by Nick Stamoulis Over the years I've found that's it easy enough to explain to someone what they should do with their link building campaign-the types of links they're looking for, how to build a 12 month strategy, how to evaluate the quality of a link and so forth-but where a lot of site owners and marketing managers get hung up isn't with the actual building of links, it's usually because of the attitude and mindset they have when they start their link building campaign.

by Jennifer Cario A few days ago, my husband looked up at me from over his laptop and said "Yahoo has a poll asking people if social media influences their buying decisions." After I smiled and chuckled a bit, I asked him what the poll "concluded." "It doesn't." And then we both smiled. Why would two people who run a social media marketing and analtyics form smile at that conclusion? Well...because we know better. You see,

by Mike Fleming Everybody wants the online sale. But are you relating to your customer in ways that make it easier for them to buy? You might be thinking, "How can it get any easier to buy from us? All they have to do is click add to cart, fill in some boxes and hit checkout!" Sure, it might be easy for them to physically buy from you, but how about psychologically? How easy is it for them to make the decision that you are specifically the right choice for them?

by Jennifer Cario After more than a year of waiting for delivery, Pinterest has finally delivered on its promise to deliver native analytics to Pinterest users with verified URLs. )And Pinterest marketers rejoiced.( In an announcement posted to the company's blog on March 12th, the Pinterest team shares the details . The analytics build on recent shifts toward business accounts and the launch of a new Pinterest interface.

by Stoney deGeyter It can be difficult to quantify or draw direct correlations between an SEO campaign and the sales it generates. Unlike PPC, where keywords can be tracked from the click all the way to the conversion, SEO tracking isn't quite as specific. In fact, tracking sales from an SEO campaign can often be difficult to differentiate from other web marketing campaigns, except through source tracking which can be vague.

by Mike Moran Image via CrunchBase It almost sounds magical-a system with an on-demand supply of incredibly cheap labor )pennies for many tasks( that is available by simply posting a request on a Web site. Amazon's Mechanical Turk and other crowdsourcing sites have revolutionized the way companies do intensive manual labor on computing tasks. So, you might want to consider using crowdsourcing for your Internet marketing jobs. But when you do,

by Jayson DeMers Google Analytics makes it possible to track SEO efforts, and has been used by businesses the world over to track ROI on internet marketing. The new Google Analytics platform has been a steep learning curve for some SEO professionals, especially those who were accustomed to the classic layout. However, the "new" analytics comes with more than just a confusing layout.

by Jennifer Cario Two years ago, everyone's love-hate relationship with Facebook got a little more passionate when Mark Zuckerburg changed things up and introduced us to Facebook Timeline. Love it or hate it, it's all about to change again. Facebook introduced a whole new news feed design at a press conference on March 7th.

by Jennifer Cario It's 2013. We've been working on this thing called social media for about five or six years now. As marketers and as business owners, we're not only wrapping our heads around the infinite engagement possibilities, we're also finally beginning to possess the tools that allow us to gather real data about the value of our efforts. And yet.

by Nick Stamoulis It seems to be a common song and dance in SEO-once the search engines give the thumbs up to particular link building tactic like blog commenting or guest blogging the spammers come out of the woodwork to use and abuse that tactic for as long as they can. As the old adage goes, if you build a better mousetrap someone is bound to breed a smarter mouse. It often feels like it's Google versus the spammers and I'm not always sure who comes out on top. With Panda,

by Stoney deGeyter Comparing SEOs is sometimes as difficult as comparing beef enchiladas made with a red sauce to chicken enchiladas with a cream sauce. I mean, they are both from the enchilada family and probably pretty tasty, but there can only be one winner! Where was I going with this? Oh right, comparing SEOs. In essence, all SEOs are there to do the same thing, but they come in a lot of different flavors. Depending on what meat and sauce each uses,

by Nick Stamoulis Summertime may not be just around the corner, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel! If your peak business season is the summertime)businesses such as beach front hotels, ice cream parlors, landscaping companies, etc( then you need to make sure your seasonal SEO is in tip-top shape and ready to capitalize on the changing search behavior of your target audience. For businesses that are heavily impacted by seasonality,

by Mike Fleming There are many cultural forces built into every society that has ever existed on the planet. Some are stronger in certain societies than others. One of them is called the rule of reciprocity . It says that a person )or group( should try to repay what another person has provided. More simply put, if someone does something for you, you have a natural tendency to want to do something for them.

by Mike Moran We like to tell ourselves that blogs are this breathtakingly new way of communicating with customers unlike anything we've ever seen before. And, to some extent, that's true. But if you are a veteran of electronic or even paper newsletters, I'll excuse you for not being so bowled over. You've been doing this for years and you know how it's done. One of the things you know is that coming up with fresh content takes work,

by Mike Moran Image via CrunchBase Seth Godin is fond of saying that we must make our products and our companies remarkable , but it's easier to say than to do )as Seth well knows(. And I fear that some people just blow off Seth's advice, because they hear "remarkable" as just another fatuous superlative, such as "great" or "fantastic" that is bereft of its original, more specific meaning. Remarkable means something that would cause someone to remark about it. So,

by Nick Stamoulis Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter If you're looking for some new, profound or revolutionary "trick" to getting #1 rankings, you can just stop reading this post right now, because you won't find it. In fact, there is really nothing new here. Then again, there is really nothing new to good SEO. Sure, you might learn about some new avenues or a particular strategy, but not here. Not today. This post is for those looking for some good, solid, foundational SEO.

by Nick Stamoulis I would hope that since the Google Penguin update came crashing down around everyone's ears last year that site owners are being a little more careful about their link building choices. While I don't want the fear of a penalty to halt your link building campaign in its tracks )which I'm sure has happened for plenty of sites(, I do hope that site owners are becoming a little more discerning during their hunt for inbound links. That being said,

by Mike Fleming A few years ago, I went ahead and got myself a nice liberal arts education . You know, the kind that's supposed to "prepare you for the real world" by affording you the opportunity to take courses in communications, science, budgeting, psychology, etc. I must say that it's a good thing too, considering I landed in the profession that I did.

by Stoney deGeyter I've long advocated a common-sense approach to algorithm chasing with SEO. What most people don't understand is that with today's algorithms, there is almost no such thing as a top search engine ranking. There is simply exposure. You either get more of it or less of it. Rankings play a role, but not in the way most people think. Here are some little known facts about Google: Google analyzes somewhere around 200 different ranking signals.