Search engine optimization is where it’s at, baby. So without further ado, here are five great SEO tips for SEO newbies and novices alike!

1. Keywords should be present in every element of your webpage, from your title tag to your paragraph tags. And don’t forget about the meta tags — they’re great for primary and supportive keywords!
2. Did you know you can add ALT and TITLE descriptions to images, and TITLE descriptions to links? Take advantage of these for keyword placement.
3. When uploading files and other images to your website, use descriptive keywords and descriptions for the file names — great for SEO and visitors alike!
4. Build a network of quality back links to help boost you in the eyes of Google.
5. Quality content beats quantity content every single time.

My blogging supports my shopping, and in a way my shopping supports my blogging — shopping makes me happy, plus shopping gives me something to blog about.

But I digress. It’s a Tuesday night, barely 10:30pm, and I am tired. I’m telling you people, this is what happens when you have kids. Suddenly you’re so busy keeping a house clean and taxi-ing kids around and making three meals a day and working in between all of that, that by the time the night rolls around the kids are in bed for the night, you’re wiped out, with no energy to do anything but sit around for a while before falling asleep. Lesson learned? Don’t have kids. This especially goes for those of you who just shopped for long prom dresses a few months ago!

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane, shall we? In the world of blogging and personal domains, who remembers:

• Iframes
• Blinking text
• Javascript-powered rainbow links
• Javascript-powered fade-in & fade-out images
• Checkered backgrounds and celebrity-based header images
• Times New Roman and Courier fonts set to 8px with 0.1px line breaks
• Link exchanges
• Rings
• Tag boards
• Plug boards

Some of these go way back. Do you remember any of them?

While I am all about security updates, it seems like WordPress has been more than a little update-happy lately. Every time I turn around there’s a new update to install! But it pays to have an updated blog and a secure one, so while I’ll grumble about the frequent updates, I will ultimately go ahead and hit that annoying “Update” button whenever it appears.

Google Plus (or Google+, if you’re too cool for words) is the newest thing on the interwebs and it’s taking everyone by storm, but to be honest I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s very different from Facebook and MySpace, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it does make it a little tricky to wrap my head around. Plus, it seems like Google has gone out of their way to make it different, which means that easily-confused people like me will have that much of a harder time figuring things out.

But once I get back from vacation stuff this week I plan on giving it another go, so I’ll let you know how it works out!