This month I have finally managed to take time to go on a couple of experimental video shooting sessions but ended taking a lot of stills instead.

You wouldn’t believe how good it felt to finally be able to play with a camera.  Fatherhood is the biggest blessing I have ever received but it does not come without its sacrifices.

So we went for a drive in the mountain range area near Lisbon called Sintra, it’s a gorgeous  place that has a bit of everything, from dense vegetation to century old magnificent trees. It’s also on the coast line so when you leave the mountain side you can immediately see the shore. 

The first sets of pictures were taken in the mountain side near a fountain, the light wasn’t too grand but it did provide good contrast between the road and the vegetation. 

This second set was taken in a very special place in the top of the mountain, a couple of minutes away from the fountain. I was a bit disappointed with my work, the lighting was superb but I didn’t take the most out of it.

On the way down was able to find a spot where you could see the entire coast line and the mountains above it, the light was exquisite, really enjoyed shooting there.

Feel free to checkout the entire set here.

One the questions that I keep getting from colleagues who aren’t involved in the Search Engine Optimization arena is how many keywords should they to optimize their website for.

First of all, Web Pages are optimized, not websites. A web site is usually constituted by several web pages that can rank for various terms that have a life of their own.

As you might be aware of, the number of times a specific word is found on a page plays an important role on how that page will rank for with that particular term. However Google has several mechanisms in place that prevent content publishers from abusing the factor. This is where the Keyword Density factor comes in.

An optimal keyword density is a good balance between a specific word and the rest of the content published on a web page. Clustering a page with a keyword will have an adverse affect on how that page ranks for that keyword on Google, as the page will be identified as spam.

Another aspect that should be taken into the account is the less time = ROI.

The less time you spend optimizing your website for good results the better your return of investment is. This is one of the things that I have noted to blog about in the future that I think most SEO specialists tend to forget.

The fact that you achieved the ranks you proposed yourself to achieve isn’t necessarily a victory. Always ask yourself, how much time did this action take from me?

Choosing your keywords carefully is always the best way to go.

Find your market’s niches: Web Market investors always tend to go for the keywords that they would search for, remember that internet user behaviour is completely different from the regular consumer. You will be surprised at the queries that your potential clients are doing. In this industry never assume that you know something without testing it out.

Tools for Research: Although meant to be used for PPC campaigns, the Google Keyword tool provides you with the Google Search Volume information for any particular term that you search for that can be used in your Organic keyword selection. It’s a great tool to find good niches within your market based on the search volume data provided by Google.

Another useful tool that can aid you in your Keyword selection process is Google trends. It gives you a pretty good idea of how a certain search term does in terms of search volume, with the extra bonus is spreading this through out the year. This is extremely important as it allows you to program your investment during the year. Ideally, you should change the keywords you invest in depending on how well they do thought certain periods.

Placing the Keywords in the Meta tags, does it matter? No, at least not for Google, but it doesn’t hurt! How Google treats the Keyword Meta Tag is still not very clear, but what we do know is that as far as relevancy is concerned, they don’t matter. It is also a possibility that Google looks for repetition of keywords in the Meta Tag to look for spammers, so take this into account when building your keyword Meta Tag.

Keyword Density: The Keyword density factor is one of the most disregarded and at the same time abused elements of Google’s algorithm. To put it very blatantly, Keyword density refers to the percentage of a given keyword within a specific web page’s content.

Through a Search Engine’s perspective, it means that repetition means relevancy.

Getting inbound links to benefit specific keywords within web pages: Although the purpose of this post is to provide a few tips on how to chose and where to place your keywords, without really focusing on link building, here are a few tips to optimize your optimized Keywords:

Let’s suppose that you have a web page that talks about Coffee Mugs, and let’s suppose that it is an interesting niche, and that you have an affiliate campaign set and ready to go for this particular branch of products.

If your website is about Coffee Mugs, or if you have more related internal links pointing

So how should I proceed to market that webpage.

1. Make sure the keyword density is right within the page

2. Try and place the keyword in the title of the webpage in the first position of the title tag (it does matter). Ex. Coffee Mugs – Mysite

3. Place the Keyword in a Header tag. If it is an article the ideal structure would be; placing the Keyword in the Title of the article wrapped around h1 tags and in the short description of the article wrapped around header 2 tags.

4. Get properly anchored inbound links from websites related to Coffe Muggs. Google is all about contextualization. If your Web Page is getting links from Web Pages that are in context to what your page is talking about, the importance of that page will logically increase. (Even better if those contextual inbounds have are authoritative).

This one might sound a little off, but this needs to be said.

I am the only one who doesn’t think that things are all that bad? Sure the economy is down, but for crying out loud, I’ve been people mentioning and throwing around the word “Depression”… Depression…really?

My Grandmother was English, and she lived through World War I, and I remember listening to her describe how she and her sisters would go down to the addict and stay there for days until the German planes would stop bombarding.

Every time a plane would go by and dropped a bomb they could hear the sound of the Bomb falling down and my great grandmother would tell them to close their eyes and count to ten, if they reached 10, it would mean that the bomb didn’t hit the house.

She would describe to me the feeling of going up the stairs and leaving the addict after a bombing, with that feeling of exciting and overwhelming happiness…yes…it was a good day, they had survived.

Survived my friends, this is the word to be noted here. Most of us have never had to survive a day in our lives. Sure we have all gone through some hard times, working too many hours for too little pay, but that’s what life is all about, it’s supposed to be hard.

So I suggest that all of us make a collective effort to simply ignore the word “crises” for the next year or so, you wouldn’t believe out better all of our lives would be.