Bryson Meunier argues that the industry is starting to bundle local search and mobile search as a package deal too often. "To be clear: there is local search, there is mobile search, there is local search on mobile devices and mobile search with local intent," he says. "But all mobile search is not local in nature. In fact, not even most of it is." He cites data from a study by Yahoo that found that only about 10% of all mobile searches have a local intent. "The total opportunity to connect with mobile users searching for information …

Ashworth University's marketing team had two goals in mind when they revamped the school's SEM strategy--to improve conversion rates, and to improve student retention. And after implementing a number of keyword-focused strategies, the average conversion rate hit 17%, and the lifetime value of students increased by almost 50% in some cases. "Retention was a big part of what we needed to do better," said Chris Burford, Ashworth's director of search marketing. "While we wanted to get more enrollments on the front end, we also needed to get them to stay for a while and spend money." …

Content is king when it comes to SEO, right? Well, as Aaron Shear notes, in some cases, Web sites would actually be better served by not having a never-ending trove of updated articles, blog posts and product info. "It's time we review the advantages of content, and where it may be applicable," he says. "As I speak with companies on a regular basis, they constantly tell me that they've been advised to write new and unique content by the boatload -- no matter the Web site or space they're in." For affiliate and ecommerce sites that shill the …

Jody Nimetz outlines the basics of keyword strategy, including detailed definitions of head, torso and long-tail phrases (and their merits and flaws), as well as an overview of the slew of new research tools that have emerged over the past few months. "The search engines have started to open up a little with regards to providing some insight into keyword search volumes and as a result there have been a couple of great tools that can be used for conducting keyword research," he says. Nimetz cautions that just knowing about the keyword options isn't enough--search marketers …

Li Evans offers a video tutorial for small business owners seeking to tap the power of Yelp, a third-party ratings and reviews site that has soared in popularity. The first step, of course, is to claim their business account with the service, as former customers may have already begun writing reviews. Business owners can make sure that the data is correct, including info on hours of operation, payment types, phone number and address, as well as answer any reviewer questions. Evans also suggests adding the company URL to the profile to help draft organic search traffic, as well …

"More often than not, a Google search will return millions and millions of results," writes the Pandia Search team. "50 Matches is a search engine that never returns more than 50. The idea is that by indexing and searching only sites that have been bookmarked, 'dugg,' etc., the quality of the results will be so high that 50 matches are all you need." The upsides are that the results will likely contain some of the Web's most popular content and be spam free--as the engine only crawls content that has been hand-picked. The downside is that the index …

Mike Grehan reviews "Always Be Testing," the latest book from Future Now cofounder Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar. "The Web is awash with opinions and ideas on best practices in search marketing, but there's not so much about best practice testing," Grehan says. "This book fills the gap." The authors of "Always Be Testing" make liberal use of real-world examples of how companies used simple and complex tests to increase conversions, and offer methods for figuring out what to test and how to test. They also encourage the use of Google's Web site Optimizer tool. "Given …

If you've got back-to-school products, then now is the prime time to shill them. And Noah Belson offers four tips for improving back-to-school paid-search campaigns for advertisers in the electronics, textbook, financial and even local retail verticals. For laptop, mp3 player and cell phone vendors, make sure your ad copy focuses on sales for the time being, as opposed to repair. "If you happen to offer both sales and service, concentrate on sales this month to make your ads more relevant to people looking to stock up for school," Belson says. "Ads for electronics items should stress the …

Duncan Reilly serves up a list of nearly two dozen search parameters to refine your queries on Google. Of course, there are well-known tricks like adding quotes to a phrase to garner an exact match, as well as entering a stock symbol (like YHOO or GOOG) to get the most recent share price info. But Reilly also includes lesser-known query refiners like the location finder. "Use inurl:, intitle:, intext:, or inanchor: to tell Google where it should look for the term you['re] looking for," he says. He also suggests using the modifier "filetype:" to find pictures or particular kinds …