One of the main benefits of creating a blog is that you can use it to drive traffic to your home business web site or your offline home business. And the key to doing this is to make sure that your target audience can find your blog as easily as possible.This means you need to do whatever you can to get your blog ranked as high in the search engines as possible, and make sure that the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN know when you have updated your blog so they can visit it and “index” your latest blog post–ensuring it appears in their search results.Since Google is the largest and most powerful search engine for generating traffic to your home business blog, you will probably want to focus a great deal of your attention here.Fortunately, there is one particular strategy you can use to make sure Google knows exactly when you have added new content, so that it can visit your home business blog and index your latest post… which enables people searching the internet to find your blog.Only when Google has visited and indexed your new blog content will that content show up in Google’s search engine. Any by telling Google to come and visit your blog, you will get your latest content into the search engine much faster– potentially by weeks or even months–than if you wait for them to find it.We’ll use our home business site ([http://homebusinessnow.blogspot.com]) to illustrate the step-by-step process you need to follow to use this strategy effectively.Your first step is to submit your blog to Google. Your home business blot must be submitted to a search engine to speed up the process of getting listed in Google’s search results. To do this, go to Goolge and when the URL shows up, add the following without the quotes to Google’s address “addurl”. Hit “enter” and on the next page enter the URL of your blog and a brief description and submit and you are done!Now wait a few days (you can add more than one URL if you have several blogs running) to check if your blog has been visited by Google. To verify if your home business blog has been added go to Google’s search engine just type Google (dot) com into your browser window. When that page opens enter “cache: followed by the URL of your blog site. If your blog has been visited by Google, you will see the date of the visit at the top of your blog page plus a “cached” (saved) version of the page on that particular date.You can double-check your listing status in Google by searching for a unique string of words in one your blog posts as if you were an internet surfer looking for information. As an example, enter the following words with the quotes, “make money with a home business” and you’ll see our main site come up. At the time of this writing, our site was ranked #2.Your blog will appear in the search results if Google has visited and indexed it.

What are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime? So asked my 9 year old grandson.

As I thought of the question the local Green Grocer came to mind. Because that is what the greatest change in shopping in my lifetime is.

That was the first place to start with the question of what are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime.

Our local green grocer was the most important change in shopping in my lifetime. Beside him was our butcher, a hairdresser and a chemist.

Looking back, we were well catered for as we had quite a few in our suburb. And yes, the greatest changes in shopping in my lifetime were with the small family owned businesses.

Entertainment While Shopping Has Changed
Buying butter was an entertainment in itself.
My sister and I often had to go to a favourite family grocer close by. We were always polite as we asked for a pound or two of butter and other small items.

Out came a big block of wet butter wrapped in grease-proof paper. Brought from the back of the shop, placed on a huge counter top and included two grooved pates.

That was a big change in our shopping in my lifetime… you don’t come across butter bashing nowadays.

Our old friendly Mr. Mahon with the moustache, would cut a square of butter. Lift it to another piece of greaseproof paper with his pates. On it went to the weighing scales, a bit sliced off or added here and there.

Our old grocer would then bash it with gusto, turning it over and over. Upside down and sideways it went, so that it had grooves from the pates, splashes going everywhere, including our faces.

My sister and I thought this was great fun and it always cracked us up. We loved it, as we loved Mahon’s, on the corner, our very favourite grocery shop.

Grocery Shopping
Further afield, we often had to go to another of my mother’s favourite, not so local, green grocer’s. Mr. McKessie, ( spelt phonetically) would take our list, gather the groceries and put them all in a big cardboard box.

And because we were good customers he always delivered them to our house free of charge. But he wasn’t nearly as much fun as old Mr. Mahon. Even so, he was a nice man.

All Things Fresh
So there were very many common services such as home deliveries like:

• Farm eggs

• Fresh vegetables

• Cow’s milk

• Freshly baked bread

• Coal for our open fires

Delivery Services
A man used to come to our house a couple of times a week with farm fresh eggs.

Another used to come every day with fresh vegetables, although my father loved growing his own.

Our milk, topped with beautiful cream, was delivered to our doorstep every single morning.

Unbelievably, come think of it now, our bread came to us in a huge van driven by our “bread-man” named Jerry who became a family friend.

My parents always invited Jerry and his wife to their parties, and there were many during the summer months. Kids and adults all thoroughly enjoyed these times. Alcohol was never included, my parents were teetotallers. Lemonade was a treat, with home made sandwiches and cakes.

The coal-man was another who delivered bags of coal for our open fires. I can still see his sooty face under his tweed cap but I can’t remember his name. We knew them all by name but most of them escape me now.

Mr. Higgins, a service man from the Hoover Company always came to our house to replace our old vacuum cleaner with an updated model.

Our insurance company even sent a man to collect the weekly premium.

People then only paid for their shopping with cash. This in itself has been a huge change in shopping in my lifetime.

In some department stores there was a system whereby the money from the cash registers was transported in a small cylinder on a moving wire track to the central office.

Some Of The Bigger Changes
Some of the bigger changes in shopping were the opening of supermarkets.

• Supermarkets replaced many individual smaller grocery shops. Cash and bank cheques have given way to credit and key cards.

• Internet shopping… the latest trend, but in many minds, doing more harm, to book shops.

• Not many written shopping lists, because mobile phones have taken over.

On a more optimistic note, I hear that book shops are popular again after a decline.

Personal Service Has Most Definitely Changed
So, no one really has to leave home, to purchase almost anything, technology makes it so easy to do online.
And we have a much bigger range of products now, to choose from, and credit cards have given us the greatest ease of payment.

We have longer shopping hours, and weekend shopping. But we have lost the personal service that we oldies had taken for granted and also appreciated.

Because of their frenetic lifestyles, I have heard people say they find shopping very stressful, that is grocery shopping. I’m sure it is when you have to dash home and cook dinner after a days work. I often think there has to be a better, less stressful way.

My mother had the best of both worlds, in the services she had at her disposal. With a full time job looking after 9 people, 7 children plus her and my dad, she was very lucky. Lucky too that she did not have 2 jobs.