Aegis is the latest holding company to make a major search play in Germany, buying SEO firm rmsarcar.com. The company, which focuses on the travel, retail, dating, finance and insurance verticals, currently handles search for companies like TUI AG and Skyeurope. Rmsarcar.com will be bundled with Isobar's iProspect after a staff training period, and rebranded iProspect Germany. The move--which comes roughly a month after independent search agency iCrossing acquired a German firm--expands Isobar's search marketing network to nearly 40 countries, with some 600 employees.

"A blog can be a valuable tool in helping smaller, newer players improve their rank and generate search traffic," says Tom Pick. It's a statement that has been echoed by many a search pro--but Pick offers anecdotal evidence to back it up. In a test for a small business client, Pick found that the company Web site and the blog garnered different rankings for various phrases--with the blog supplementing the core site in key areas, and vice versa. For example, the blog outranked the site for specific keywords (even attaining the number one and two spots on some …

The niches that have evolved around search, from tech-focused bid management, to social media optimization and reputation management, to link building services, warrant different price models, according to Brian Turner, including pay-per-performance. And while a "one-stop shop" may offer each of these options--they'll likely be best at a select few. "One area of failing common to SEO companies is trying to offer specialist services they do not have a real competence in," Turner says. "A common experience with this is link development work." He argues that there are a number of branded search firms that are selling link …

Peter Hamilton lists some guidelines for creating and promoting online video--and makes the case for why clips may be the best link bait ever. But we're not talking about your standard UGC, or even semi-professional company interview. Hamilton says that the quality of the video counts -- from niche-specific how-to videos, to footage of the annual charity softball game. "The quality of content will directly impact the rest of the campaign, just as the quality of written content attracts links," he says. Factors like image resolution and audio clarity are non-negotiables for video link bait--because if …

Industry consensus is that Google has the most traffic--so some search marketers think that devoting the bulk of their PPC time and budget to AdWords/AdSense (or a combination of the two) is the best way to achieve their clients' goals. But as David Rodnitsky says, a significant part of any campaign's success lies with choosing the right engine(s)--based on criteria like traffic quality, quantity, ROI and audience. "Ultimately, you need to know how to ask the right questions about a search engine, allocate your time appropriately, and be willing to run a lot of quick and dirty tests …

The WOMM-U (Word of Mouth Marketing University) conference from WOMMA was in full swing last Thursday and Friday, and Li Evans recaps a case study from Houlihan's (your other favorite neighborhood restaurant) that proves that social media and word of mouth marketing cost more in time and energy than they do in dollars. Working with a small budget, Jen Gulvik, Houlihan's vice president of marketing and creative director, developed a site-based social media strategy, starting with a questionnaire to find out who the Houlihan's brand ambassadors were, what they liked about the brand and what kinds of campaigns …

While the European search market hasn't quite caught up to the U.S. in terms of spending, recent reports show that the practice of search is gaining traction in the U.K. and Ireland, among other countries. For example, a study presented at the Search Marketing World 2008 conference in Dublin found that 83% of Irish Internet users said they search every day, and 52% said they searched several times daily. Their engines of choice? Google took the top spot, used by some 96% of searchers, with Microsoft and MSN following up with 24% and 10%, respectively. According …

Powerset has come out of stealth mode, going live with a public beta version of its semantic search engine. Charles Knight wraps up the coverage that the highly lauded "Google-killer" accumulated in the year leading up to its release, including announcements about its $10 million initial round of financing, blog posts about how the engine was going to work, and a rant from Danny Sullivan about why semantic search (and therefore Powerset) didn't really pose a threat to core search. Still, the buzz around Powerset has been palpable, and Knight explains why. "This release is the …

T.V. Raman delivers a five-spot of design tips to ensure that your site is accessible to the widest number of users--and engine crawlers. Raman side-steps generalities like "don't use Flash" for slightly more advanced suggestions. For example, some Webmasters choose to use CSS sprites (files that contain all the images that will show up on a Web page and then display them accordingly to decrease page load times). Raman shows that you can still create alt tags with these sprites--particularly if your images are functioning as links--so that users and engines that have disabled CSS can still access …