Using social media as part of a client's search strategy has become the norm--but not all companies have a clear understanding of who their target audience is when it comes to social media. Li Evans breaks down the eight most prevalent types of social media users, and how you should direct your content toward, around or away from them. The most valuable users are the brand evangelists, promoters and co-creators. Each group has varying degrees of affinity for a brand--with the evangelists being die-hards who are likely to tell everyone they know, the promoters being less crazy (and …

Melanie Nathan has the inside scoop on how to increase the chances of getting positive responses to your link requests, and it starts with using a "trustworthy" email address. Nothing says link-requesting freeloader like a generic address from one of the free providers--so try not to use your Hotmail or Yahoo account. Instead, get an address that includes the name of your business (like jane.doe@[businessname].com). When asking prominent bloggers for links, it's best to have a clear goal of what kind of link you want. Are you pushing for a mention of your site in a post, a …

Last week YouTube rolled out YouTube Suggest, a predictive search feature that helps users narrow down their search for the most popular videos. And Bryson Meunier notes that video-focused SEOs can use the tool for keyword research as well. Meunier says he used the tool to discover "some of the most popular YouTube queries and categories." And though the results weren't mind-blowing insights, Meunier says that they can likely be used to "justify Arts & Entertainment spend in YouTube, or to find alternative subjects that still bring in a lot of search volume."

There are a number of similarities between the best practices for local SEO and yellow page ads. For example, small businesses have long been told to include as much info as possible in each yellow pages ad they place--because if consumers don't see it in the ad, they don't think you do it. The same goes for on-page SEO and the engines' crawlers, according to Tim, the Local Search Hound. "If you don't mention the service on your site, Google assumes that you don't do it," Tim says. "And you will have little chance of ranking for that …

Tom Pick likens Google to an alcohol abuser in need of an intervention in this piece--which takes a tongue-in-cheek look at some of the search giant's increasingly frequent marketer offenses. For example, Google's "wild mood swings and erratic behavior" translates to search rankings that have become terribly unstable. Pick says that he's seen a site go from the 49th spot for a particular keyword, to the ninth spot, and then back down to somewhere on the fifth page within a matter of weeks--with no changes made to the page. Meanwhile the giant has been starting to …

In early 2007, Shimon Sandler asked his AdWords rep for some benchmarking data for click-thru rates (CTRs) on a by-industry basis. In the midst of spring (soon-to-be summer) file cleaning, Sandler found the slide she'd prepared for him, and decided to share it with the search community. "I was told that these are from large comprehensive PPC campaigns from industry leaders," he says. "I don't think this can really be used as representative data for the Avg CTR for each of these industries. But, it's interesting data anyway." Indeed. For example, average CTRs for the banking/savings …

Glenn Pingul says that video should be a core search marketing tool, and gets to work debunking some of the most common myths that small business owners seem to have about the medium. First off, video doesn't have to be expensive--nor does it have to be a clip of live action. Repurposing 30-second spots is great if a company already has them, but creating high quality how-to videos, interviews and even photo slideshows set to music can be just as effective. But video--just like all searchable content--must be fresh and updated. "Now, the timeframe of what …