Search marketing encompasses multiple strategies, but according to Kara Ratliff, the first challenge many businesses face when crafting a search plan is choosing whether to focus on PPC campaigns, organic SEO or some combination of the two. First she extols the virtues and drawbacks of both practices, from the methodical, relatively concrete nature of paid search, to the ambiguous, hit-or-miss art of organic optimization. Then Ratliff recruits search pros Jeremy Schoemaker and Dana Todd to weigh in on the topic. Schoemaker notes that one distinction is whether there's an actual product being sold. So while bloggers …

Yahoo will host a free search marketing Webinar next Wednesday, Nov 14. The Web giant will discuss best practices for holiday advertising, as well as present findings from recent paid search consumer studies. Pato Spagnoletto, Yahoo's senior director of marketing, YSM will host the session, and has invited readers to submit questions via the Marketing Pilgrim blog comment stream.

New York-based Ads-Click has rolled out a mobile ad service, giving marketers the option to create text and banner ads with CPC pricing, custom landing pages, as well as click-to-call functionality. The mobile platform is built on the same tech protocol as Ad-Click's other marketing tools (including a campaign hosting and management system, and an ad exchange) so that advertisers have no problem integrating mobile campaigns into their digital media mix. According to Jonathan Burke, Ads-Click's vice president of business development, North America, the company saw that publishers liked to work with one ad network and …

All the buzz about Google's branded Gphone seemed a bit anti-climactic when the search giant revealed that it had been working on Android, an open-source mobile operating system. But Google doesn't need to be a hardware manufacturer to achieve its mobile goals (and apparently, not even a mobile software developer, because the company bought Android as a start-up in July). According to eMarketer, the search giant's mobile ambitions are driven by the fact that "Google cannot grow fast enough relying solely on the PC-driven Internet." EMarketer uses local and search advertising spending data to outline why Google is …

In late September Yahoo announced that it would begin allowing search marketers to block domains in its Publisher Network that they didn't want their ads to appear on. Webmasters applauded the feature (often with the "it's about time" rallying cry), but since it has actually been in operation, some search pros think the YSM team has adopted a laissez faire attitude about keeping bad publishers out of the network. Search Engine Watch forum members started a discussion two weeks ago on this topic, and SEO Roundtable blogger Rusty Brick follows up on Yahoo's response. According to the Yahoo rep's …

Gas pump manufacturer Gilbarco Veeder-Root has inked a deal with Google that will embed the search giant's maps into the manufacturer's line of Internet-enabled gas pumps. Starting in December, some 3,500 gas pumps across the country will feature Google Maps in a small color screen at the pump. Motorists can scroll through various owner-selected local spots like hospitals, hotels, restaurants and other attractions, and print out directions to them from the pump itself. While there will be no Google ads embedded in the maps, it's likely that gas retailers will be able to serve coupons for the local …

Do you know your site's bounce rate? More importantly, do the search engine algorithms factor that bounce rate into account for rankings? Eric Enge asked Google's Matt Cutts about it, and his response alluded to the fact that the engines could likely detect a site's bounce rate -- but that there were also many contrasting factors and other "noise" that could skew any definitive results. A site's bounce rate can be defined as either how long a user spends on a given site (with less than 15 seconds being a bounce) or how many different pages a …

John Battelle has admittedly been busy with his Federated Media Publishing duties -- and notes that he hasn't had time to blog about all the new search companies and services that continue to innovate in the space - except this one. It's a new discovery engine called "All About Steak" and is pegged as "a website devoted to helping people quickly access relevant information about steak and beef products." Naturally the recipes and tips are flanked by steak and beef display ads - with contextual links sure to follow. The engine is powered by a company called RawSugar …

The search leaders have made accessing their paid search ad platforms easy and relatively self-explanatory. But learning the nuances of PPC campaign management takes trial and error -- and of course time. While there may be a bit of a learning curve for in-house and small business search marketers, Jennifer Laycock notes that they can advance without costly detours by avoiding these five paid search mistakes. From ego-bidding, to failing to separate content from search, to not developing multiple landing pages, Laycock offers an explanation of what each mistake is, why it's detrimental to a PPC campaign, and …

In mid-October Google started letting site owners give feedback and get a glimpse of which pages in their site might be included in up to 8 sitelinks below their main organic search listing. While Webmasters can't outright pick which pages do become sitelinks, they can opt to make sure that outdated or otherwise irrelevant pages don't. Stephan Spencer notes that while Webmasters are right for hoping that Google will give them more control over their sitelinks' functionality, quality, indexable, effectively organized content never fails to catch the algorithm's attention. Spencer also says that in addition to giving users …