Yahoo offers up a March Madness-themed game plan to help marketers prep for the upcoming changes to the way minimum bids are set--and it's all about the keywords. Start by identifying which keywords are working best for your business and add them to a "watched keywords" list for easy reference during the minimum bid adjustment period. Get rid of the underperformers ASAP, and then diversify, Jeff Hecox says. "If minimum bids are raised on some of your keywords, find some that remain at lower levels and make them more prominent in your lineup." Pay attention to …

If you're playing the PPC game, you should be bidding on your own brand name as well as its misspellings. Ian Lurie says it's a no-brainer--as it's a small investment that complements the much larger ones you've made to trademark your name and get your business incorporated. "It's cheap," Lurie says, noting that the engines' quality scoring and ranking algorithms make it so that your own company and product names are likely to be some of the cheapest keywords you can buy. Buying your brand name can also provide "visibility insurance," if for some reason you …

Although it's costly and takes a bit of time to get right, search is the perfect business for a tech-savvy entrepreneur, according to Spock CEO Jaideep Singh. "Once you've got it right, you've built something utilitarian and of lasting value. This is in sharp contrast to many web social web applications that can get be built quickly and cheaply and get mass adoption," says Singh. And that's why we'll continue to see an influx of search-focused startups. Singh outlines the challenges that newcomers to the search space face, starting with defensibility--or the art of keeping your value proposition …

SEO used to be about making changes to a Web site (like uploading new content or tweaking meta data) and waiting for the search engines to pull it into their index. With Universal Search, that wait-and-see approach is no more, according to Rob Aronson. "Now it is time to get pushy," he says. Getting your site to rank is about pushing your content to different places on the Web so that the engines can find it--whether it's videos on YouTube, images on Flickr or news via RSS feeds or aggregation sites. Site owners can also push their content …

Jason Lee Miller is a bit skeptical about the value proposition of video ads showing up as search results. "At the heart of my reluctance is the thought that maybe the online audience does not behave quite like the offline audience," Miller says--and he's talking about how they respond to branding efforts. "Despite that inherent trust that branding builds, many WebProNews small business-owning readers have reported that content (branding) ads do nothing for them, that they end up spending too much money for not enough directly measurable results," Miller says. "So that makes me wonder if branding efforts …

If you're a Google AdSense publisher, then you may need to update your meta tags--as these snippets of data can be the extra nudge needed to help your site attract more relevant, higher-converting ads. For example, if you run a Web site for fashionistas that focuses on European designers, then including those designers' names in your meta tags could help narrow the focus of the kinds of ads that show up. Your target audience will likely end up seeing fewer generic retail ads--which could lead to increased clicks and a higher payout for you. What meta …

Brandon Cornett serves up a five-spot of steps for a quick Web site overhaul--one that can lead to increased traffic and visibility on the search engines within a few days. It starts with keyword research--specifically, using a free tool like WordTracker to find the 100 most searched for phrases for a specific keyword or topic (like "gourmet coffee"). Scan the list and create a spreadsheet of the words that are most relevant to what your Web site is offering (i.e. "gourmet coffee beans" or "gourmet coffee gift baskets." Armed with your list, go through your existing site content …

Jason Calcanis, the Web entrepreneur that many search pros love to hate, will be one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming SES NYC. While some may wonder why a man who has repeatedly trash-talked SEO and its practitioners has been chosen to speak at one of the most prominent search marketing conferences for the third time, Li Evans sidesteps the whys and gets right to the point. She's soliciting questions for Calcanis from the search community. "If Jason Calacanis is going to park his butt on that stage again at another Search Engine Strategies, why should his …