Steve Jobs, the visionary in the black turtleneck who co-founded Apple in a Silicon Valley garage, built it into the world’s leading tech company and led a mobile-computing revolution with wildly popular devices such as the iPhone, died Wednesday. He was 56.

The hard-driving executive pioneered the concept of the personal computer and of navigating them by clicking onscreen images with a mouse. In more recent years, he introduced the iPod portable music player, the iPhone and the iPad tablet — all of which changed how we consume content in the digital age.

Fortune: Ten ways Steve Jobs changed the world

His friends and Apple fans on Wednesday night mourned the passing of a tech titan.

“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” Apple said in a statement. “The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”

See reactions from Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and many others

More than one pundit, praising Jobs’ ability to transform entire industries with his inventions, called him a modern-day Leonardo Da Vinci.

“Steve Jobs is one of the great innovators in the history of modern capitalism,” New York Times columnist Joe Nocera said in August. “His intuition has been phenomenal over the years.”

via Steve Jobs, Apple founder, dies – CNN.com.

How does the user like and interact with your page?  Check out the article published today by Search Engine Watch.

Google is rolling out updates to how the AdWords quality score is determined and how much impact that score has on the ad’s ranking. These changes were first tested in Brazil, Spain, Portugal, and portions of Latin America.

What’s Changing

The changes, which were first implemented on a limited scale in August, increase the weight given to keyword relevance and landing page quality when it comes to determining the quality score for a page. These two factors will also have a greater impact on how ads are ranked on the Google SERP.

Google stated that, “As the changes roll out, some campaigns will see variation in keyword Quality Scores and typical ad position. Within a couple weeks, things should stabilize and we expect most campaigns will not see a significant change in overall performance.” Google has not released figures for the portion of campaigns that will likely be affected or exact how substantial the AdRank and quality score changes will be.

Google officially announced the impending global spread of the changes on October 3rd, stating that all AdWords users should see the changes “over the coming weeks.” This means that October is the time for making fixes to exact match keyword relevance and landing page quality.

via Google AdWords Puts More Weight on Relevance, Landing Page Quality – Search Engine Watch (#SEW).

Google Earth and Maps vice president of engineering Brian McClendon said the following of the one billion downloads achievement:

via Google Earth Reaches One Billion Downloads | Search Engine Journal.

Going After One Keyword

One mistake that I often see with business starting out with their SEO campaignsis the fact that they sometimes just go after one keyword. Going after the one major keyword for your industry or locality and obtaining a first page position could be enough to really boost your business. But, let’s face it. Doing search engine optimization for your website is a investment. You are both investing a lot of time and money to go search engine rankings escalating. If you’re only going after one keyword, all it takes is one change in Google’s algorithm to knock you from that position leaving you with no business again.

That is why it’s important to diversify. Going after multiple keywords that relate your business is important. Google is constantly updating and changing their algorithm and how they rank sites and you want to have a diversified portfolio comes to your search engine optimization as well. This will prevent you from losing all of your business should a algorithmic change happen and also gives you more clout when it comes to the way that Google will rank you for other longtail keywords that relate to your industry.

PPC vs SEO For Generating Business

So what is the difference between investing in pay per click ads versus search engine optimization? Well, there’s a few things to consider.

Pay per click campaigns will definitely get you traffic quicker and give you that boost your business that you might need right now. A word to the wise, make sure that you have a proper landing page set up for your pay per click campaigns before even thinking about running an ad words campaign or a campaign through Bing. There are many many businesses that waste thousands and thousands of dollars on their pay per click campaigns before ultimately giving up because it will have the correct keywords, the correct ads, and a high converting landing page.

Search engine optimization on either hand, is more of a long-term investment. You don’t get immediate results like you do with pay per click but ultimately, your goal is to invest in your business now and have much lower cost per click and cost per conversion ratios in the future. The difference in cost per conversion when comparing PPC to SEO fluctuates greatly depending on your industry and the keywords you select.

What Type Of SEO Campaigns.

Should you move forward with a search engine optimization campaign for your business online, I would suggest going with a company that guarantees results and allow you to pay based on performance. So for example, you might pay an initial setup fee per keyword, but you don’t pay anymore until you see results. For example, you might start paying your search engine optimization specialist once they have you ranking for your particular keyword in the top 30. As they rank you higher and higher in the search engines, you pay them more per month to get you to that ranking and maintain that ranking. Most of these types of SEO campaigns are designed to have a contractual timeframe to accomplish the goals, and maintenance plans that  help you maintain your positions in search engines.

It is pure speculation this point why Steve Jobs has stepped down and resigned as CEO of Apple, but health concerns from his past may be the reason.

Explain read below for the full text of Steve Jobs letter that he presented to the board which sites that he is unable to fulfill all of his “duties and expectations”.

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple”s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.  I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple”s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

How will Steve Jobs resignation affect Apple stock?

We will see tomorrow what will happen to Apple stock from Steve’s resignation and hopefully business huge drop being that Steve Jobs has been the head and face company so for so many years and is a huge reason why Apple has been since so successful. One thing is for sure, Apple is here to stay and Steve Jobs will continue to play a role in the company thedirection of it’s future.

Well, I have an answer for you.  Buy maybe not what you are thinking.  None of the above.  Kind of.

Most people know about WordPress.com, but don’t know what WordPress.org is.  They are almost the same thing except, with WordPress.org you install the files onto your own server.  It only takes about 30 seconds to install and only about $4 per month.

Why WordPress.org instead of WordPress.com?

When you host the WordPress files on your own server, you pretty much take ownership of your site.  You also open up access to a huge variety of  premier tools that you can use to get more traffic and build a following.  Don’t get me wrong, I do like WordPress.com and even Blogger, Tumblr, and Weebly for that matter, but when you commit to anything besides WordPress.org, you are locking yourself in a box for the future growth of your website.

With “self-hosted” WordPress, you get access to premium theme developers at StudioPress with the Copyblogger team and Brian Gardner and ThemeForest and the ability to change take your site anywhere you want in the future when it comes to time-saving plugins and shortcuts. (StudioPress does a few themes that work on WordPress.com) WordPress is now reported to run 22% of the websites online (.com and .org) and with that many users comes a huge development community eager to make your site easier and more powerful.

WordPress Plugins To Power Up Your Site

Let me give you some examples of what you can use with your new wordpress site that are unavailable with the other options.

You can use wishlist Member, developed by Stu McLaren and team, to turn your website into an easy to run membership website where you can give members or paying members access to premium content.  This is great for being able to segment and control your content for different users.

If you want to create landing pages and squeeze pages, you can easily install a plugin called Premise that allows you to control that way your page look on a page by page basis.  You can hide the navigation bar, hide the header, change the header, hide the sidebars, add custom graphics and webforms and more with Premise.  It was developed by the CopyBlogger team and Brian Clark.

You can set up another installation of wordpress and run an entire theme that is set up for product launches, squeeze pages, and landing pages called OptimizePress.

If you want to automate things on your site a bit (with careful consideration) you can use WProbot to add feeds and videos to your site automatically.  (Don’t add duplicate content to your website) .  You could use this to initiate content and then add your own unique content to it as well.

These are just a few examples of what you are missing out on when it comes to Tumblr, Blogger, Weebly, and WordPress.com installations.

Verdict of WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger

WordPress wins for sure.  I have used all of them and found that anything but a self-hosted site will find most people feeling boxed in after a while and they might not give you the flexibility that you want or need.  Just pick up your own hosting pack at Hostgator and you will be off and running quickly.  If you need help, check out http://wpthink.com for video tutorials on setting up your own WordPress install.

If you have any other questions on the subject, enter them in the comments section below and we would be happy to help.

The ultimate goal for both Bing and Google is to have a quality experience for their users.  If you are searching for “How to make waffles” then they want to deliver the absolute best information possible to help you with your query.  If they don’t deliver, they will lose users when someone does it better.

Bing put out it’s rules of engagement so to speak when it comes to doing SEO on Bing.com.  Read and follow carefully when you are adding content to your site and put the most emphasis on uniquness and quality.

How To SEO on Bing

1. Make sure your site is crawlable by using an XML sitemap, a robots.txt file, and well-structured on-site navigation.
2. Improve your site structure by using an HTML sitemap and linking to trusted sources both within your site and outside of it.
3. Create a solid content hierarchy by doing basic keyword research and avoiding placement of your content in rich media such as Silverlight and Flash.
4. Use a short meta title that has fewer than 65 characters and that’s unique to each page, and try to include the targeted keyword toward the beginning of that title.
5. Use a unique meta description tag.
6. Create quality content (following the guidelines Bing provided earlier).
7. When you build links, focus on keyword-relevant anchor tags that link back to quality content on your page.
8. Create an RSS feed.
9. Use schema.org markup.
10. Create a user interface that prioritizes the user experiences; the search perspective on things like page load time aren’t as important as how the user responds.
11. Encourage social sharing with the use of social buttons.
12. Don’t cloak your website.
13. Don’t use link farms.
14. Don’t engage in three-way linking.
15. Don’t duplicate content.
16. Don’t use auto-following on the social front.
17. Don’t use thin content.
18. Don’t buy links

Before we get into it all I want to give you my honest opinion of WordPress if you are wondering if you should use wordpress for your website.  Wordpress powers around 25 million website and about 22% of all websites run wordpress for their CRM for their personal blog or business website.  With a huge community comes huge community support.

There is WordPress.com and WordPress.org.  The difference between the two is that WordPress.com is hosted on their servers and WordPress.org is hosted on your own server.  I highly recommend using WordPress.org and hosting all the files on your own server.  It is much easier than it sounds.

There are great developers and supporters of WordPress that make the CRM easy to use and also make it easy to customize and integrate with other websites and services.  It is kind of like the iPad and iPhone.  The actual iPad and iPhone systems are great, but it is the community and apps that make Apple products great.  Same goes with WordPress.  It is the drive for the development community to make WordPress progress that makes it special.

So, yes you should use WordPress for your personal blog or business website

I recommend it with confidence.

Getting started with WordPress

Step 1:

Sign up for a very inexpensive hosting account at Hostgator.  We use Hostgator because we have used several other servers in the past and finally ended up with Hostgator about 3 years ago and never had any issues since.  They have great customer service too.

Step 2:

Using the information that Hostgator sends, log into your cpanel and click on Quick Install.

Step 3:

On the next page you can click on the WordPress link to start the installation of WordPress.  This whole process of WordPress Installation only takes a few clicks.

Step 4:

Click the continue button to start get to the next installation step.

Step 5:

Just fill in the information in the form that pops up in QuickInstall.  Typically you are going to just install WordPress in your root or index file.  If you want to install in a subdirectory like “blog”, then just enter the subdirectory name that you want to install in.  The directory will be created if you don’t have it created.  Again, WordPress will run your entire site.  It is not just a blogging software, it is a complete content management system.  So, if you are confused, just leave the URL area alone.

Enter your information and email address and then click install.  A bar will pop up and show the installation process to to 100% complete.  You will receive an email telling you about the completed installation with your username, password, and login URL. That is it!!

You now have a WordPress website for your personal blog or business essentially for free.  The only cost at this point is the miniscule WordPress hosting.  You might want to invest a premium WordPress theme.  I highly recommend StudioPress for this.  Great Genesis Framework and coding great for SEO.

If you want to take the next steps of getting started with WordPress, make sure to check out our WordPress video tutorials.  They are great for step by step WordPress help and marketing advice such as SEO and social media integration.