I just got a chance to use the new Realtime feature in Google Analytics and it’s pretty cool! Here’s a quick video review so you can see what it is like.

You can see what is happening on your site in real-time, including the number of visitors on your site at the moment, what content they are looking at, what keywords they used and where they are located.

If you want to sign up for early access you can do that here: Google Analytics Real-Time Early Access. They approved my request right away so give it a try.

Let me know what you think!

Here’s a video with a couple of tips for accessing your online reviews on Google Places.

I really like the Review Wednesday (#RWX) idea from GetListed.org. The idea is to take a few minutes every Wednesday and leave a review for a small business you have visited during the past week.

Then share a link to the review on Twitter using the hashtag #RWX. If enough people do this, we could help out a lot of small businesses!

Once you leave a review, it’s kind of tricky to get a link to share on Twitter that allows people to click through to your review. This video shows you how to do that.

Video: Tips for Getting Your Online Review Links

Get a direct link to the reviews

1. Find the business in Google Places
2. Get the CID from the URL
3. Create a URL like this: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=9368790565215994253&dtab=2&action=openratings
4. (Watch the video for more explanation if you are having trouble…)

See all of your Google reviews you have done

To see all your reviews, just go to this URL while logged in with your Google ID: http://places.google.com/rate#rated.

Here’s a complete description of Review Wednesday on GetListed.org.

Do you have tips to share? Leave them in the comments below so we can all try them!

Recently Facebook made some pretty significant changes to the way Facebook Pages work. They changed the appearance of the pages and where the page tabs live, and they also changed the way that you create custom page tabs.

A New Approach for Facebook Page Tabs – iFrame

Previously, to create a Page Tab with custom content, you would use the Facebook FBML app, and paste some HTML-like code in there. It was limited, but pretty easy to do.

Starting March 18, 2011 they moved away from the FBML App, and declared that all new pages need to be created with the new iFrame Tabs for Pages.

Watch the video below for a visual tour of the changes and to see how the new iFrame Tabs for Pages work.

This video is #1 in a series of videos about how to make the most of the new iFrame Tabs for Pages by managing your Facebook Page content in WordPress.

Have you migrated your Facebook page from the FBML App to the iFrames? I’d love to hear your comments and questions below!

Those of you who follow my blog know I recommend BlueHost for simple and easy WordPress hosting. WordPress installs and updates are a breeze, you get great U.S. based tech support, and the price is right.

Not to mention you can install up to 100 WordPress sites on a single account!

And here’s another great reason: BlueHost just made it super easy to do automated backups and file-level restores.

New: Site Backup & Restore

The new feature I’m talking about is called Site Backup & Restore. As I wrote in Back up Your WordPress Site it is super important to have an automated backup plan, even if your site is small.

With BlueHost’s Site Backup & Restore, every site in your BlueHost account – including files and databases – are backed up for you automatically every day. Several versions are maintained so that you can go back and restore files, directories, or entire sites if you need to for any reason.

Watch a Video of Site Backup & Restore in Action

There is a free and a Pro version of Site Backup & Restore. The free version will automate backups for you. The Pro version adds the ability to restore individual files and folders, and MySQL databases (which is what WordPress uses.)

If you are using BlueHost, run – don’t walk – and sign up for the Pro version of this feature. At $12.95 for the YEAR it is well worth the peace of mind you’ll get from knowing all of your sites are fully backed up.

If you are considering hosting providers, give BlueHost a try – it’s the best low-cost WordPress hosting around. Why? I give you 5 great reasons here.

p.s. Several of the links in this article are affiliate links. I use BlueHost for most of my websites (over 25 of them) and I also use the Site Backup & Restore Pro feature that I’m writing about in this article.

If you installed WordPress in a sub-folder or sub-directory under your domain, and want to move it to the root of the domain, there are a few things you need to be aware of.

For example, what if you installed WordPress in: http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/

but you want to move it to to top level of the domain like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/

Well, its not hard if you know what to look for. In this video, I’ll show you how to move your WordPress installation to another directory and how to make sure that all of your content and images are moved over properly too.

Here’s a quick summary of the steps in the video:

1. Update the WordPress address and site address in the WordPress database
2. Move the files to the new location
3. Fix up the URLs to any files or images you have uploaded via WordPress

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!

p.s. Do you like my new video intro clip? Seriously, I want to know if you like it or if you think it gets in the way…

Child themes are the best way to customize an existing WordPress Theme. They allow you to inherit the functionality of another theme, and extend it without modifying the original theme files.

WordPress Child Theme Tutorial Video

Using a child theme to customize and extend your WordPress Theme gives you several benefits:

• Inherit functionality from an existing theme
• Customize and extend it without modifying the original theme files
• If you break something (which is easy to do when modifying CSS or PHP files) you can easily recover
• They are very easy to set up!

In the video tutorial I’ll show you exactly how to set up a child theme to extend the SmallBiz WordPress Theme and change fonts, background colors, and functionality in the theme’s footer.php file.

Here are the instructions on the WordPress.org site: http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

Have fun tweaking your themes, and let me know what you think in the comments below!

We’ve been busy adding tons of new enhancements to the SmallBiz WordPress Theme!

Here’s one that I’m very excited to show you – the theme now has SIX layouts to choose from out of the box. You can select the layouts from the custom Options Panel, and quickly create new and different websites.

Check them out in the video below:

Once you choose one of the layouts, the Options Panel will change, giving you different options to suit that layout. Then you can change the content that displays on the home page depending on the layout you selected.

SmallBiz WordPress Theme Layouts

Also, all the layouts are mobile-enabled; we’ve made sure they will display nicely on the major mobile operating systems such as iPhone and iPod Touch, Android, etc. We will be testing with Windows Phone 7 as soon as we can get our hands on one too.

All SmallBiz Layouts are Mobile Enabled

We now detect which device OS the visitor is using, and change the display accordingly. This opens up a ton of new options down the line for SmallBiz on mobile devices.

Click here to see some cool sites using these new layouts: SmallBiz WordPress Theme Gallery

Click here to pick up a copy of the SmallBiz Theme: SmallBiz Theme Pricing

New Local SEO Tool for Competitive Analysis – LocalSearchToolkit

Check out this new tool to help you with your Local SEO process. This week my guests are Mike Belasco and Mary Bowling from SEOverflow. They have created a tool that saves you a ton of time in the Local SEO process.

The first step when you get a new Local SEO client is to look at Google 7-Pack for their area to see who is ranking and how competitive it is.

Google 7 Pack Results

This is just the start, and it involves a fair amount of manual effort that Local SEOs are all too familiar with.

Never Fear, LocalSearchToolkit is Here!

Well, the fine folks at SEOverflow have come up with a new tool that automates this process – just type in your keyword phrases and it gives you a full report, including:

• Who is in the 7-Pack
• What their citation sources are
• Where they have online reviews
• What categories they are using

Watch a Quick Video Tour

You can sign up for the beta at LocalSearchToolkit.com

Listen to the Interview with Mike Belasco and Mary Bowling

You can listen to the interview by clicking the play button at the bottom of this post. You can download the MP3 audio file by clicking the download link below if you’re like me and you listen to interviews on your iPod/iPhone in the car.

Here’s a quick and easy way to get some more traffic to your blog from your Facebook Page.

When you set up your Facebook page, you can add links that are shared on your “Info” tab.

That’s great, but not everyone looks at the info tab. In this video I’ll show you how to add a link to the sidebar so that everyone see it, whether they are on your Facebook Wall tab, Info tab, or any of the other tabs on your Facebook page.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

In this video I share an easy tip that will bring you lots of traffic from your YouTube videos.

I’ve been doing this for a while now and started seeing a big increase in the referral traffic that I get from YouTube to my blog right away.

You do have a YouTube Channel don’t you? If not you are missing out on a huge SEO opportunity. YouTube is the second largest site on the Internet (behind Google.com) in terms of volume of searches.

Here is a link to The Expand2Web YouTube Channel. If you want to learn how to set up and optimize your YouTube Channel, Facebook Page, Blog and Twitter Account join me in my upcoming Social Media Blueprint online training class.

Give this technique a try and let me know how it works for you!