Looks like Google has taken one more shortcut to providing best service to its fans: as of yesterday, Google’s very own Internet browser codenamed Google Chrome, is available for download.

What is Google Chrome?

My first impression is that Google Chrome is a slick ultra-light browser with minimalistic yet intuitive interface and a minimal set of settings. There’s no fixed status bar, there’s no main menu, there’s just the address bar (called Omnibox because it also combines a search bar).

The tabbing works very smoothly, and overall you kind of feel there’s something missing simply because there’s only the page content and a very subtle set of controls. You get used to such a simplicity very quickly, though.

Here’s how Google Chrome looks:

Google Chrome

Performance of Google Chrome vs Firefox

I haven’t noticed much of a performance boost yet, but maybe it’s just because I need to play with this new browser a bit more. All the pages load quickly, but I’ve yet to see the ones which load much better than in my Firefox. ZDnet did some testing already and it shows that Google Chrome is quite fast.

What’s really cool is the really simple interface and intuitive searching – as you type a URL, Omnibox tries to guess what website you’re trying to get to. Works like a charm for many well known websites!

One of the main reasons Google came up with its own browser is performance of Google services and apps in modern browsers. Firefox is not ideal, although with a bit of tweaking you can get it to work pretty fast. Is it very likely that Google Chrome, being a highly specialized product, will be the best for GMail, Google Calendar and other services – but it may take some getting used to. Google also claims Chrome will be better for most websites, so it does seem like the optimizations will have a generic nature rather than a Google-specific services customization – I think it’s great news.

That’s it! Have a look at the browser itself, I think it’s a great move for Google, but would hate to see it as a direct competition to my favourite Firefox. I think the fact that these two products both called web browsers still doesn’t make a fair apples-to-apples comparison because Firefox has got quite a history and is much more universal as it is. I’m a long way from changing my preference for Firefox to any other browser, but must admit that Google Chrome seems to have done quite a neat and easy to use browser – time will show what Google will make of it.

See also:

• Google Chrome: First Impressions @ PCpro
• Google Chrome: features
• Reasons behind Google Chrome: a fresh look at a web browser

If you register for Wordze between now and July 14th, you’ll have to pay only $4 for the month of July, with $38.98 for every month after (you can cancel at the end of July if you change your mind).

I find Wordze to be one of the most useful and affordable tools online, and thanks to offers like this almost everyone can give it a try at virtually no cost.

Just got an email from Wordze, announcing their next round of free 30-day trials.

The following link should work for the next 7 days, good chance for all of you who wanted to try keyword research with Wordze: Wordze – Free 30-day trial

If you were waiting for a super-easy and extra-useful list of resources – your wait is over, because Kevin did an impressive job by not only compiling the list but also providing direct links to submit pages where possible.

Here’s a link: The Blogger’s Guide To SEO.

How Google Adwords suggests you new keywords

When you start an Adwords campaign, you specify a list of keywords you think is relevant, and then perhaps use the provided keyword tool to expand this list. That’s the typical approach. But wait, there’s more.

Most often, users get to see your ad in a sidebar of Google ads added to the Google SERP (search results page). So people use certain words for their search, and then Google decides which ads are most relevant. Sometimes your ad is shown there as well. The search term used by a user doesn’t necessarily match any of the keywords from your Adwords campaign, and this is where the added value lies.

You see, every time such a user clicks on your ad, the keyword term will be specified in the request which goes to your website. In other words, in your logs it looks like the person searched for some keyword term and found your page as one of the results.

How can you benefit from this?

The beauty of this approach is this: you get suggestions for hundreds of very relevant keywords, some of them vastly different from the original idea you had behind your Adwords campaign. The reason these keywords are relevant is because people opted clicking on your ad, so it’s not a relevancy calculated by Google, but the human intelligence.
Simply start expanding your website by adding pages targeting the newly discovered keyword combinations, and over time this will bring you an increase in natural search engines traffic.

I’ve been a happy customer of Wordze for the past month and a half, and so I think you should go and give it a try. Who knows, you might like it!

As this month gets started, we are nearing the official year anniversary of Wordze’s launch date. So for a limited time, we are going to do something crazy that we have never done before. For the next 30 days if you post in this thread the keyword list you would like to have, you may just wakeup the following day to find out that we have picked your request and posted a 10,000 keyword file on this forum for you to download for free.

The only rule is that you can request one keyword per day!

Here’s a link to the DP forum thread: 30 days of free keywords from Wordze

Update 15/03/2008: – I’ve just noticed how someone liked this post enough to stumble it, so I have made a quick update to the post with some more steps of my new blog routine. Also, please check out the WordPress Plugins Magic website for a ready-made collection of plugins for download.

Here is what I do, feel free to ask questions in comments:

WordPress Setup

• Enable Akismet plugin, you’ll need a WordPress API for this
• Make all the files under wp-content/themes writable for your webserver – this will allow you to edit themes from WordPress control panel
• Create a .htaccess file in the top level directory of your WordPress install, and make it writable for your webserver to allow permalinks config from WordPress control panel

Basic SEO

• Enable permalinks, chose the permalink structure wisely – if you’re aiming for a timeless content, don’t use date tags.
• Download and activate the SEO Title Tag plugin. Change the options to use category names and blog name in relevant titles if you like.
• Download and activate the Google Sitemap Generator plugin. Submit your newly generated sitemap through the Google Webmaster Tools page.

Improve experience for your visitors

• Download and activate the Smart Archives plugin , you will probably need to create a separate page for it and put the appropriate tag for it to show the archives.
• Register a FeedBurner feed, install and point to it the FeedSmith plugin. Enable the SmartFeed option in FeedBurner‘s Optimize section for your new feed.

Open ways for interaction

• Set up a comment form (cForms for me – the best forms plugin ever!) – again, you’ll probably want to create a separate page for this.
• Download and activate the Sociable plugin (check out my tutorial on configuring it: Must Have Plugins: Sociable)

Hope this helps. My list is never static, I practically reinvent it every time I start a new project, so I’ll be updating this post from time to time.

If you have a website or a blog, and you would like to…

• ensure your WordPress is fully optimized for SEO
• have your site structure maximize the search engines exposure
• get as much natural traffic from search engines as possible
• have your website rank better in SERPs

… then you want to use the contact form to reach me. I will be back from my holidays mid-August, and will contact you by email to confirm how I can help you.

What you will get:

• A chance to ask any technical questions regarding your website
• A single-page report of your website structure and setup
• Action list for improving your SEO

Feel free to spread the word, and I’ll talk to you in two weeks time!

The most recent article, How To Optimize WordPress Blogs For Search Engines, is a comprehensive guide to making sure your new WordPress blog is doomed for a great SEO start. Everything from SEO-friendly permalinks to optimizing your robots.txt file, from Google Sitemaps to fighting the spam in your comments, is thoughtfully explained, which makes it much easier for you to go through the best practices of SEO.

Visit the Ireland SEO Marketing website, and you’ll probably want to subscribe to the feed after reading just a few posts.