Starting at a whooping $2,000 the Google Mini is out of reach for most small business owners and internet marketers. However, our friends at the big G also offer a totally free alternative to add a powerful search field for your website: Meet the little-known Google Co-op.

This nifty little tool lets you start your own search engine using Google’s technology. It has a simple control panel that lets you customize the search results both visually (you can add your logo) and by telling it which website(s) you want to include in the index and if the searches your visitors make should also include results from their main web index.

Keep reading: SEO Tip: The Google Mini Mini

It seems like nowadays, anyone a computer and an internet connection can start a blog or website and slap together a few sentences to create “content”. However, creating outstanding website content that surfers actually crave, bookmark, share with friends and print out to take to bed, requires planning and taking a series of careful steps.

The steps for writing outstanding web content (some bloggers and webmasters refer to it as “flagship” or “staple” content) are:

Keep reading: How to write outstanding web content

Social media optimization is the new name of the web traffic game. If you want to keep generating traffic for your website, you must learn the rules and apply them to your website immediately.

Long gone are the days when search engine optimization (SEO) was enough to drive a flood of traffic to your website. While most old school marketers are still trying to figure out the pesky nuances of the latest “Google dance”, younger and savvier webmasters understand that we’re now serving two masters: SEO has become the evil twin – and SMO (social media optimization), his shiny happy sibling.

Keep reading: What is “social media optimization” anyway?