New York Times on Google AdWords for Small Business

If you've taken my classes, these tips on advertising with Google's AdWords from the New York Times will probably sound pretty familiar to you:

• Begin by casting a narrow net, advertising in your local market and then expanding to additional markets like Google’s AdSense network.

• Try to choose keyword terms that your competition has overlooked to keep per-word costs low.

• Remember that good campaigns require constant adjustment.

That's good advice, and while there's not a lot here that you haven't seen in class or in the handouts, the article does offer some specific examples of AdWords use by small businesses. Highly recommended if you're ready to take the dive into pay-per-click advertising.

Check it out here.

Tweaking Wordpress

For those of you building your small business websites (or even e-commerce sites) on Wordpress, Lifehacker has published detailed instructions on "tricking out" your Wordpress site. If you're interested in finding the top Wordpress plugins (it can be daunting to sort through all the available ones) or changing design themes, this article is a good starting point. Check it out at Lifehacker.com.

Forget about the keywords meta tag

I've mentioned in class before that the keywords meta tag is basically useless for search engine optimization and ranking. The description meta tag is important if you want to control the page description in the SERP (search engine results page), but the keyword tag has no value because Google bases keyword analysis on human-readable content.

Today, Google confirmed (apparently in response to a variety of legal actions regarding keyword tags) that they completely ignore the keywords meta tag. Bluntly: "Google doesn't use the 'keywords' meta tag in our web search ranking."

I don't think you can get a more clear-cut answer than that. For more information and an explanatory video, click here to read the complete article at the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Hiring Social Media Experts

New post from a forthcoming Identity Marketing magazine article on hiring social media experts is available over at the eBlox E-commerce Blog. If you're considering bringing in a social media expert to help with your marketing and SEO or perhaps you're considering becoming one yourself (why not? everyone else is doing it) then head over and check it out.

If you're a photographer looking to build a website inexpensively, here are some tools that come highly recommended:

Wix: http://www.wix.com/ - Free Flash-based website builder
Other People's Pixels: http://otherpeoplespixels.com - Specifically for artists and photographers, $16/mo
Snap Pages: http://snappages.com/ - General website creation, also used by photographers/artists, $8/mo
Folio Twist: http://foliotwist.com/ - Built specifically for artists, $30/mo

How to Build a Web Site from Scratch

This is intermittently technical, but for those of you who might be tinkerers, Lifehacker has a good overview of how to build a website from initial concept to completion without any prior knowledge. If you're an autodidact or just want to pick up a few tips, this is a pretty good read. Check out the full article here.

Google search share up to 72%

Google's share of the search engine market grew to over 72% in February of this year, as other search providers continued their decline. For those of you who wonder why I talk about Google so much in BiGAustin's web classes, here's your reason. The latest slide in my SEO presentation showed a roughly 60% market share, and Google has only grown since then. Here's the article.

Hosting Services Comparison

If you're looking for a web host for your site or web application, HostMonk does a great job of offering objective comparisons of features and pricing. It's geared toward the technically-inclined, but if you need specific features, such as lots of storage or a particular type of operating system, you can compare apples to apples and find exactly what you need. Check it out here.

Afforable Web Hosting Roundup

Lifehacker (one of my favorite blogs) has a roundup of readers' votes for the most "Popular, Reliable and Affordable Web Hosts." If you're looking for inexpensive web hosting for your small business or personal website, this is a good overview of potential candidates. Check it out here.