My good friend Jim Kukral seems to find countless ways to give free advice – from emails to phone calls and webinars to speaking at conferences.

Now he’s offering a free blog set up for people who need to establish a blog presence. He’s the real deal if you’re in the market for a blog – and want it to look right for your needs.

Learn more about low-cost hosting and his FREE Blog Builder Program.

It’s a shame that Google can’t get its own keyword tool right.

Sure, it’s an awesome search engine. But come on guys, with all of that money, you would think you could make sure your keyword tool work correctly.

I’ve been doing some keyword research about teen issues and basic keywords show no search data.  “Teen jobs” yields no search data. And that’s not the only phrase.

Get some background at Search Engine Land.

I speak with a lot of small businesses and they have some wild ideas about what it takes to be successful online.

Periodically I’ll dive into their thinking and offer ways to work through the issues they face.

One problem is they don’t understand search engine optimization – SEO. I can explain that it involves selecting keywords and integrating them into a web site (source code and text). Some of them wonder what that really means.

When I share that the words should be on the web site (it really doesn’t happen without touching the web site), they wonder what that might mean to the design.

One business wasn’t real keen on disturbing the design with words (apparently everything is supposed to be pretty with text a part of images). I made the case for appropriate sections, touches of text. The business rejected SEO. I think it’s just because the overall look mattered more and the executive was not able to grasp what text and SEO could accomplish within a nice design.

Instead of welcoming SEO, the start up ignored it.

Later, the executive asked for SEO after the design went ahead with a design that didn’t favor SEO.

Now I’ll try to work with the design with the possibility that the design will need to be modified. It’s just a shame that SEO wasn’t given a chance in the first place.

When companies are all about the visual and skip the SEO strategy, they basically declare: “I want to limit my search engine visibility and let others get the visitors.”

My friend Jim Kukral keeps cranking out great stuff with a new book, “Internet Marketing for Business Answers – Small Business Expert Interviews (Internet Marketing for Business Answers, 1).”

Among the many experts Jim interviewed is Andy Sernovitz, CEO, GasPedal and author of  “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking.”

Here’s a little bit of what Andy told Jim:

“And the other big success is it’s got to be more than just going to work, there’s got to be some meaning to it above and beyond whatever you do or sell. For us here at GasPedal, what we do every day, the bigger idea, is that we can help companies survive and do well and thrive, and they don’t need to have a nick off their name. There is something you can do to make it better and we love that kind of clever easy innovation that just changes people’s lives and opens their eyes.”

I like that kind of thinking, that attutude.

The businesses Jim explores have been through a lot and tried many Internet strategies. We can learn from what they do well and be inspired to develop our own approaches based on our values and priorities.