BigGuide is now using Shrink The Web to generate thumbnail images of Websites. Their free service is perfect for Web directories, blogs, and any other site that wants to jazz up their site with thumbnail images of Websites that they refer to in articles, posts, or directory listings.

Getting it setup isn’t too difficult and they provide good support (i.e. information) on their site.

Probably what I like most, besides the “free-ness” of the great tool, is that you can choose from among 6 different sizes ranging from petite to in-your-face. We use the ‘large’ here on BigGuide, which is one size down from in-your-face.

For more information visit their Website: Shrink The Web

If you have a twitter account or have clients that do I recommend you read the post on Mashable, ‘The Top 10 Twitter SEO Tips‘.

Without stealing their thunder here are the most important tips to takeaway imo:

Choose a good handle (username):

Be sure to pick an optimal handle that’s relevant to your brand or campaign and easy to remember.

Select a good account name:

Your name is what appears next to your profile, which can be different than your handle/URL. You obviously want an account name that promotes yourself, your company or your brand.

Write a good bio:

Write your Bio so it includes the most important, mission-critical phrases for your brand. Use all 160 characters! Your bio is consistently indexed so its contents are what provide your Twitter page with its core relevance.

Share the URL with everyone:

Now be sure to point to your Twitter profile from other sites. For example, you can integrate your Twitter URL into your website by placing a call to action on the site for your customers to follow you on Twitter. You could also integrate your Twitter URL within your site’s Global Footer, which appears at the bottom of every page of your site. Both of these options offer usability to your site visitors and help drive your Twitter URL up in the search engines.

The beginning of your tweets are important:

The “lead-in” of each tweet is important for SEO as it determines what appears in the tweet’s title tag when it shows up as a search result on Google. Approximately 42 characters are factored into each tweet’s title tag, including the account name, as well as the initial characters of each tweet. Keep in mind that your full tweet and all its characters are still being indexed by major engines, though.

Happy tweeting!

Be sure to follow us! @BigGuide -  http://twitter.com/BigGuide

If you didn’t notice take a look at the homepage on the lower right side and you’ll see a widget displaying our tweets made over on our BigGuide twitter account: http://twitter.com/BigGuide

We use our new twitter account to tweet when we have something of value for Webmasters, SEO specialists, business peeps, and other similarly oriented followers of BigGuide. We also tweet whenever we add a Featured Listing to BigGuide. This helps us deliver exceptional value for the $10 permanent listing clients receive. At least we think so….

Tweet tweet! If you have a twitter account please follow us! We’ll of course return the favor (clients and fans alike).

If you’re interested in reaching our audience ( currently 400-600 visitors a day) you can, and should,  add your permanent listing to our directory ($10), but if you want more exposure consider a run-of-site link on the right-hand side of the site.

We won’t add links to gambling sites, adult themed sites, or other sites we determine don’t meet our subjective criteria.

Monthly cost is $15.oo and can be paid via PayPal. Send email to david[at]bigguide.net if you’re interested along with information on the site(s) you want to promote and I’ll send you the information you need. Or if you have an account with LinkWorth you can find us there as well.

Veronique started Saveur du Jour to focus on authentic, high-quality products that will help you bring that atmosphere from France in your home. She works with French designers and US based distributors to bring the best products to US customers at the best price.

Here are a few words from Veronique, proud mom and the founder or Saveur du Jour: “I was born in Paris and used to spend my vacation days in Normandy and Provence. Today, I live in the Bay Area with my husband and daughters. I created Saveur du Jour to bring to the US all the savors and flavors of France I love and to recreate the ambiance you could find in every home and kitchen in France.”

You can learn about the Website from her listing in BigGuide at: French Gifts or at the site: Saveur du Jour

I watched this promotional piece created by Outside Line to toot their own horns and I think it’s a marvelous digital promo piece. Outside Line’s primary focus is on the music industry and they win award after award for doing some of the most amazing stuff for their expanding list of well known clients. A quick look at this promo piece and you’ll see why.

Watch it HERE

Moms are one of the most highly prized targets of advertisers due to their buying power, their buying courage (they brave brutal reprisals from their husbands!), and in the case of stay-at-home moms their “spending time” (many have more time to shop then their career-mom counterparts).

What these online moms do is no doubt of great interest to the big guns in the advertising industry. So when we had a chance to get our hands on some stats from the Mom Articles Website, a site clearly devoted to serving up content for moms, we jumped at the chance.

The site doesn’t get a ton of traffic, but the articles are broken out into 42 topics all easily accessible so we don’t have reason to believe far greater number of visitors would affect the resulting percentages much.

What topics are moms most interested in?

Frankly, the first thing that jumped out at me was, I’m very happy to report, that the category ’sex’ was NOT one of the 10 most popular categories viewed! My faith in the human race is somewhat restored.

Top 10 Most Popular Topics for Moms

1. Family (1630 Visits)
2. Beauty (1576 Visits)
3. Home (1391 Visits)
4. Crafts (1308 Visits)
5. Cooking (1307 Visits)
6. Health (1276 Visits)
7. Work At Home Moms (827 Visits)
8. Money (802 Visits)
9. Marriage (768 Visits)
10. Internet (746 Visits)

Sorry husbands (includes me), but marriage was number nine. Let’s just be glad that the ‘relationships‘ category wasn’t on the list.

Top 10 Most Viewed Articles (good indicator of what they were wanting to learn more about)

1. How To Quickly Lose Weight (1856 Views)
2. Learn How To Forgive (1138 Views)
3. Facial Skin Care Products – 5 Tips To Keep Your Skin Looking Younger (918 Views)
4. Burning Fat in the Cubicle (705 Views)
5. Common Marriage Problems – Avoiding common marriage problems in your conflicts (613 Views)
6. Ab Workout Suggestions (588 Views)
7. Your Biggest Loser Contest: Get Competitive and Earn Cash (393 Views)
8. Want to be Cool Mom? (299 Views)
9. Sex After Kids? How New Moms Can Keep Romance Alive (288 Views)
10. Pink Eye Causes, Symptoms, Treatment (274 Views)

Fascinating… I can’t recall the last time I went online to track down info on the causes of pink eye!

Top Ten Most Popular Articles (based on moms that rated the article)

1. Want to be Cool Mom?
2. Burning Fat in the Cubicle
3. How To Quickly Lose Weight
4. Learn How To Forgive
5. Facial Skin Care Products – 5 Tips To Keep Your Skin Looking Younger
6. Common Marriage Problems – Avoiding common marriage problems in your conflicts
7. Ab Workout Suggestions
8. Your Biggest Loser Contest: Get Competitive and Earn Cash
9. The Cost Of Disorganization…Can You Afford It?
10. Are the foods you are eating keeping you in pain?

My conclusions are that moms are still the wonderful, loving, caring, special people they always were and that they are actually taking advantage of the great information that’s available at their fingertips.

If I were marketing to moms I’d convince them that losing weight and being cool are mutually exclusive and that my site, product, or service wouldn’t judge them for their size, but rather for their ability to forgive. ; )

David

Despite the doom-and-gloom predictions Web directories continue to deliver results for internet advertisers. Our traffic at Big Guide is stronger then ever and continues to grow each month. At one point last Fall Big Guide had a Google pagerank of 5 and then came the Google re-adjustment of directories… and we lost all pagerank. Discouraging? Yes. But, what was interesting is the traffic continued to grow despite the apparent reduction in search engine strength. Indeed our traffic driven by search engine results is now stronger than ever in terms of both actual numbers and as a percentage.

Not only does our traffic continue to grow, but the number of listings we receive is also at an all-time high in May. Thank you very much advertisers! We believe it’s the great value we offer with the Featured listings at $10 and regular permanent listings at only $7 each. (Note: Rates as of May 25th. Terms and prices are subject to change without notice.)

Thank you for visiting and if you’re a customer, thank you very much for your patronage!

David

If you’d like to learn more about a candidate start first with their website. Their website won’t contain any negative ads about their opponents and it will contain their information about what they believe in and want to do as President of the United States.

Once you’ve reviewed the candidate sites then you should do additional due diligence by reading 3rd party information.

Below you’ll find a list of candidates and links to their official campaign websites.

Joe Biden D

Hillary Clinton D

Chris Dodd D

John Edwards D

Mike Gravel D

Rudy Giuliani R

Mike Huckabee R

Duncan Hunter R

Alan Keyes R

Dennis Kucinic D

John McCain R

Barack Obama D

Ron Paul R

Bill Richardson D

Mitt Romney R

Tom Tancredo R

Fred Thompson R

Vote.

Anywhere FM offers music lovers a surprisingly easy way to listen to music while sitting at your PC. Signing up is free and very easy. Much of the music is free and you can enjoy your favorite music all day long.