Matt McGee says if you're a small business owner, tuning up your Web site should be a goal you set for yourself -- even before we usher in 2008. So he drafted a 10-point plan to do so. Reviewing your company info (like an "About Us" page, a "Management Team" page, etc.) and contact info might seem like common sense, but personnel and telephone or fax info can change multiple times over the year -- and sometimes the task of updating it on the site gets forgotten. The same goes for updating your copyright or privacy policies. …

About two weeks ago, Blumenthal's blog posted one user's account of a possible shift in the way Google was displaying reviews and ratings for local businesses. The California florist noted that Google local had specifically deleted a number of her CitySearch reviews and removed her "star ranking" -- and that the changes were negatively affecting her traffic. So the Local Search Hound dug into why Google might have scrapped those reviews, and came up with a possible theory -- that the search giant has begun applying a Quality Score-like grading system to reviews (and reviewers). By …

Did your client wait until the last minute to ask you to optimize their site for the holidays? Don't worry -- there are plenty of last minute shoppers, and SEO tips on how you can use to snag them! According to Stephan Spencer, you can still make some small changes that will impact their traffic and possibly sales. The first is to add some new keyword-rich links to the homepage -- holiday-focused, anchor text that the engines can pick up and will drive those last minute shoppers to your "great gifts and goodies." Revising your meta descriptions with …

Jonathan Mendez offers five reasons why landing page optimization (LPO) will take center stage next year. Competitive pressures will force both SEM firms and digital agencies to work LPO into their suite of standard offerings, as the number of advertisers searching for those services will increase -- and LPO will become a critical part of overall marketing spend. LPO technology will continue to improve, with dollars flowing from VC investors as well as new M&A activity in the space. Mendez also says that landing pages have become the "30 second spot" for the digital age, and as …

Just days after Ask debuted its AskEraser search data anonymizing service, privacy advocates and industry insiders have said that it falls a bit short when it comes to eradicating user info. Jason Lee Miller highlights a statement in the AskEraser FAQs that proves that while Ask attempts to get rid of the search data, it cannot force third-party providers of info like stock quotes, weather conditions, and paid search results (i.e. Google) to remove the user info from their servers. Miller does more digging and finds out that Ask still keeps the search info (user or session IDs, …

Lisa Barone culls info from a recent MarketingSherpa seminar for this post on the best tests, design schemes and overall strategies for boosting the conversion power of landing pages. Stats from MarketingSherpa's new Landing Page Handbook reveal that of the myriad steps you can take to impact a landing page's conversion rate, dynamically serving the on-page copy bumped up conversions by 68%. Giving users a sign that this new page contains the specific information that they were looking for -- even simple copy that says "you searched for 'x' on Yahoo" -- is an incredibly effective change. Though …

There have been multiple accounts of changes to Google's SERPs with regards to Universal Search, but the search giant admits to constantly tinkering with the algorithm and certain interface features in the aims of "improving the user experience." But the newest change caught by the blogosphere is the shift to a double-paneled SERP (a la Ask-3D minus one pane), with the images, video or other non-text results lined up in a OneBox on the right side of the page. Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag notes that this new interface is remarkably like a design scheme AOL tried (and then …

Omar Tawakol has left his position at Medio Systems to head up an online marketing startup called BlueKai. Seattle-based Medio's technology powers on-deck search for giants like Verizon and T-Mobile -- and Tawakol served as chief advertising officer, spearheading the company's push into mobile advertising. Author John Cook wonders if Tawakol's departure may seriously hinder Medio's business development strategy, as he helped orchestrate the company's recently inked search and ad deals with CBS in the U.S. and mInfo to power search in China. BlueKai is in serious stealth mode, with just snippets of information available on …

Sequoia Capital, a VC firm known for its early-stage investments in powerhouses like Google, Yahoo and Apple, has reportedly poured at least $1 million into Kenshoo, an Israeli startup in the SEM automation space. Much like Clickable, Kenshoo's services aim to streamline the bid management process, and also provide actionable advice on how to better optimize campaigns with different keywords, among other options. While Kenshoo is going up against giants in the space like Omniture and aQuantive's Atlas Solutions, it is likely that its focus is on the "longer tail" of businesses -- where there is still …

Kalena Jordan's lighthearted look at the ten worst offenses in site design and SEO spread the blame equally amid clients, Web designers, search pros and IT managers. It's likely that if you've been in the online marketing business for even a few months you've come across (or had a hand in?) at least one of these errors. Jordan includes three domain errors in the mix. The first is misspelling the domain (a caution against buying domains over the phone, or not verifying with a client exactly how it should be spelled), and the second is buying anything other than …