by Mike Fleming In my last post, I shared using a fishing metaphor to talk about stepping your PPC game up to the point where you know how to use it to build your online business for the long haul. So, let's start looking at some of the "tricks of the trade" to do just that. Trick #1 - Use Keywords Correctly A great misnomer among PPC advertisers is the belief that the foundation to success for an account is found in picking the right keywords.

by Stoney deGeyter There is an odd phenomenon that I have noticed in the world of websites. There is a small, yet vocal, group of people that love crap! Time and time again, when I advise a client to improve their website or logo, I hear, "we get complimented on it all the time." That? It brings up images of Charles De Mar from the movie Better off Dead saying, "I've been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I'm no dummy." The problem is,

by Mike Moran You've probably heard of sentiment analysis , a technique that allows computers to determine whether a comment is positive or negative about a subject. You can probably imagine a few uses for this kind of technology, such as culling social media for mentions of your brand, but you might be surprised about how much effort Google is putting into this area, including recently purchasing a startup that specializes in sentiment analysis .

by Miriam Ellis Do you take pride in your work in Search? I bet you do. If you design websites, I bet you make sure everything is absolutely perfect, all links and forms working, all imagery balanced and aligned, calls to action in place, everything just right before you launch a new website. If you write copy, I bet every piece you publish is publication-ready before it goes live. If you do SEO, you dig deep into your tools looking for gem-like keyword phrases,

by Stoney deGeyter This series is pulled from a presentation given at SMX East. Part I of this series covered the problems duplicate content creates . Part II covered some of the causes of duplicate content . This post covers some of the solutions that will help you fix your duplicate content problems. Quick Recap: Part I: Duplicate Content Causes Problems. Duh! Part II: There is No Single Cause of Duplicate Content. Don't collect them all! Great! Now let's move on.

by Mike Fleming Here's what's new in the world of paid search advertising... Google Changes Display of Top Position Ads Apparently, Google is going to start putting Description Line 1 of a typical PPC ad in the headline of the Top 3 ads positions as long as the line ends with a punctuation mark. If they roll this out, it's likely that competition for top position ads will grow and it will also affect ad copy strategies.

by Stoney deGeyter This series is pulled from a presentation given at SMX East. Part I of this serious covers the problems duplicate content creates . This post covers the causes of duplicate content, and Part III will look at the solutions you need to implement to fix your duplicate content problems. Quick recap of Part I: Duplicate content causes problems. Duh! Now that we got that out of the way,

by Mike Fleming One of the great things about PPC advertising is its immediacy. You can start running ads right now and see almost instantaneous results; whether good, bad or just ok. But, the trap that we don't want to fall into when running our accounts is limiting our thinking just to what can be gained right now . The fact is, PPC is a great way to help build all areas of your online business long-term.

by Stoney deGeyter Duplicate content is like a virus. When a virus enters your system, it begins to replicate itself until it is ready to be released and cause all kinds of nasty havoc within your body. On the web, a little duplicate content isn't a huge problem, but the more it replicates itself, the bigger the problem you're going to have. Too much duplicate content and your website will come down with some serious health issues. I'm going to break this into three parts.

by Mike Moran I've been spending a lot of time recently looking at local search, and discussing its importance with dozens of small businesses at the events I speak at. One discussion keeps coming up that I believe is terribly misguided. Small businesses think that their only competition in local search will come from other small businesses. So, as long as they stay ahead of their local competition, they are fine.

by Stoney deGeyter The thought that you should SEO your site before you even develop it seems counter-intuitive. And, in many ways, it is. But, not entirely. I've been an SEO for over 12 years, and I still can't get past the fact that optimization continues to be the "after thought," only coming into play long after the site has been up and running for months, or even years. This mindset needs to change.

by Stone Reuning One of the biggest challenges you will probably face is trying to explain the virtues of building content over traditional advertising to a boss or prospective client. Let's face it, most businesses are experts in their respective industries, not search engine marketing. Many people still think advertising first- be it online through pay-per-click ads or more traditional means like direct mail, radio/TV and more.

by Stoney deGeyter One of the questions that I keep hearing from small business owners every year is this: How can a small business like me afford SEO/SEM? It's a fair question coming from budget-conscious business owners. Not everybody can afford SEO. But, nobody can afford NOT to SEO. We recently had a "small" business come to us for a proposal. We talked at length about their needs, concerns, and budget for SEO, PPC, and Social Media campaigns.

by Mike Moran Some of this is generational. I am more comfortable firing up a search query than polling my Twitter followers or Facebook friends. But as social media activity increasingly has an impact on Bing and Google search results, it makes me wonder whether it will become an annoyance for me rather than something truly helpful, which mostly has to do with how I have approached social networks as a quasi-public person in what's turning into a private networking world.

by Mike Moran At a recent Webinar on search marketing, I received a plaintive question from a participant. She had listened carefully to all my advice, but practically wailed into the phone, "My CEO does not believe in paid search. What can I do?" If you've run into this situation, you needn't be as worried about it as she was. The first thing for us to do is to take away the mystique of paid search, or any marketing tactic, for that matter.

by Stoney deGeyter In the last post, we explored five of the Top 10 Guidelines to Establishing Web Credibility , provided by Standford back in 2002. Still relevant today, here we'll explore the remaining 5. Design your site so it looks professional )or is appropriate for your purpose(. We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. Of course,

by Stoney deGeyter Back in 2002, Stanford published their Top 10 Guidelines To Establishing Web Credibility . Amazingly, these conditions for creating a credible website are just as relevant today as they were back then. Isn't it funny how, with all of the advancements in site development and marketing, it all still comes back to the basics? Below are the first five guidelines.

by Stone Reuning In 2010, over 100 million users joined Twitter. It was by far the fastest growing social media channel last year...the idea of Twitter and its micro-blogging platform certainly will be an important tool going forward. Likely you've seen Twitter in a lot of places over the last couple of years - reality shows, sporting events and other venues people look to for up-to-the-minute information are just a few.

by Mike Moran If you just read that headline and felt like singing, " CMS and SEO , E-I-E-I-O," you're not alone. Sometimes digital marketing is an acronym factory that feels like you need a secret decoder ring just to understand what is going on. And even if you know that a "CMS" is a content management system and that "SEO" is search engine optimization, you might not know how they relate to each other.

by Miriam Ellis Grinches, Scrooges and big, toothy sharks are out there in growing numbers, waiting to take the money of honest local business owners in return for very poor advice, promising Local SEO glory and delivering bad practices. In 2010, through my work as a Local SEO for my firm, as a Q&A forum consultant for SEOmoz , a Cre8asite moderator and writing articles here and elsewhere,