Local listings are an increasingly large part of search. Google places results now pop up at the top of search results automatically. This is good news for local businesses. If you have a physical location, you better take full advantage of the opportunity!

You should always start by claiming your business on Google Places, then work your way down by submitting information to Yahoo Local, YellowPages.com, and maybe even Bing Local. From there, you want to convince search engines that your ...

Even in this post-panda world there is a place for link building through articles. If you have unique and high quality content, then there are a lot of free article directories out there that will help you promote your business or website.

That’s something that we talk about in chapter six, the link building chapter, of our SEO for WordPress book.

But which directories are good and which are junk? There are a lot of lists of free article directories out ...

SEO for WordPress, Out on Packt Publishing, Dec. 2010

We’re Halfway Done!

It’s been a lot of work, but our upcoming SEO for WordPress guide is coming together nicely. We’ve teamed up with technology upstart publisher, Packt Publishing to put everything we know about SEO for the world’s leading website platform, WordPress, into a easy-to-read and comprehensive guide. Expect the book out in December of 2010.

Preorder Now

Don’t pay just yet! There are ...

The Austin American Statesman newspaper reported today that Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s campaign website is riddled with hidden phrases such as “rick Perry gay” (Governor Rick Perry is Senator Hutchison’s opponent in the race for Texas Governor.  The story broke here, in the Statesman’s Postcards section. The hidden text is a thinly veiled a attempt to capture rankings for a wide variety of phrases.

The CSS display:none Tag

The Senator’s website (site has been taken down–as ...

I like to play around with Way Back Machine – the site that archives screen shots of websites in years past.  We’ve put together a little tour of early versions of now-ubiquitous websites. We think you’ll enjoy this little web tour. So, put on some Pearl Jam (they were hot in 1998) and set your browsers to 640 by 480 and relax:

Google in 1998:

This incarnation of Google was ...

This is a new project we are undertaking. A current and useful map of Wifi Hotspots in Austin. We have started with Southwest Austin.

We are seeking collaborators. If you’d like to contribute hotspots to this resource, please email us at michael[at]tastyplacement.com and we’ll include you as collaborators.

Click, Drag, Zoom

This is your basic Google Map, so you can click drag and zoom to scope in on your ‘hood…

View Austin ...