Here's a handy guide to SEO I put together.

The “secret” to SEO is to not worry too hard about SEO. Yeah, keyword research and canonical links are all important, but in the end if you have a good site, people will share it on Twitter and Facebook. And if people share it, Google will notice.

Google is basically that quiet kid who sits around listening to what the cool kids are talking about to find out what’s cool. And Twitter and Facebook are the cool kids. So if people are using social networks to say stuff like “Hey this site is pretty awesome.” then Google will be all like “HEY GUYS CHECK OUT THIS SITE I FOUND. I’M SO COOL! I KNOW ABOUT ALL THE COOL STUFF SO BE MY FRIEND OKAY?”

Or something like that.

But there’s a bigger point I want to make. It’s not just about having good content and getting more traffic—it’s about getting the right traffic. Here’s a little insight into my personal struggle with this topic:

Recently I redesigned my website and rearranged a bunch of stuff. I wasn’t getting much traffic so I wasn’t worried about keeping old pages up or using a lot of redirects. Originally my website existed to help me show off design work and get some freelance gigs. Currently I have a full time job and I’m not interested in freelance work. But I’m still completely full of myself so I wanted to have a website showcasing my artwork anyway.

So I took down any work that wasn’t directly related to what I really want to show off… that means stuff like web banners, photo retouching and anything that wasn’t something I’m really passionate about. It felt liberating and I was glad to be rid of the clutter… until I looked at my stats.

Apparently I was getting search traffic for terms like “moire artist” because of some retouch work I did to fix a moire pattern in a photo. There were actually quite a few pieces from my old portfolio that came up in search that were no longer live on the site. Not a ton of traffic, but steady traffic. That got me thinking that I should put this stuff back on my site. “Oh my god, I’m missing out on traffic because I took down so much old work. Someone somewhere is looking for a retouch artist to fix a moire pattern RIGHT NOW and they’re not going to find me!”

And then I remembered that I don’t care.

Sooooo my point is this: don’t worry about every little search term you might possibly rank for—just focus on the stuff that really matters to you. This is important for bloggers and freelancers who are trying to brand themselves online.

If you’re a fashion writer, but you happen to get a lot of search traffic for a rant you wrote about the best burrito you ever had… those visitors are probably not very useful to you. They’re not going to stick around to read the rest of your blog or subscribe. And if for some reason you find that posts about burritos get way more traffic than any other type of posts, but you really don’t want to keep eating burritos for lunch just so you can blog about it, then don’t. In the end, it’s not the audience you’re after. (Plus, you’ll probably get really fat.) That’s not to say you shouldn’t be flexible if you find an unexpected audience, but you shouldn’t alienate the one you already have by making big changes to your content.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to work on ranking for “Awesome narwhal artist.”

I’ve always been a bit into comic books, which had a big influence on how I learned to draw (and read I’ll admit). But the influence didn’t just stop there; comics also influence how I design. Sounds crazy? I explain the concept in much more detail in an article I wrote for Inspired Mag about comic books as a source of inspiration for designer.

How Comic Books Can Make You a Better Designer

I’ve always been kinda into comic books, especially X-Men and Spiderman. As a kid I had a huge Rogue poster on my wall, and a poster sized X-men calender. Somewhere I’ve even got an uncut sheet of cards I always meant to hang, but never got around to. But as much fun as it would be the adult in me doesn’t want comic book posters lining all of my walls.

But Rogan Josh might just change that. His series of Modernist Mutants and Minimalist Marvels posters portray superheroes and villains in simple graphic forms that make stunning pieces of artwork.

Pictured above are two of my favorite characters of all time, Rogue and Gambit.

Modhero via Cool Material

In my experience some designers will talk about “right way” to do something in Photoshop. Personally, I love to learn every way to do something because different situations call for different methods. Everyone works a little bit differently and it’s important to find the methods you’re most comfortable and efficient with. With that said this tutorial isn’t about showing you the “right” way to remove a white background… it’s about the fast way.

This tutorial will show you a quick and dirty way to isolate an image on a white background. This method is fast and looks fine for web graphics, but I wouldn’t recommend it for anything hi-res.

Let’s get started shall we?

So you start off with your image on a white background, in this case it’s a blue piece of luggage on a white background that I want to drop onto a yellow background.

So I drag the image of the luggage onto my new orange background. At this point I can choose to use a selection mask to carefully select around the perimeter of the luggage, or I can use the lasso tool to do the same. Some might even suggest using the eraser tool instead. Those are all great methods that I use often in large files, but in this case I’m going to cheat a little.

Rather than following any of the “correct” methods I mentioned, I’m simply going to set the layer’s blending properties to “Multiply” which makes anything white transparent. Obviously that looks like crap, but there’s more!

Now I make a new layer underneath the luggage layer. In this layer I will use a brush to color in behind the luggage with white. The white layer on top of the color layer blocks your background color from showing through your image.

To make straight lines I click, hold down shift and click again and a line will be drawn between the two points. I fill in the edges using this method then scribble in the rest. The benefit to this method is if you make a mistake you can easily erase the bottom layer without altering your original image. It’s also less precise than using selection masks and can be done in less than a minute with a tablet or even a mouse and you don’t have to look at any weird red overlays. With practice this can be done in a few seconds.

Another great befit to this method is any shadows you end up with look natural against any background since they don’t contain any of that left over white color. As you can see in the example above the shadow on the left using the Multiply method looks much more natural and less choppy.

This method doesn’t have the kind of accuracy that’s necessary for print, but it works just find in a small scale web graphic when you’re pressed for time.

If you have a method that works great for you, please share it in the comments.

Halloween is right around the corner and if you still don’t have a costume and you’re scrambling for ideas then check out Costume Pop for last minute ideas. One of my favorites of course… be your favorite blogger! Just print out one of these blogger Halloween masks (drawn by yours truly) and stay in your PJs.

See all 15 Halloween Masks at Costume Pop

After hearing the news that Ralph Lauren doesn’t feed their models I had to try to imagine what this woman must have looked like before they butchered her—I imagine that she was probably once quite beautiful. This is just a quick edit to demonstrate what normal human anatomy sort of looks like.

Don’t get me wrong, I love photomanip… I edit photos professionally and for fun, but within reason. It’s important to use a light touch to make someone look their best and really bring out the features that give them character. One photo could never catch the essence of something or someone entirely and I feel that editing helps the viewer see what you want them to. But this is downright disgusting… but more importantly it’s inaccurate. I’ll never claim to be an anatomy expert, but I do feel that good Photoshop artists must have a basic understanding of human anatomy… otherwise they do things like crush someone’s rib cage or remove their vital organs.

I honestly don’t know if this is the result of a lack of understanding of the human body or an obsession with portraying it as disfigured. What do you think?