Google introduced interactive links designed to allow consumers to get more information on a local business (like directions or a street view) when they click on an organic search listing or sponsored result on Google Maps. Previously, the click only took users to the business's Web site. In a few weeks, Google Maps also will introduce an interactive report for local business ads, available through your account's Report Center. Amanda Kelly tells us the report can help you accurately assess returns on investments with local business ads by detailing the number of users who opened your info window and …

Keyword research, pay-per-click strategy, and Web analytics and analysis: There are many parts of an SEM strategy to consider when planning a paid search campaign. This post lists options to think about and ways to execute them. . Greg Meyers provides a list of questions you need to ask yourself before getting started. Some of them include: When creating the PPC plan, should search marketers decide to leave additional money in the budget to test various audiences, or should they stick with the obvious and play it safe? Or, should they remain flexible and switch the agreed-on timeline to …

Make sure prospective clients know what it means to optimize for head queries, the most popular terms, as well as long tail queries, those less popular that still collectively drive lots of traffic, suggests Mark Jackson, who believes SEOers will likely repeatedly have this discussion with clients. . Jackson believes the head of search can improve traffic. For retailers, the tail of search might work best because it targets people searching for a specific product and product model number. For companies focused on "ranking for that one major keyword, having a deep Web site full of great content is …

Companies that provide services to many cities and states need more than one Web site and yellow page listing. They rank well in local search engine queries where their office is physically located, but not in the immediate surrounding area. . Chris Smith offers SEO tips on how to get your business to appear in search engine listings for all cities within a metropolitan area. Some are Google approved, while others are not. He provides step-by-step instructions on us how to rank within multiple city listings in Google Maps, basic Web search results and Web search results within Google …

Danny Dover explains interactive elements each major search engine supports and provides instructions on how to use them. The information aims to help SEO beginners, making the terms and procedures easy to understand. "It is a relatively recent occurrence that search engines have provided ways for webmasters to interact directly with crawlers," Dover writes. "While this relationship is still not optimal, the search engines have made great strides toward opening their proprietary indices. This has been very helpful for webmasters who now rely so much on search driven traffic."

Andrew Goodman tells us there's no "con" position in the "paid search bid management" debate. "Either you sing the praises of automated bid management, or you'll be asked to sit in a dark corner (or cave) and contemplate what possessed you to enter the digital marketing arena," he writes. "Unfortunately, there are few real debates on the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to bid management automation." In his post, Goodman opens the dialogue, highlighting fundamental assumptions supporting today's bid management tools. And before presenting a conclusion, he debates attributions, variability and unpredictability of order size, purposes of …

Why did your last social media marketing plan fail miserably? Possible reasons, suggested by Stuntdubl SEO: your content sucked, you forgot about deploying a search strategy, or you executed the project poorly. Stuntdubl SEO provides clear-cut solutions for each mistake:. Be yourself, succinct, and entertaining. Offer solutions. Brush up on your online SEO and marketing skills. The blog also lists a ton of resources for further help.

Steve Seeley believes it is important to know how search engines work and to "split up" your site into segments such as header, navigation, body, footer, advertisements. Search engines will use page segmentation not only as a better way to "break down content on a Web site, but help fight spam," Seeley writes. Detailing the four page segmentations types--Fixed Length Page Segmentation (FixedPS), Fixed Length Page Segmentation (FixedPS), Vision Based Page Segmentation (VIPS), and Combine Page Segmentation (CombPS)--he provides insight into when and why you might want to use each.

Smaller ad groups and ad copy, matching options for each ad group, and SEO and quality scores are some topics Ron Jones covers in this post. He discusses methods for gaining a better quality score, ways to achieve relevance and continuity, and tips to test content posted on the site. For instance, he suggests A/B or multivariate testing, which lets you test multiple sections of your page at the same time, so you can move things around to see the results.

If you're looking for a job in SEO, now's the time to make the move. Jeff Quipp believes the "search industry is growing faster then the economy is shrinking." He puts the call out to colleges and universities to develop a course curriculum that helps people train for a good job in search engine optimization. It's a field, he argues, where kids can find a job immediately after graduation. Quipp runs through a list of available jobs at search companies, along with the skills needed, and ways to retrain for the positions. Even if you have zero experience …