Google has made another change to how its search engine works. If you own a website, it’s good to be aware that all search engines make changes like this regularly. They don’t always tell us when they’ve done it though, or what they’ve done, or what will be affected. This is one of the times they’ve told us.

If you haven’t subscribed to Google’s Official Search blog “Insider Search”, point your RSS feeds there now. (If you aren’t sure what an RSS feed, you can learn what an RSS feed is here.)

For most of you who have ads located at the upper areas of your site, this is probably not an issue. Google has made this change primarily to impact sites that are almost nothing but ads. You’ve probably seen them before: you click a search result on Google and end up on a page that has a ton of advertising and nothing looked like what Google said it was.
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Recently, I wrote in my personal blog about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act.

Then I realized that I have more people reading this, who also have a need to understand this potential law and what it means to them.

GeekArtist Web Solutions, LLC stands with other businesses, individuals, and non-profits that are against this law. Read the rest of the article here…

For those who follow us on Facebook and Twitter, I had mentioned to hold off making a Google+ business page because Google was still working on that.

Google has released their version of business pages for Google+!

See GeekArtist Web Solutions, LLC Google+ business page (my first post is my picture…enjoy).

Go forth, and make your Google Plus business and non-profit pages!

Not sure if you want to try it yet? It’s very easy to use. And quite a number of people have either abandoned Facebook entirely, or like me, use both. I believe it is a viable social network and won’t go away anytime soon. It is certainly more popular than Google Buzz (which, Google will be closing soon).

If you have any questions about Google+ pages, just ask. Or you can check out Google’s Help section.

Whether you call yourself a small business owner, consultant, or entrepreneur, there is another word similar to those words: freelancer.

Freelancer and business owner have different meanings to a lot of people. But they face similar challenges and have similar needs.

As a result, I’d like to introduce a lot of you to a very helpful site called Freelance Switch. And I’ll do that by sharing 3 posts that may benefit you and your business.

10 Simple Website Changes that Will Increase Your Freelance Sales – If you’re looking at your site trying to figure out what you need to do to improve it, this is the post for you.

6 Sources to Find Sales Lead Lists – A very simple list with a few simple, but sound, ideas.

30 Inherently Useful Tools for Freelancers – A great list, covering everything from accounting, to cheap credit card processing services.

What services do you use for your business that you just can’t live without?

If you didn’t read the prior posts, definitely check out the 2 prior posts in the WordPress series:

• Part 1 of WordPress Plugins: Do’s and Don’ts for WordPress Plugins
• Part 2 of WordPress Plugins: 14 Awesome WordPress Plugins

To keep this post short, from a security standpoint, for now I’m going to focus on spam and blocking various IPs from your WordPress site. I’ll address other security issues in a future post.

As before, I’m going to give you 2 links: one for the WordPress plugin repository, one for the plugin author’s site. You can get the plugin at WordPress.org plugin repository, or via your installation of WordPress by going to Plugins > Add New and putting the name of one of these plugins in the search box.

I link the author’s site for those who want to do further research for the plugin, and as a bit of SEO love for these WordPress plugin developers.

This is not a comprehensive list of all plugins. This is just a list of those I have the most experience with or people I know have recommended. Feel free to join in the comment section with any WordPress anti-spam plugins you have found.
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