking, both internal and inbound, are core to SEO success. Develop a comprehensive linking strategy that focuses on cross-linking within a website, within a network of websites and from external relevant websites. Link using keywords related to the page within the anchor text. In regards to inbound links it is quality over quantity.

Generating Creative Ideas as a Team

Is your team having a tough time coming up with creative solutions to problems?

If so, it might be time to give the left hemisphere of the brain—the logical, analytical side—a vacation. Enter stage right: the brain’s right hemisphere—the imaginative, nonrational side. Below are four techniques you can use to help your teammates’ brains break free of the ruts they’re in: