It's important to know if visitors can easily navigate your site and understand the content that draws in more eyeballs. Can visitors quickly find the information they need? Ann Smarty found information on two useful tools she shares in this post. The Five Second Test lets you run a quick "free page usability poll." It collects messages and organizes data to define the easy-to-remember text and graphics on a Web page. Feng-Gui, the second tool Smarty discusses, show you the heat map of any image you submit. Without being able to vouch for its accuracy, she explains the …

Have misconceptions about natural SEO strategies, link-building tactics, or content optimization got you down? P.J. Fusco agrees you can produce nearly immediate traffic bursts with a little strategic link bait or a well-structured social media campaign, but it's not organic SEO at its best. These quick-hit results can disappear over time. Take the long-term approach and consider implementing a goal-oriented content optimization strategy. "Content optimization [is] a time-honored strategy for attaining and maintaining top performance in the search engines," Fusco writes. "It tends to keep giving and giving over time, as long as you mind the metrics …

John Audette has developed a tool marketers can use to determine the tactics that best fits campaigns. This tool helps to establish strategy and budget for Internet marketing campaigns by measuring the return on investments (ROI) and weighting the time it takes to see and retain results. In building the AudetteMedia Cube, Audette used a scale of 1 to 100, rating SEO, content, blogging, online PR, PPC and more on three criteria. "Once priorities are set, it is possible to make an initial budget allocation of resources to the tactics that are most likely to produce desired …

Jeff Quipp suggests sound business models and SEO results are closely related. In the post, he defines good/bad business models, looks at why companies with faulty models are doomed and tries to sift through possible issues to arrive at a probable conclusion. Companies with sound business model ultimately rank higher in listing, Quipp writes. He suggests SEOers need to determine the signals behind the company's faulty business model and make a decision on whether you will help them make the changes to improve operations, decide whether or not to accept or retain these type of clients, and …

Like most people, Bruce Clay is inclined to think Jerry Yang's decision to step down as CEO was in the company's best interest, calling Yahoo a company that has struggled to find market share under the shadow of a behemoth (Google). Clay points out that when Yang first stepped up to the position of CEO, there already was muttering the role might be temporary. While speculation swirls around who will become Yang's successor, the questions remain: "Is Yahoo looking for someone whose specialty lies in technology or in media? Or even entertainment -- although, the last time …

A special bonus in today's edition includes a link to Jerry Yang's memo to employees on stepping down as CEO, compliments of Kara Swisher.

Measuring SEO success based on ranking is dead. The measures will rely on analytics, measuring traffic and bounce rates, among other metrics, according to Bruce Clay in a video interview at PubCon 2008 with Mike McDonald. Behavior-based search will move toward personalization early in 2009. Search queries will be based on prior search history. This means two people searching in the same search engine on the same word will not return the same results. That's one prediction from SEO guru Clay. He also tells McDonald that personalization will cut across Web sites and search engines from Google, Microsoft, …

How do you measure attribution when consumers research potential purchases offline as well as online, before buying online, especially for big-ticket items? Consumers want the extra savings found at online stores, but still want to touch and feel products before making the purchase. David Levy provides an example of his recent Tempur-Pedic bed purchase to discuss the issue. What does this mean for SEOers? Levy suggests "it comes down to attribution." He explains that measuring online research to offline purchasing is difficult, "and data at this point is directional at best," but maybe this type of buying strategy …

Google's Facebook launched a new feature that adds "hundreds of million of internal links" to brand pages in users' public search listings, which are Facebook's way of exposing user information to the Google search engine, according to Justin Smith. The brand pages, in which users are noted as fans, should add thousands of links, Smith suggests. "For marketers, this step by Facebook increases the weight Google will give to brand Pages," he writes. "Brand and marketing managers should not be surprised to see their Facebook Pages rising in Google search results in the months ahead."

John C. Dvorak doesn't believe SEO works and provides a list of reasons why. His biggest gripe, based on how Google handles SEO, makes him think achieving the correct results would take a miracle. In the post Dvorak presents problems and proposes solutions. Some of the topics he discusses range from page rankings and search results to user flagging. He suggests flagging parked sites the way you flag spam on a message board or an incorrect categorized post on craigslist. "The risk here is that creeps trying to shut down a specific site could swamp Google with false …