This is a submission to the Small Biz Local Discovery Contest and part of our commitment to serve the small business community with quality Internet marketing resources. This article answers the question: “How would you advise a small business owner on how best to use SEO, PPC or Social Media to drive conversions to a local business?” Vote for your favorite contest entry from August 1-10. Beginning in October 2010, Google began making changes which have allowed small businesses to be more easily found in search results based on geography. This shift in local search visibility, is easily, the greatest change in search geared toward small businesses since the advent of the search engine. Yes, it’s that good! All it t...

Panda 2.3 was rolled out on July 22nd and since then I have been hearing a nice number of reports from webmasters that they have recovered. Of course, we are still getting reports that sites are still not doing better and then new reports of sites that just hit by this update. But for the first time, I am seeing a significant number of reports from people saying they recovered.

Want to rank better on Google? Get people to add you to their Google+ Circles, and that seems to be a potentially huge boost, based on a search I just did. I’m Friends With Ford When I looked for cars about an hour ago, I found a listing for Ford at the bottom of the [...] Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Webmaster level: AllOne of the 10 things we hold to be true here at Google is that fast is better than slow. We keep speed in mind in all things that we do, and the +1 button is no exception. Since the button’s launch, we have been hard at work improving its load time. Today, we’re proud to announce two updates that will make both the +1 button and the page loading it, faster.First, we’ve begun to roll out out a set of changes that will make the button render up to 3x faster on your site. No action is required on your part, so just sit back, relax, and watch as the button loads more quickly than before.In addition to the improvements made to the button, we’re also introducing a new asynchronous snippet, allowing you to make the +1 e...

Every week we bring you our favorite recipes from our friends at Serious Eats. This week: Pan-fried mango chicken, Karen DeMasco's oatmeal cream pies, and a stack of cheese and sesame flatbreads. Read Full Post