Preface:

There are two bands that wireless networks use:  2.4 ghz and 5 ghz.  2.4 has been around for a long time and is reliable.  The complaint about 2.4 is that lots of devices use this band so there is potential for “congestion” on the band.  The 5 ghz band is newer and naturally has less congestion.  Many devices are not equipped to use the 5 ghz band (Macbook Pros can use it but iPhones can’t).  The complaint about the 5ghz band is that is doesn’t do as well for longer distances of signal strength.   It’s important to know that newer components that work on the 5 ghz band can “drop-down” and work on the 2.4 ghz band.

One option (that I don’t currently advise) is to have two routers.  One for the 2.4 ghz band and another one for the 5 ghz band.  I mention this fact as it will make more sense as you read down.  But clearly in a home where you have devices that work on the 2.4 ghz band, you will need to have a router that can handle this 2.4 ghz signal.

That being said, here are the three choices at Best Buy (and I’m sticking with linksys because I like linksys/cisco and I’ve used their routers for years — and I currently run two of them myself).  All three choices below allow to run a wireless network as well as plug in your wired desktop computer or other wired device.

For reference I run an older model 2.4 ghz linksys router and I’m very happy with the speed at 2.4 ghz.

1. Linksys E1200  -  this is an inexpensive router that works on the 2.4 ghz band only. It’s $50 at best buy and has great reviews.  The advantage is that is a simple router that will do the job reliably.  It will not however take advantage of the potential speed benefits of the 5 ghz band.  As you get more and more 5ghz compatilbe devices in the future, you’d need to get a 5 ghz router for the 5 ghz band.

2. Linksys 2500 -  this is a $80 router that works on both bands — 2.4 and 5 at the same time.  The idea is that you have two separate networks (one at 2.4 and one at 5 but both with this same device) and then you connect the 2.4 devices to the 2.4 network, and repeat the process for the 5 GHz-capable devices.  This router did not get good reviews at Amazon.com and it seems to be hit or miss with reliability and performance.  Thus, I cannot recommend this router.

3. Linksys E3200 – this is a $110 – $150 router (Amazon vs Best Buy) that received good reviews and can handle the 2.4 vs 5 problem.  The only reason I’d consider this model over the 2500 is because of the 2500′s mixed reviews.

Wireless Network Speed (Potential) vs Wireless Range

So ultimately it comes down to the E1200 vs the E3200.  I think the simplest and most cost-effective way to go for most home router users is the E1200.  You could setup this router simply and get everything to work on the 2.4 ghz band.  You could do a little more future-proofing, however, and  go with the E3200 and just use it in the beginning on the 2.4 band to make sure everything works well.  If then in the future you want to add a 5 ghz device, you’d just need to “turn on” the 5 ghz band on this router.   The only concern I have about this last approach is that there are reports of people having problems getting the correct devices to run on the correct network consistently.  So when you make your final decision, really consider if you will need to use the 5 Ghz band,.  For most of my clients their primary concern is range, and for this factor, 2.4 Ghz is still the way to go.

The computer gives an error message, no networks found, radio off. When I google radio off, it says something is turned off on the router, however, everyone else’s computers in the house work including a netbook, two laptops and a desktop.

Another thing I noticed, it says No Networks found, and the bar List Networks is grayed out as unavailable. It used to detect the neighbors networks, and now it’s finding nothing. I at least can get access to the Internet with my air card, but I like to save those minutes for when I am mobile, which is going to increase in the next month or two as I enroll in an on line course. Thanks for your help! PS (and YES, my wireless button is in the ON position ))))))

A:  This sounds strange.   But let’s work it out.  It’s possible that your built-in wi-fi card in your laptop is having a problem — but this is rare.  Please answer the following quetsions below as YES/NO so we can go forward.

1. Are you the only person (your laptop) the only device in the house that is having problems connecting wirlessly to the home network?

2. Are you able to connect your laptop via wi-fi  (not the cell carrier aircard) to anywhere else?  E.g. if you go to a store that has free wi-fi, can you connect?

What is AdWords Express?
AdWords express is a pay-per-click (PPC) program where you advertise your product or service alongside regular Google searches.  So far this description sounds the same ad the AdWords program — but here come the differences.

With the AdWords Express program…
1. you are limited to advertising a local business that has a Google Places page (e.g. so from my interpretation of what I’ve read it seems that this program is geared to local stores and services providers only).

2. you cannot select particular keywords.   Google will select keywords for you based on the category you have selected for your Google Places page.

3. you thus cannot filter your keywords (e.g. negative keywords, broad match, exact match, etc) — it’s all Google’s “guesstimate” as to where your site fits in.

4. you cannot, therefore, select a particular price to pay for a specific keyword

5. Something that does appear intriguing, however, is that if you are a Google AdWords Express advertiser, your business will appear in blue on the map that’s usually displayed on the search results page, while the other businesses will still appear in red.  I do wonder, however, how this will look when, for example, the majority of the local businesses in your area for a specific niche (e.g. all the dentists) have Google AdWords Express ads — how will anyone stand out?

Will it Work?
One of the great things about AdWords is that you can finely-tune pretty much everything about your ads (caveat: Facebook advertising does a better job of targeting demographics), and I think that one of the things that Google is trying to do with AdWords express is to simplify the process for people who want to advertise without the need to manage an AdWords account (or hire someone to do so).

Philosophically I’m not sure how valuable this approach is going to be.   If you want to lose weight, then you need to watch your diet and go to the gym — there’s no shortcut.  Similarly, with online advertising, it takes hard work and lots of time invested to find what ads work and at what price.  When it comes to running an AdWords campaign for my clients, I really like to use data from a successful organic SEO campaign before I start an AdWords campaign — nobody likes throwing money out the window.  So the idea of having Google select keywords for me based on my Google Places category makes my wallet nervous.

So while I commend Google for trying to make AdWords more accessible to the masses, in doing so you as the advertiser do lose a lot of control, and it’s this control specifically that differentiates a good marketer from a great one. That being said, I will be keeping my eyes and ears open in the near future to see where Google AdWords Express winds up in the online marketing equation — will it be an alternative to a traditional AdWords account? an adjunct to an AdWords account, or a waste of money?  We will see.

The Big Picture Here: You are going to create an MCC account to help you manage client AdWords accounts, but you are also going to create an AdWords account that you can use to advertise your own business’ services.  So basically you will have an MCC with a bunch of clients, and your own busisness will be a “client” of yours, as well.

So here’ the situation:

1. You have a separate Google Account for your own personal use, and now you want to separate some of your business and clients out of this personal account.  So go ahead and create a new Google Account for your business (E.g. info@mybusiness.com).

2. Enable Gmail so you become mybusiness@gmail.com (or something similar that you like), as later on when you are going to want to be able to share Google Analytics data, you will find that you cannot share Analytics data with a non-gmail email address.

3. Now you have a Google Account for your business and a Gmail account for your business, it’s time to create the MCC.  When you create the MCC, use your business’s Gmail account address, as this is the address you are going to use to manage all of your clients in the MCC (e.g. mybusiness@gmail.com).

4. Once MCC is configured, go ahead and set up an AdWords account outside of MCC (e.g. as if you were setting up an AdWords account and you’ve never heard of MCC before), using an email from your business’s domain as the email address (e.g. adwords@mybusiness.com).  And yes, this will be another Google Account you have to create.  But with this new Google Account (adwords@mybusiness.com), don’t enable Gmail or other Google services.  The idea here is that you are going to use mybusiness@gmail.com to manage everything for your business and for your clients — EXCEPT for your company’s own AdWords account.  And since you are going to be managing your OWN AdWords account (the adwords@mybusiness.com) from within your MCC (e.g. you’re not going to need to go to AdWords and login as “adwords@mybusiness.com), then I’d simply setup “adwords@mybusiness.com” as an email forwarder.  Of course remember to setup the forwarder BEFORE you create the AdWords account.

5. Now simply link this new AdWords account to your MCC, and you can now manage “yourself” along with your other clients.

And just to clarify, you will need a Google Account for your business to manage your client’s services such as Analytics and your MCC (mybusiness@gmail.com).  But in order to create your OWN AdWords account WITHIN the MCC — e..g to manage your own company’s advertising (E.g. to advertise the fact that you manage AdWords for people), you will need to create a new AdWords account (adwords@mybusiness.com), which in turn is what will require the creation of the second Google Account. Whew!

* Note:  In theory you could simply setup a new AdWords account via the MCC that does not require a verified email address, so it’s possible that you could create an AdWords account for your business advertising without having to create a second Google Account just for the “adwords@mybusiness.com” email address.  I’ve read this is possible but I’ve never tried it — so if anyone out there has tried this approach can you verify it for the rest of us?

Hope this helps!

In this two-part article I’m going to go through a few scenarios to try to illustrate some best practices about how to setup a Google Account.  This article will cover personal Google Accounts and Small Business Google Accounts, and the second article will talk about best practices for Developers and Agency who want to manage Google products for their clients.

Now there’s no “official” distinction between a Google Account that you use for personal use or small business use (e.g. you signup at the same place) — but it’s more a function  how you configure and setup Google products that will help you get the most out of these services — as an individual or as a small business.

Now this text wont’ teach you how to setup a Google Account or configure Google services such as AdWords or Google Analytics, per se, rather it will be a conceptual overview to try to help you understand how the Google pieces fit together for a purpose.  In doing so, I’m going to walk-through some hypothetical yet common scenarios.  Please note that this article is MY personal take on best practices, and is not in any way affiliated or promoted by Google, nor it it some kind of Google ‘”official policy”.   And as with all the content on this site, I do welcome your feedback if you have an additional method or if you have comments on the way I present things.

Scenario I:  Personal Google Account

John is an individual and he’s interested in using Google products and services for his personal use.  The best thing for John to do is to create a Google Account, and a subsequent Gmail account along the lines of: johndoe@gmail.com.  One of the things that John will need when he first signs up for a Google Account is a backup email address for resetting his password, etc, or if for some reason he cannot access the Google Account.  Thus, John can signup for the Google Account with another email address such as a Yahoo! or Hotmail address.

John likes Google’s services, and John has used his Gmail account to signup for multiple Google products including Gmail and AdSense, He also has a Google Analytics account that he uses to track his two personal blogs, johnsmakebelieveblog.com, and johnsothermadeupsite.com. Note that John also has an AdWords account that he uses to promote both of his blogs.  Thus, he integrates his AdWords account with his Google Analytics account.

Because it’s all for personal use, it doesn’t matter that John has multiple website profiles listed under his Google Analytics account, nor that his AdWords account is working with both of his websites.  Note however, as you will see below, for business or agency use, this setup (one Adwords account with one Analytics account that has multiple website profiles) would not be ideal.

Scenario II – Google Account for Business

Things are going well for John and he has decided to create is own small web development firm, “John’s Designs”, with a website of www.johnsmadeupcompany.com.   Because he wants to use Google services for his small business, he’s going to create a second Google Account.  In theory John could use his personal Google Account (johndoe@gmail.com) to work with his small business, but the best thing do to is create a separate account.

So John now goes ahead and creates a second Google account that he will use for his business.  Note that at this point in time he is NOT using Google Apps, and he will signup for the new Google Account with the email “info@johnsmadeupcompany.com”.  Once he adds Gmail, his login for this company Google Account will change from info@johnsmadeupcompany.com to johnsmadeupcompany@gmail.com.

At this point in time John has TWO Google Accounts.  The first one is his personal account (johndoe@gmail.com) and his second one is (johnsmadeupcompany@gmail.com).

John now sets up Google Analytics.  He is tempted to link his business website, www.johnsmadeupcompany.com to his personal Google Account that already has Analytics setup, but in the interests of keeping this separate and easy to organize, he uses his BUSINESS account to create a Google Analytics account to track www.johnsmadeupcompany.com. Similarly, John then decides that he wants to use AdWords to promote his web firm.   He could easily add his company to his personal AdWords account where he promotes his blogs, but for the purposes of keeping things straight, he simply creates a new AdWords account (also under his BUSINESS Google Account) to manage these items.

Here’s where we are now:

Personal  Account -  johnsmakebeliveblog.com, johnsothermadeupsite.com

Gmail, Analytics, AdWords

————————————————————————————–

Business  Account -  johnsmadeupcompany.com

Gmail, Analytics, AdWords

Before we move on to the best practices for Developers and Agencies, I want to make a few important points:

1.  For personal use it’s fine if you have a Google account and you manage all of your properties from a single Analytics account and a single AdWords account. However, if you have a large web property, OR if you ever plan to let multiple people access the data or access the interface, strongly consider having a separate Google Account for each of these properties.  So your mega-blog should have its own Google Account (with Analytics and AdWords).

2. For your business,  I urge you to create a completely new Google Account for everything related to your business.  I’m not talking Google Apps here (that’s a different beast), but consider that for your company, you many want other people to share your account and have access to your account, so these people do not need to know about your other websites or other personal data.  Also, if you are interacting with clients, “yourcompany@gmail.com” is better than “yourname@gmail.com”.

3. Note that at this time you CANNOT copy an Analytics profile from one Analytics account to another.

4. Note also at this time that if an email address is associated wtih an AdWords account, you CANNOT use that email address to access a second AdWords account.  So if John uses johndoe@gmail.com for his personal AdWords account, he CANNOT use this email address to access his business AdWords account (or that of one of his clients — more about this later).

5. I agree that it’s a BIG pain to have multiple Google Accounts — but at this time, and with the way Google has things setup, it’s just easier in the long run to deal with multiple accounts and logins.

In Part II of this article I will move to the next step and talk about best practices for Google Account setup for clients for developers and agencies (e.g. John’s going to get a few clients!).

1.  Navigate to the Tools > Account Settings dialogue box.

2. In the Account Settings dialogue box, find the account you want to write a signature for (if you have only one account then your choice is easy) and click on the name of the account (in this example I clicked on “test@somewhere.com”).

On the right panel, about halfway down, you will see a “Signature text” box.  You can click the button to “use HTML”  if you wish, but either way you can go ahead and enter you signature text in this box.  When you are done entering the email signature text press “OK” and you’re all set.

Note if you want to create different signatures for different email accounts in Thunderbird, simply repeat the above process for each account you have configured.

Once you have quoted text, however, the next question is where are you going to reply — are you going to reply BEFORE (or on top of the quoted text) or are you going to reply AFTER (or below) the quoted text.  I’ve always set my clients to reply to email BEFORE the quoted text, as I find it easier for people to see.  Further, when people reply AFTER the quoted text — especially in an email where you’ve had multiple replies in a single email and thus a long trail of text — it’s often hard to find the newest reply, and some people don’t think to look below all of the quoted text to find your reply.

When I installed the new Thunderbird (that is, Thunderbird 5.0), I found that the program defaulted to having my replies come AFTER the quoted text.  As this is not my preferred way to handle replies, I needed to reset the feature so my replies cam BEFORE the quoted text.  Here’s how to do that:

1. Go to Tools -> Account Settings (not “options” where you think the switch might be located):

Thunderbird 5.0 Account Settings in Tools Menu

2. Now in the Account Settings panel, click the “Composition & Addressing” option under the account you want to modify (note in my example I have two email accounts and I’ve clearly changed the names for the screenshot):

Thunderbird Account Settings Options

Under the “Automatically quote the original message when replying” item (of course, make sure it’s checked so you include quotes in your reply) you can use the “Then,” drop-down box to decide if you want your reply to start after or above the quote (as shown here). or after the quote (not shown).

Once you’ve made your selection, click “Ok” at the bottom to save your modifications.  You may have to restart Thunderbird to see the changes in effect.

you can then decide where you want the quote to be and where you want your signature to be, as well.

To get the email preview pane back in Thunderbird simply:

1. Go to View ->Layout ->Message Pane

and your email preview will be back.

Restore the Message Pane in Thunderbird

(You could also just hit the F8 function key to do the same thing.)

Send & Archive as the name implies, allows you to reply to an email AND archive the conversation at the same time, which is a tremendous Gmail time saver for reading your messages and keeping your inbox clean.

Smart Mute is also extremely helpful, as it allows you to basically “stop listening” to a Gmail conversation.  So say 10 of your friends are involved in a Gmail conversation and you no longer want to receive updates (replies) to this conversation, Smart Mute let’s you avoid having to have the conversation appear in your inbox as these new replies come in.

Accessing Google Labs for Gmail Plugins

1.  First, to access any of these add-ons (or plugins), open your Gmail account and open your mail settings.  To open your Gmail mail settings head to the widget-looking blue circle at the very top right of the screen (next to your Gmail address), and left-click.  In the drop down that appears, left-click on “mail settings”.

Gmail Mail Settings

2.  One you are in the mail settings area, click on the “labs” tab…

Gmail "Labs" tab in Mail Settings

…and you will see a list of available add-on features for Gmail.  Note also Google’s warning that these lab add-ons could disappear at any time, and the link to use if for some reason the lab features mess up your inbox (it’s:  https://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0 ).

3. Now simply browse (or use the search dialog box at the top of the labs menu) to find the feature you want to use, and click the “enable” button.

Click the enable button to use a Gmail feature.

That’s it, and enjoy your newly streamlined Gmail workflow.

1. Login to Google Analtyics as you normally would.

2. On the dashboard, at the top right you will see the default date range is set for the last month:

3. To change this date range simply click on the down arrow.  You will see a set of monthly calendars.  Click on today’s date and then click on todays date a second time.  The first time you click the date it will populate the left date box, and then second time you click (the same date) it will populate the second date box:

Then simply click “apply” at the bottom and you can see today’s data!