Taking a break from the grind of day-to-day campaign management gave the Slightly Shady SEO some much-needed perspective on the art of search marketing. For example, CTR may not always be the best performance metric to track. "I previously didn't track things down to the level of ad copy (at least not for all my campaigns)," he says. "I began doing that and discovered that out of my 2 active ads on one campaign, one had a CTR that was about 0.2% lower than the best one, but had nearly double the conversions on many less clicks." …

Debra Mastaler serves up two link building scenarios for a fictional "Smart Car" company, to illustrate the power of originality and incentives in the link acquisition process. In the first example, Smart Cars Inc. offers to pay a blogger or other Web site $20 for link placement, suggests a reciprocal link scheme, and also tries paying for a product review. In the second, the company also ends up paying for a link, but labels it clearly and also lists the linker as a promotional partner within their sales collateral and on their Web site. Mastaler dubs that "promotional …

On May 5, Google changed its bidding policy on company names and other trademarked keywords in the U.K., allowing advertisers and affiliates to bid on their competitor's terms. And in the four weeks since the change, spending on branded terms jumped 22%, likely buoyed by both competitor bids and trademark owners upping the ante themselves. "When Google announced the changes, many assumed the amount of Internet search traffic that brand owners receive from searches for their own trademarked brand terms would decrease because competitors and affiliates could now bid on these terms," Marcus Austin. But according …

In three hours, you can assess the major strengths and weaknesses of your Internet marketing strategy using nothing more than an analytics program. Ian Lurie explains how it's done--noting that it's about finding out what your visitors are after, where they're going to on your site to find it, and making it easier for them to get there. Use the first 15 minutes to find out your top 10 organic search traffic drivers with a program like Google Analytics. Take the next 45 to find out which pages those searchers see when they enter those keywords on Google, …

Gordon Choi serves up the most common tactics a Webmaster can use to ensure that his or her site ranks well for searchers in a chosen country. First, choose a country-specific domain and hosting service. If you want to reach Internet users in China, for example, a .cn domain is crucial, and if you want to ensure your site gets indexed for readers in the U.K., then choose a hosting company that will give you a U.K.-based IP address. Try embedding your company's address in your site's footer, and if you're targeting a country where English is not …

Mike Blumenthal doesn't work for the Google Maps team -- he just blogs about local search and Google Maps. But that hasn't stopped small business owners from contacting him regarding their incorrect or missing Google Maps listings and map categories flooded with spam. And he's had enough. "It is time for Google to step up to the bar and provide typical business people with an obvious means to report these problems and a clear cut procedure for dealing with it," Blumenthal says. "The time for me to be the industry watchdog has passed and Google needs to accept …

How does the quality of traffic that's generated from social media sites differ from "core" search traffic? James Duthie sought to find out and ran tests on two blogs, one that drew most of its traffic from search engines, and another that scored most of its visitors from social media sites. Duthie used four metrics to determine traffic quality: returning visitors, average page views, time on site and bounce rate, and SEO traffic clearly trumped SMO traffic in all but the bounce rate category. "Should social media initiatives be abandoned pronto? Obviously not," Duthie says. …

Google has added search volume data to the AdWords Keyword tool, giving marketers another window into the overall relevance and popularity of potential campaign keywords. The data can be used to help forecast overall budget costs, as it will provide some idea of how many clicks an ad will generate. "Now, when you use the Keyword Tool to search for relevant keywords to include in your keyword list, you'll be able to see the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network," wrote Trevor Claiborne. "These approximate numbers are …

Ask has inked a paid search and display distribution deal with photo sharing and widget provider Photobucket. Photobucket will embed an Ask search box on its homepage, and the search engine will run sponsored text and display ads alongside the results. Financial terms of the multi-year deal were not disclosed, though the deal is reminiscent of Google's contextual ad deal with MySpace. Both Photobucket and MySpace are divisions of News Corp.