The iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, Android, Palm Pre, and the others. Smart phones. They are becoming increasingly common. Are they a good choice for you?
A few months ago, I finally got a Blackberry. For me, I think the only bad choice was waiting too long. I feel maybe I should have gotten an iPhone when it came out.
The convenience of near constant internet access is some thing that I truly appreciate. Being able to get news or do a Google search whenever I want has many advantages. I can keep up with my email. I can Twitter and for the first time my Facebook profile doesn’t look neglected. I have something to do while my wife is shopping
For many people, a smartphone could be a replacement for a computer. I think a smart phone could probably handle most of what many people use a computer for with the added convenience of always being with you and always being connected to the internet.
Smartphones do have a few disadvantages. Small screens make it difficult for those with not so good eyesight. Small keyboards make typing tedious. Batteries can also be a limiting factor. Even the iPhone’s Safari browser is not quite as good as a full browser. In time, these limitaions will be overcome.

If you are a heavy internet user and you, like me, have put off a smartphone, it’s getting to be time to jump in. No, it’s not going to replace a real computer for a heavy user but it does offer a convenient alternative to hauling a laptop around just in case you want internet access.
Can a smartphone be effetive for a blogger or internet marketer? This entire post was written on a Blackberry. The accompanying photos were taken with the phone also. While I will probably edit a bit later on, it’s not a bad way to use some time that would otherwise be wasted.

Of course, what I would really like is an iPhone or even better, the new Google phone.

Nokia e63 Smartphone

Keywords for your small business website.

Part Three of creating an effective small business website.

Not the best pizza in Chicago because it's in Lake Geneva, WI

I did not ask the question in the post title because I am looking for pizza in Chicago. Although, I have had some very good pizza in Chicago. I also know a great place to get Chicago Style Pizza in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. This is about keywords for your small business website. We are going to start working on the content for your website.

What are keywords and why are they important?

Basically, keywords are the words people might use to find your type of business in a search engine like Google. The words they type in the box. What they want to know. Keyword study can even be nearly a full time occupation for some internet marketers as they try to rank for different keywords to get traffic.

Most small business websites don’t rank for any related keywords.

Typing in “Where is the best pizza in Chicago, Illinois gets some pizza restaurants in Chicago.

Is this the best pizza in Chicago?

It also gets a bunch of sites that are not even from Chicago. List type sites that rank better than most pizza restaurants. Many are not much better than spam sites. Yet, they know more about keywords and search engine optimization than a local restaurant owner does. In fact, I am guessing that not long after this post, this site might rank better than some pizza places for where is the best pizza in Chicago. “Best Pizza” is a different beast altogether in my guess though.

Keywords are the words  used most often in searches.

There are short tail keywords and long tail keywords. A short tail keyword might be “business website”. The short phrase is searched for more often then a longer one. Long tail keywords might be more like “effective small business website”. Both of these are probably very difficult phrases to rank for though. There is a lot of competition for small business websites by those who have a lot more time to spend on SEO than I do.

You as a small business owner have an advantage in keywords though.

You can work the long tail a lot longer than most search engine optimized list type sites. You can also work it better. Keep reading this series and I’ll cover how to use them.

Once you have a list of keywords you can start to use the keywords as your write the content for your site.

You will need to make sure you use them. It is best, however; to use them just slightly more than often than you would in normal writing or communication. You don’t want it to sound strange when someone reads it. You do want to make sure the search engines know what your talking about on the page. Some people go so far as to worry about the exact percentage a keyword shows on a page. I just type the whole keyword or keyword phrase a bit more often where I might use a pronoun. Two to four times a will be good.

My next post in this series will cover some of the ways to figure out the keywords you need in your small business website content.

I’ll try to make this short.

I think my blog posts are way too long.

I actually write a great many more posts than actually make it onto this blog. Maybe you have noticed that many if not most of my posts tend to be fairly lengthly by most blog standards.

Take a post about Firefox I am working on for example.

Long winded and boring?

A few weeks ago I started working on a post about my favorite Firefox extensions. Now, I could just make a list of them and leave it at that. But no, not me. I have to write a post that takes up several pages of the notebook I wrote it in. This post will take me an hour to type in. After that, I still need to create graphics and add the links. I am looking at several hours of work just to publish a post that I have already written.

Add to this the fact that I can be lazy sometimes.

Especially when I have already done a lot of the work and still have the fiddly stuff to do. You can see how this is going. If I ever want you to see that post (and many others suffering the same fate) I need to adjust the way I blog and publish posts.

So, look for shorter posts here from now on.

This way, I can do my writing with pen and paper, the way I think best. Then I can publish it without too much trouble. I should be able to get more of my scribbles out for the world to see. One small post at a time.

Now my problem is I need to break up that Firefox extension post.

Do you as a reader prefer shorter or longer posts?

Not just here but at other blogs.

Google recently annouced an improved AdSense for search.

After reading it on the AdSense blog I went and checked it out in my AdSense account. You have a had time believing this is not Photoshopped. It is a screen capture I made when it happened.

It is nice to know even someone that defines quality websites like Google can have problems too.

I’m not sure why the sample was messed up. Could it have been a browser glitch? I was using FireFox. Was Google’s CSS messed up?

I know the improvement was in the way Search works not the look.

I still think it was pretty funny. Anyone else notice this happen when they announced it a while ago? I am sure it is fixed by now.

I put them off too long.

It is time to do some WordPress blog updating.

I am not an early adopter unless there are serious security problems. In most cases, the Semiologic theme designers have a better handle on the security problems already. In this case, most of my blogs are on reasonably secure versions already and there is no hurry.

In fact, it has been recommended not to update to WordPress 2.6.

WordPress 2.6 has some serious bugs. There is a permalink problem and also security flaw. If you have not updated your WordPress installation to 2.6, you should wait till 2.6.1 comes out in a few more days. 2.6 was not a real security update so you are not taking much risk waiting.

I am updating at this time just to be prepared for further updates.

As WordPress and Semiologic Pro continue to advance, there is an increased possibility of problems with upgrades to blogs running older versions. I want to avoid this in the future. I am also considering host changes for many of my sites and I think it would be better to be using the latest supported versions on my sites and blogs if I decide to move anything.

I am sort of expecting a few problems with this update.

Mostly in the subscribe and bookmark plugins. I am also concerned about a potential feed problem. There were some bugs in these that may not be completely ironed out, but I think those are minor problems.

May I inlist your help?

Does my feed seem to be working right? If you are not subscribed to my RSS feed, now would be a great time to try and see if my subscribe plugin is working. Also, if you have found some posts here useful, why not test my bookmark plugin and let me know of any problems. Yes, I realize this seems to be a poorly masked attempt to get more subscribers and social bookmarks. It is, but I am curious to know if everything is working at this point. How’s that for honesty?

I have plans for more changes to some of my blogs.

I need to make a new header both here and at my photography blog (the header on the photography blog needs it really soon there is a real problem with it). I also plan to use some of the new features in Semiologic Pro to improve some things on the home page and add some interesting things. I am really excited about some of them.

So, lots of fun blogging stuff to do.

WordPress 2.6 has been recently released.

While not a security release, you may want to download the new version right away anyways.

There are some very cool new features. Some features WordPress users have been waiting for a long time to see.

Here’s a few of my favorite new WordPress 2.6 features.

Image captions for WordPress!

Finally! Why we had to wait so long for image captions to be added to WordPress I do not understand. This is something that anyone posting photos on their blog should find very useful. I have been wanting and waiting for this since I started using WordPress.

Improved image control in WordPress.

Many have seemed to have problems with images since the last version came out. While I did not have any uploading problems, I have seen a few quirks that were annoying. Hopefully, now getting those images to float where they are supposed to will be much easier.

Word count.

This should help me keep track of the size of my posts a bit better. Sometimes I get shocked to see the length of a post after writting for a while. I think a word count can help you focus on one idea and finish it before a post gets a bit too long and starts to ramble. I believe there is a sweet spot in post length that makes it more readable (I never seem to follow this – maybe word count will help).

Bulk managment of plugins.

I like to deactivate many plugins before updates. There are often several that could cause a problem with a theme or with the new update. Deactivating before the update can make life a bit easier. Until now, you had to wait for the page to reload after each plugin was deactivated. Now you can select more than one at a time. This will make life much easier. Too bad I have to update first to get the feature.

Here’s the WordPress video showing some of the latest enhancements.

 For most users updating should be easy.

In most cases, start by downloading the files to your desktop. Unzip the files and FTP them to the directory you have installed WordPress into. If you have used Fantasitco to install WordPress, you can upgrade as soon as your host upgraded the Fantastico script, or you can do it manually also.

The Online Video Toolkit from Jim Kukral

Jim Kukral has a free guide to making video for your blog or website.

Jim has been running the Daily Flip video blog for quite awhile. Now he is sharing some of the things he has learned and does with the rest of us.

I just finished watching the videos he has up so far and they are very informative.

The Online Video Toolkit  is meant for those just starting to think about doing video blogging or podcasting. Jim uses a very inexpensive setup in producing the Daily Flip and gets great results. He also uses no technical jargon when he is explaining what he does.

Some of the topics the video guide cover so far are:

• Choosing a camera
• Inexpensive lighting with great results
• Setting up your "studio"
• Clothing to wear

There are other subjects he covers also. He will be adding more videos to the guide. Jim also asks if there are some subjects that you would like him to cover. I think he did a great job showing how much your clothing can affect the camera, this is something I might not have thought about.

Video and podcasting are becoming more and more important for bloggers and Internet marketers.

While you may not want to use video in all your posts, it is something that you should be familiar with and be able to add when you need it. There are times when video can really make a difference. Use the right tool for the job. Or, you can use Jim’s techniques for an all video blog like the Daily Flip.

I find Jim’s Kukral’s The Daily Flip to be one of the best video blogs I have seen.

Jim does a great job. His videos are short and well done. The Daily Flip is very informative and you can learn quite a bit about internet marketing there. He is a great example to follow if you want to do video. Now he is showing everyone how he does it and what he uses.

If you are thinking about adding video to your blog, give the Online Video Toolkit a look.

It is free. Jim does ask you to sign up with an email address to get access, but Jim is a straight up kind of guy. I don’t think you’re going to find yourself getting email from Jim about any of the crazy deals you typically get when you give your email. Jim is not selling anything in the videos or on the site. He even goes into Best Buy to show you where you can get video cameras like the Flip Camera he uses.

Give the Online Video Toolkit a look.

Finding the right Web host for you can be difficult.

Choosing a Web hosting solution for your Website or blog is one of the most confusing choices with starting out.

Yet, choosing a good Website host is very important. A bad web host can cost you money. A bad Web hosting company can damage your ranking. A poor Web hosting solution can drive potential visitors away. It can make your blogging or Internet marketing career miserable.

It is difficult to know what advice to follow when you choose a Web host company.

Like cell phone providers, it seems like everyone hates their host. For anyone that says a host is good, it seems like there are 3 people that will claim that website hosting solution is the worst on the planet. Every Web host has numerous individuals either claiming it is run by monkeys or that it is the perfect hosting solution for every need. It is difficult to tell who had a really bad Web host versus who just had bad luck and whose experience was a rare exception.

Web hosting review sites are no help.

Web hosting affiliate programs are very profitable. Many hosting review sites are not much more than a list of affiliate links. The order they are in may not be as reliable as an opinion. Checking 10 “Top 10 Web host provider” lists will give you 10 very different lists. Often, a significant portion of each list will be unique to each one. It is hard to know who to trust.

Sadly, nearly all the Web hosting companies over promise and under deliver on their shared hosting plans.

Shared hosting plans are the $10 hosting plans that promise unlimited domains, gigabytes of space, and terabytes or incredible gigabytes of bandwidth. You will never get to use those features before you account is pause and you are told you need a more expensive plan. You will be told you are using too much resources (usually CPU cycles). No shared plan is going to stand up to a DIGG front page. With a shared plan, you are sharing the server with hundreds of other sites. A DIGG can use all the resources of a server (or more) leaving none for any of the other sites. The host can either pause your site, or let the hundreds of other sites on the server go offline.

It is a shame that Web hosting companies feel forced to advertise like this, but would you pay the same for a host that only offered 2 domains and 500 megabytes of space vs. the typical deal? Probably not, even if it was more accurate. At one time Web hosting companies had different shared hosting plans depending on how much you thought you needed. Now, it seems like  there is just one shared plan, a few reseller plans, and then more expensive VPS and dedicated server solutions.

With shared hosting plans, you get what you pay for.

It is unreasonable to expect a $10 shared plan to give the same performance that you would pay $100′s for with a dedicated server. However, for most cases, they are just fine to start with. It may be all you ever need. Once you have a successful blog or Website, you can upgrade to a dedicated sever or virtual private server (VPS) if you need it.

What you need most from your Web hosting company is reliability and support.

You need your web server to be up and running. You need a reliable Web host. If not, visitors may think your site is gone when your site does not load and never return. Or worse, Google may decide your site is bad and stop sending you the traffic in the first place. Also realize that 99% reliability means your site could be offline 3 entire days a year.

Support is important because sooner or later you will need it. It might be to have a blog restored from backup. Good support means different things to different people. In most cases, I am happy with an email solution within a couple hours. Even with my slow typing, I would rather email support than spend 15 minutes waiting on the phone. I also realize that any site I would put on a $10 hosting plan can afford to be offline for a few hours. If you think you would lose too much money on support that might take several hours, you should look into more serious hosting. These are not the hosting plans for your Super Bowl commercial site. Still, especially if you are starting out, you will have questions that need an answer occasionally.

Below I will share my Website host experiences. These are all basic hosting options that I either have accounts with currently or had until recently. I am sharing my own experiences both good and bad. I also have an opinion on which I would recommend to someone. Most of the links are affiliate links, so you can take my experience or leave it.

XXXX vs. HostGator vs. Hosting Zoom vs. Prohosters

XXXXXXXX

This blog is hosted on XXXXX. I had the unfortunate situation being with XXXX for a week and being with them when all their servers went down for an entire day. They claimed to have made changes to prevent this from happening again. Since then, I have not had too much of a problem. A few minor down times and occasional slowdown spikes at peak hours, but generally pretty good. Phone support is available.

I only have two sites on XXXXXX shared plan. This is because until recently, they only allowed two unless you wanted to pay an extra fee each month. Now you can have unlimited add-on domains.***As of December 2009 this site is now hosted on HostGator and because of further problems with the previous host, I am removing mention of them on this site. I cannot in good faith recommend them.***

HostGator

I have not had any problems with HostGator. None. I have several sites on a Host Gator shared account and have not seen any problems. I admit that I do not check them quite as much (daily, but not much more than that) as the sites on Lunar Pages. While it is possible there have been problems, I have not seen any. I would expect some slowness at peak times but I have not seen it. You can have unlimited domains on the shared account.

I have not had much need for support with HostGator. My support tickets were handled timely even though I have never marked them urgent. They are better than LunarPages are warning of coming software upgrades. I was given over a month’s warning before the upgrade to PHP5. HostGator seems well run and is my recommendation for a Webhosting company for anyone starting out. HostGator is high on my list to check when I think about getting another hosting account.

Hosting Zoom

I have a budget reseller account with Reseller Zoom a division of Hosting Zoom. I am including it here with the shared plans because it is basically shared hosting. The difference is you create an account for each domain (allowed up to 20 with the smallest account) instead of the add-on domains shared hosting plans have which look like subdomains in your account. It is slightly more complicated than just a regular cPanel admin but not difficult. The basic account was just $4.95 when I started. It costs more now (about the same as most shared hosting solutions). This is a good option for someone who has several small sites. Also, storage and bandwidth is very low on the budget plan.

Support with Reseller Zoom depends on your plan. Budget plans do not get phone support. Only online support. Reseller Zoom has some security settings that are different from most hosts also, which can cause some problems or confusion. Reseller Zoom is best for someone with a bit of experience. Of note are options for European and Asian hosting plans. You are best off getting hosting on the continent your target market is on, but if you are looking to improve your site using silo techniques, having links from sites at geographically different locations can help boost rankings.

ProHosters

ProHosters is a division of Carpathia Hosting. ProHosters is not the typical shared hosting but a VPS hosting solution. Their starter VPS solution is close to HostGator’s low end reseller plans in cost but probably lower in bandwidth and space. However, with ProHosters your plan tells you how many other plans are allowed on the same server. In other words, you are not packed onto a server till it starts to slow down from the load like most shared plans. Starter hosting plans are limited to 100 plans per server.

ProHosters support is top end. Any scheduled maintenance is done at off hours and you are well warned ahead of time and given specifics of any expected downtime. ProHosters also does not hide downtime. In four years of using Prohosters, I think there were three times the server was down or there was any interruption in access. None were over an hour and specifics were emailed to me about how long the outage affected the server and what the problem was. You will not see support like this from most shared hosts and even some VPS and dedicated server hosts. The hosting takes advantage of Carpathia Hosting’s datacenter reliability.

The only downside to ProHosters is cost and the admin panel. It is more expensive than most hosting. It does not use the cPanel that is used by the majority of hosting companies. It is an advanced option to look at when you have a site that is making lots of money for you. Till then, I think HostGator is a good solution. Carpathia and Prohosters do not have an affiliate program so the links are not affiliate links.

Some final points for WordPress users:

• Stay away from Windows hosting. WordPress permalinks and Windows hosting have some problems.
• cPanel is used by most but not all Linux hosts. This can make changing hosts easier for you later on.
• WordPress does have a higher CPU load than a static Website. This means you cannot get as many blogs on a server as static sites before the server slows. You will never get to the bandwidth limits of your account before you are asked to upgrade to a more expensive hosting option.

I hope I have explained why choosing a Web host can be confusing, I hope you’ll find my advice valuable.

I still don’t really get the whole Twitter thing.

Twitter has been around a while but lately, it seems

to be mentioned by everyone. I’ve been hearing about it since it came out. OK, its instant messenger chat with only 140 characters. What is the appeal?

The last few weeks, everyone seems to be talking about it.

It seems like it has recently gained a lot of popularity. Everyone is pushing it.

I am still not sure how valuable it is.

I have wasted a lot of time over the past few days. Not making my own Tweets, but reading others and trying to figure it out.

Michael Kwan had a post recently about using Twitter to get traffic and Stumbles to your blog. Take a look at his post at:

Case Study: Twitter + StumbleUpon = Massive Traffic

Twitter seems a lot like some of the early Website chat rooms.

Twitter adds a user account, filtering, feeds and that phone update option. I am not sure I would want updates on my phone, but then again, I did not think I would join Twitter either and here I am.

I admit, I did learn something this week on Twitter.

A somewhat popular blogger and social networker had her father’s blog hacked. The host did not have any back up. Not something I would have expected from that host. Maybe not a host I would want use.

Have you found Twitter valuable?

Who do you follow? Have you found some Twitters that are interesting? Have you learned anything that you might have missed unless you had Twitter?

Want to follow me on Twitter? My Twitter URL is http://twitter.com/shokthx

Christmas themes too!

ScratchBack has announced it’s new marketplace blog directory.

This will aid both publishers showing the widget and advertisers. The marketplace should provide a single location and increase the usefulness of the ScratchBack widget.

If you are using the ScratchBack widget on your site or blog make sure you sign up on the marketplace!

This will help advertisers looking for a place to advertise find you. I think most of my Text Link Ads advertisers came from the TLA marketplace. I think eventually many advertisers will be using the ScratchBack directory to find blogs and sites to advertise on.

If you are an advertiser, this directory will provide a great place to find places to advertise you site or product.

Right now, the list is small. I think this is because not too many publishers know about the site. I think this will fill up quickly with some very good advertising options. Don’t forget, links are just $1.00 on this site.

For more information about the directory or to get your site listed, take a look at the post on the ScratchBack blog.

Visit the directory and make sure your site gets on it.

We’ve sorta quietly launched our new directory, or marketplace, the other day. Check it out at www.scratchback.com/directory.

Are you a ScratchBack widget user? Feel free to add your blog or website to the free directory. Adding your site or blog allows advertisers/tippers to easily find your blog based on categories, so they can tip you.

ScratchBack Marketplace Blog Directory Now Open! | ScratchBack

The directory is a bit rough yet.

It seem like they have taken some kind of directory script and adapted it. It was not obvious to me where the URL was for the sites. But, it is a great start. It would be nice to see a specific place for the cost of an ad as well as some kind of traffic ranking for sites. Right now, you would have to visit the site and check everything out yourself.

ScratchBack announces Christmas themes for the widget.

If you would like to add a little Holiday spirit to your ScratchBack widget they have a few Christmas themes now. I like them. My only complaint is that they are still to wide to go in the column I wish to place it in here. I have been told that thinner widgets are in the works – I wish these were available in a thin version.

You do not need to change the code on your blog or site.

Just go to the ScratchBack admin and select the widget manager link. You only need to go through the steps. Once you get to the point it gives you the code you are done. No need to copy the code to your blog.