In a recent post at Search Engine People, Wayne Barker notes that keeping up with SEO trends can be truly challenging, even for those who work within the industry. Staying current can be even tougher for small businesses that operate without much of a marketing budget, let alone an SEO ... more

When outsourcing your SEO, says Heather Lloyd-Martin, you have to ask the right questions if you're going to find the right candidate. "SEO copywriting professionals can have a wide variety of skill sets," she writes at Target Marketing magazine, "from the newbie who is just getting her virtual feet wet ... more

More than seven in ten (71%) of the nation's fastest-growing private companies now use Facebook and, among them, 85% say their efforts are proving successful, up 36 percentage points from the 54% that said so a year earlier, according to a study by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth's Center ... more

Before you optimize your next piece of content, Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman have some advice. "Bust your content silos!" they write in their new book Content Rules. "Do you have a print newsletter? Do you produce a regular podcast? Run a version of a print article on the blog, ... more

Are you dissatisfied with the results of your Google AdWords ads? A low "Quality Score" could be to blame. If you've tried all else but aren't seeing results, give these three unconventional tips a shot at bumping up your score. more

US direct and digital advertising expenditures are forecast to reach $163.9 billion in 2011, up 6.2% from 2010 levels, according to a report from the Winterberry Group. Of that total, digital spending is expected to reach $31.6 billion, up 14.0% from the previous year. more

Google Sites led the US explicit core search* market in December 2010, accounting for 66.6% of total searches conducted during the month, followed by Yahoo Sites with 16.0% and Microsoft Sites with 12.0%, according to data from comScore qSearch. more

Your About page is one of the most important pages on your site, says Lisa Banks in a post at the Site Reference SEO blog. Done right, it can help boost rankings and stimulate inbound links, she notes. Banks' interest in About pages was recently stirred by influential blogger Chris Brogan's ... more

You've no doubt optimized your site and marketing materials for top keywords, but have you thought about the influence they can wield in less traditional ways? Consistently optimized messaging across all of your company content—from its name and description to your employees' titles to your site content—helps create an image ... more

In a recent guest post at It's All About Revenue, Brian Posnanski shares tips on finding just the right keywords to boost standings in search results. "Keywords are the ingredient that make content searchable and discoverable," Posnanski notes. That's why TrafficPRM—Posnanski's interactive agency—created the Seven Keys to Keyword Research guide to ... more

In an Internet business environment that expects immediate results, online marketers have overlooked the power of SEO, or organic search, as a top revenue-generating channel. It can also teach you how to run your business in a smarter way. more

Facebook was the top-searched term overall in 2010—as it was in 2009—accounting for 2.11% of all searches, according to an Experian Hitwise analysis of the top 1,000 search terms for 2010. Moreover, Facebook was the top-visited website (for the first time) in 2010, accounting for 8.93% of all US visits, ... more

"Over the last dozen-plus years, unscrupulous SEO [companies] have given the entire search engine optimization industry a bad rep," writes Stoney deGeyter at Search Engine Guide. "It seems like every few months some high-profile person in the Internet world says something about how SEO is snake oil, sending ripples throughout ... more

Yahoo Sites comprised the top-ranked Web property in November 2010 with 181.0 million unique visitors, followed by Google Sites with 178.7 million, Microsoft Sites with 175.7 million, and Facebook with 151.7 million, according to comScore Media Metrix service. more

More than three in five Americans (63%) say they ignore or disregard Internet ads, according to a new Adweek Media/Harris Interactive Poll. Internet banner ads are the most ignored (43%), followed by search engine ads (20%). more

In a recent Search Engine Land post, Matt McGee reports on Google's experiment with new metatags designed to help identify original sources of online content found through Google News searches. Google's blog post refers to the use of the new syndication source and original source metatags as an experiment: The company ... more

Google Sites led the US explicit core search* market in November 2010, accounting for 66.2% of total searches conducted during the month, followed by Yahoo Sites with 16.4% and Microsoft Sites with 11.8%, according to data from comScore qSearch. more

If you market your business online, chances are you've bought more than one domain name over the years. It's important to periodically review all your domains, even the old ones pointing to an old microsite promotion. If you don't, you may be losing out on traffic or money—or, even worse, ... more

With most companies focusing their social media marketing efforts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, over one-third (36.1%) say they've been able to make a conversion from initial connection to sale via such social channels, according to a new survey from R2integrated. more

"Sometimes I hear the sound of crickets when I stumble across certain blogs written by small-business owners," writes Samantha McCormick at the OrangeSoda blog. "At first glance, the content is good, thorough, and up-to-date, but the page rank is 0 and there are a dozen signs leading me to believe ... more

"When you perform a search at Google or Bing, the results are significantly influenced by your physical location, even on queries where you don't specify a location," writes Ray Comstock at Search Engine Watch. "So if you're in New York and you search for [pizza], or [hot tubs] or [DMV], ... more

Global ad spending is forecast to reach $449.6 billion in 2010—up 4.9% from a year earlier—and continue to grow between 4.6% and 5.2% over the next three years, fueled by digital media and strong ad growth in developing markets, according to projections by ZenithOptimedia. more

Most high-tech companies understand that SEO is a critical channel for driving new clients, revenue and brand exposure. Organic search results are used widely by software buyers to find and evaluate products. New research from iProspect finds that organic search, more than paid search and online display advertising, offers the ... more

So, you want to improve your online visibility, but you're not an SEO expert. Never fear. C.B. Whittemore from the Simple Marketing blog has a basic SEO primer for you. As a "fierce practical" marketer, Whittemore seeks to understand how applying SEO to an array of digital content—website, blog, press releases, a ... more

Large retailers can count on Black Friday to turn their books from red to black, and online retailers have Cyber Monday to cash in afterward. This year, though, we also have Small Business Saturday. So how can a small business get the upper hand on these three monumental shopping days? more