Bill Hartzer of billhartzer.com correctly identified Jeff Hudson’s The PPC Book in round 7 of Guess the Internet Marketing Site. Bill is currently the Search Engine Marketing Manager at MarketNet. Bill’s blog/news site is at www.billhartzer.com and focuses on finding interesting news that generally no one in the social media/search engine/website marketing space is currently “covering”. Bill said:

“I’m always interested in hearing about new ventures, and love to write about other websites–so people can send me press releases or any news that they have that’s related to social media, search engines, or website marketing. I’m always open to publishing articles that other people have written, as well (I love guest writers!). As long as the topic is on social media, search engines, or website marketing, I’ll take a look at your article and consider publishing it.”

I also asked Bill a couple other questions and here’s what he had to say:

Q: You are very active in the various search communities and a moderator at Search Engine Forums. What do you find is the most beneficial aspect of participating in these communities for you?

A: Part of being active in the various search communities out there is part of my “continuing education” so to speak. This industry has been changing so fast that if you’re not keeping up with what’s really going on (on a daily basis), then you’re not contributing to your increased knowledge of the industry. And it’s important to continue to participate in forums as well as other social networking sites because you get a lot of knowledge from others that you wouldn’t get otherwise. I continue to be the Administrator of the Search Engine Forums because I not only learn a lot, that’s the main place where I learned a lot from others. A lot of the “big names” you see in Search nowadays got their start back at Search Engine Forums…and a lot of them have “moved on” to other pastures. I believe it’s important to keep on “giving back” and educating people about search and promoting a website–because tomorrow’s webmasters and search marketers are today’s “newbies”.

Q: What is the local online playing field like in Texas for local business? Is it getting competitive?

A: Texas is one of the areas of the nation that’s growing and growing and growing. And the Dallas/Fort Worth area is one of the fastest-growing areas of the country right now. There’s a lot of opportunities for small businesses to “serve the public”, as there are still not a lot of businesses that exist elsewhere. For example, I know of a lot of franchises that are “up North” (as we call it) that don’t exist in the south. And as people open up more local businesses here, they all eventually will need a website and they’ll need to promote it online.

Bill also shared a tip about a slick little service. He started to integrate “Talkr” into his blog . Bill described Takr this way:

“Talkr will literally make your blog into a podcast–automatically. I know there are a lot of bloggers out there, and we all would love to podcast but either don’t have the time or don’t have the technology yet. But, Talkr will actually let you create a podcast from your RSS feed (your blog feed) and it will make one .mp3 file for every post on your blog. Here’s a link if you’d like to include that: here’s where people can sign up for it (it’s free) http://www.talkr.com.”

Thanks for playing Bill and sharing a bit about you and your blog!