Brendan Gibbons recounts the tale of Chris Stump, a hammock retailer and owner of Onlyhammocks.com, who purchased said domain and has been dealing with the penalties of its previous owner ever since. Stump bought the domain in October 2007, and got started with a solid paid and organic search marketing plan. But it became clear that something was wrong after Onlyhammocks.com was left with low PageRank and only a few pages indexed after a number of months. Stump checked with the Wayback machine at Archive.org, and found that the site had been owned by spammers for the …

Wister Walcott explains that companies aiming to scale back marketing costs should not diminish their search budgets. "Instead, smart marketers need to learn to spend more, while maintaining, or even boosting, overall ROI," he says. He offers some tips for maximizing your search spend, starting with results-based bidding. Instead of bidding to attain a specific ad position, Walcott says that bids should be placed based on the desired result (i.e. cost per lead, conversion rate, etc.). Walcott also suggests constant copy and ad group testing and optimization. "Google will 'optimize' your ads by showing those with …

The overall click fraud rate dipped slightly from the previous quarter, according to the latest Click Fraud Index from Click Forensics. Content network click fraud (across both Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network) was also down by 0.2%. But the third-party click-quality-monitoring service found that botnet-based click fraud was on the rise--with just over a quarter of all fraudulent clicks stemming from an automated mechanism. "The threat from botnets is the biggest concern as they have grown to cause over one quarter of all click fraud," said Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics. "Online advertisers …

Cuil launched yesterday amidst much fanfare (and heavy criticism for highly irrelevant results and server load issues), but Kevin Gibbons ponders whether the engine could eventually grow into an SEO tool. After all, Cuil's results are ranked based on the quality of content--not links--and developing keyword-rich content is at the crux of on-page SEO. A search for "SEO," for example, yields a number of domain-for-sale sites. "Providing domain for sale websites in the SERP's such as seo.co.nz doesn't really provide users with the results they are looking for," Gibbons says. "But it does show that using the targeted keywords within …

Karon Thackston offers a quick, simple plan for plugging keywords into an e-commerce site. It starts with broad keywords on the homepage, more specific keywords on category pages, and then long-tail terms within product descriptions. "Think of the sales process as a funnel," Thackson says. "It's broad at the lip and gets more narrow as you move closer to the spout. The same goes for the keyword strategy: broad keyphrases at first and more specific ones as the subject matter gets more specific."

"Confronted by the high price in gas and air travel, many people are seeking out events, activities and other opportunities for entertainment that are closer to home," says Ryan Bigby. And small business owners can tap into this trend by running geotargeted ads, as well as campaigns that spotlight local events and activities. First, Bigby suggests tailoring your ads to local searchers. "If, for example, you sell camping equipment out of a store located in Bend, Oregon, you can target your campaigns for searchers located in the central Oregon area that are searching for keywords like 'sleeping bags,', …

In the midst of offering social media features, reviews and cashback, Brian Smith says that comparison shopping engines are missing the boat when it comes to what their primary value proposition should be--particularly given the tough economy. "All those things are nice and should be part of a strategy, but right now, this is the perfect opportunity for the shopping engines to step up their marketing efforts (or at least run some bold tests) highlighting the fact that they save consumers money," Smith says. While companies like Pronto.com and Smarter.com have fought to be considered as …

RushmoreDrive.com, IAC's search engine geared toward the Black community, has rolled out a sweepstakes to help drive membership and usage. Members can enter to win a 2009 Range Rover Sport in the contest, which runs through Sept. 8. "RushmoreDrive.com hopes to change the way the Black community searches the World Wide Web for information, jobs and news," says Kevin Heisler. The engine combines core search with social media features, as well as news, and its technology pulls in results from Web sites that are heavily trafficked by Black users. Though the Range Rover giveaway was heavily …

Google powers a vertical engine that strictly searches government Web sites, including NASA, the CDC and NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), offering fast, easy access to pages upon pages of civic info. And spam. "Being the curious one, I thought that I would take a look to see how polluted the US Government websites really are," Bill Hartzer says. In the midst of a search for "online casino," Hartzer found various kinds of spam, including spam blogs and even log file or analytics referrer spam. Of course, Google can't be blamed for the glut of …