It appears the Internet caters to more liberal than conservative thinkers. So says analysis from Sage Lewis, citing stats from Rubicon Consulting and his own research. "If you have a product or service that caters to issues that Democrats care about, you'll probably have an easier time gathering interest and links than a business that serves a Republican audience," he writes. Lewis also suggests that webmasters look to Obama's online campaign for inspiration. With Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook, acting as coordinator of online organizing, Web sites were built to foster interaction and community. "The next time …

Have you refreshed your holiday keyword research? It might be too late, according to P.J. Fusco. Well, maybe not, she writes, but you had better start planning now for next year. If you find yourself panicking, there are still a few tactics you can do now to try and improve your search-engine visibility in Google and MSN for this holiday season. While "the ship has already sailed for Yahoo unless you want to position a landing page for post-holiday bargains and discounts in January," Fusco writes, there are still some ideas you can implement now. For example, …

Ann Smarty provides a list of tools you might want to keep handy and suggests using the FireFox toolbar as an alternative spot to place extensions. She creates several FireFox profiles to sort add-ons based on purposes, and uses the plug-ins to quickly access multiple search engines from one window. The recommended tools include SEOquake, Search Status, SEOBook Rank Checker, Domain Details, HTML Validator and Greesemonkey.

Danny Dover gives you the basics to build your own SEO strategy. While the list provides insight to those less experienced who want to learn more, it's also a handy reminder of tools to have in your box and steps needed to see success. Start by building and coding a Web site. Then pick your keywords, register a domain name, upload the hosted files to the new account and sign up for Google analytics. Dover provides a long list of to-dos and steps you through the process. Remember to add a link to your site on all your …

When optimizing a site for search engines, remember there isn't just one thing you need to do -- but rather, many smaller things that all add up. For example, search engines look for heading tags, which light the path to your Web site. There are six types of tags. Three are commonly applied; the other three are used on occasion. Garry Conn provides examples for each, explaining the types and their purpose, as well as how you can use them to improve your SEO strategy. A graph on the post describes how he categorizes tags. Conn uses …

Numerous posts suggest SEO results provided insight into predicting the next President of the United States. By analyzing stats from Google Insights for Search, Aaron Goldman shed some light on who would win Tuesday's election. He began by comparing Obama and McCain query volumes. McCain demonstrated a clear lead about 90 days ago, but Obama, now president-elect, began to take the lead during the past 30 days. Graphs and charts gave a daily breakdown. You could see from the spike when the 30 minute television spots began running across the major US networks. "Is anyone out there still questioning …

Search engine optimization has become a priority among travel companies, which includes hotels, airlines and travel agents, according to a study by travel site Whatsonwhen.com. Sixty-six percent of the 88 travel companies polled by the site said they would increase their SEO budgets. Twenty five percent said they would increase search engine marketing by up to 50%, with two-thirds citing search as their top priority.

Despite difficult economic times, experts suggest now is not the time to cut back on SEM and SEO, according to Jennifer Schiff. "With online shoppers saying they plan on cutting back on spending this holiday season, now may be the perfect time for you to optimize your site to attract every prospective customer you can--and keep your current customers coming back for more," she writes. "Best of all, optimizing your site, giving it a pre-holiday facelift, needn't be expensive or time consuming. And the return on your investment could (and should) more than offset the cost." It may …

Jason Burby serves up information on a calculator that allows you to forecast a potential return on investment for SEM efforts, providing a bookmark to help you find the calculator page. The post provides information in three key sections on "Current site behavior," "Potential improvements," and "Estimated impact of site optimization." Each section offers insight on conversion rates, estimating costs and evaluating investments. "Remember, you don't need to be exact on the values or percentage lift, but try to be consistent with your estimates," Burby writes. "This is a tool to determine the estimated impact. You'll find that …

If you have been following Stoney deGeyter's post on keyword research, selection and organization you might already know the series guides you through four distinct phases of the keyword research process. In part 11 of this 12-part series, he describes how you can organize keywords that can make your campaign "vastly more successful." Using the analogy of building an engine, deGeyter steps through the process of figuring out the engine type, learning the parts needed to build it, and piecing together the parts to achieve the quickest and most profitable results. While the organization process is not difficult, …