Social media marketing can create positive returns on keyword sets for pay-per-click campaign. It's a long term, less expensive investment. And, you can demonstrate the need for links to gain ranking in search engines. These are three of several tips Todd Malicoat provides as he suggests ways to pitch social media marketing to clients. Social media has become a core strategy when launching sites or improving link popularity, according to Malicoat. "Social marketing is the new search engine optimization," he writes. "Reciprocal voting is the new reciprocal linking. It offers a fairly low barrier to entry, and the …

Don't take shortcuts when optimizing your Web site, suggests Ron Jones, who tells us making friends with search engine agents or robots is a vital part of SEO basics. So, before jumping into details of SEO site structures, he provides insights into the importance of site structure for natural SEO. Developing the structure of the site means carefully planning the content for each page. "If your site is designed poorly or doesn't have links to all of your pages, then the robot will bypass those pages and only report on what it sees," Jones writes. "Designing your entire …

Don't take shortcuts when optimizing your Web site, suggests Ron Jones, who tells us making friends with search engine agents or robots is a vital part of SEO basics. So, before jumping into details of SEO site structures, he provides insights into the importance of site structure for natural SEO. Developing the structure of the site means carefully planning the content for each page. "If your site is designed poorly or doesn't have links to all of your pages, then the robot will bypass those pages and only report on what it sees," Jones writes. "Designing your entire …

After throwing tons of free advice toward potential clients, Aaron Wall wants to take a step to advertise his blog's community forums and training program on its internal search results. Wall walks through the steps he used to add advertisements on his site, and explains why: "My average cost per click on Google's search results is over $1 per click, and yet I have never advertised on my own search results," he writes. "Think about that number...over 100,000 times people have found the brand then done a specific search on this site with 0 of them seeing an …

If you only have $1, should you invest it in organic or paid search? Julie Batten believes while the question may seem simple, the answer is not. She proposes a few questions you might want to ask yourself in hopes of making your decision a little easier. Whether you decide to go with organic or paid search depends on your goals and the type of products your company sells. For example, are your products in a regulated industry with strict advertising guidelines? "Remember that you're at the search engines' mercy with organic search," she writes. "Therefore, if you …

You could have more success if landing page designers build the project assuming most people visiting sites through pay-per-click ads suffer from Attention Deficiency Disorder, writes David Szetela. Szetela focuses on landing pages used as destination pages for PPC, and provides details for setting up a strategy. "The first and most important objective of the landing page is to convince the visitor that they've come to the right place," Szetela writes. "If this crucial first step doesn't happen immediately, many (and possibly most) visitors will hit the back button and click on one of your competitor's ads."

Google has found a glitch in the AdWords Editor version 7.0 for Mac and Windows released this week. Existing users will have to download their accounts again after upgrading to the new version. There is a problem with the automatic upgrade feature, so Google has asked that you refer to special instructions in its blog post. As for the new features, Emel Mutlu explains version 7.0 includes first page bid estimates, which approximates the maximum cost-per-click bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of Google search results when the search query matches your …

Marketers can create SEO benefits by reaching out to members of social media sites who use their products. Any content full of keywords and inbound links that you create on social media sites can raise your profile with the search engines. Some examples in the post come from John Fischer, proprietor of Sticker Giant, a site that has gained top organic placement for terms like "stickers" and "custom stickers." For example, Fischer blogs about his customers and their passions. He uses his blog to highlight interesting customers and the stickers they've created, rather than directly promoting his company.

Claim your local listings and add location terms to your title page, suggests Mary Bowling with her guide to using local search profitably. Bowling says you can start by laying claim to your local listings in Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and MSN Live Local. "This will help your customers find you and get correct information about you," she writes. "Almost as important, it will prevent unethical competitors from hacking or hijacking your business listings on these important Web sites."

Ann Smarty provides a list of 10 SEO bookmarklets that you can use to analyze page links and images. She also provides links to the first two posts from this series: Google Bookmarklets, and Bookmarklets for On-Page SEO Diagnostics and Domain Stats Analysis. Smarty breaks down the post into two sections: analyze page links, and analyze page images. Some of the links in the post include full URLs as a link test, page links, linked pages, check images, zap images, and more.