Although no official announcement has been made, SEO experts have taken notice of the rollout of Panda 2.2, which some say will address the issue of scraper sites -- Web sites that republish and make money off other site's content. Since marketers want to know how they can modify practices, Rand Fishkin explains how the Panda updates work and how this has fundamentally changed SEO best practices.Read the whole story...

Igor Belogolovsky guides us through a 30-minute search engine marketing audit. He serves up a "laundry list" of best practices to help marketers keep a clean house and take advantage of relatively low-effort opportunities. Belogolovsky explains that marketers should understand the reasons behind knowing the percentage of conversions coming from exact match terms, quantity of bids on competitors' brand names, and if account structures have been optimized to improve quality scores.Read the whole story...

When it comes to email marketing, timing can either make or break a campaign. Jason Caldwell tells us that data suggests there are specific windows to send emails to achieve the highest open rate. A list of facts and stats to tweet at the end of the post reveals stats such as that consumer promotion emails are best sent between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., and email open rates and click rates are highest in the early morning during all days of the week, with the weekend the highest.Read the whole story...

Jessica discuss subtotals, describing this as a "powerful" yet "useful function," used across multiple data types. It's the third installment in this week's series explaining how marketers can tap into Excel to help boost paid-search performance. Supported by screen shots, Jessica provides tips on how to combine reporting from AdWords and Google Analytics with Excel to analyze relevant data and boost paid-search results.Read the whole story...