Don't build your search engine marketing strategy solely on blog posts filled with advice, suggests Chris Boggs. "A person without any SEM experience shouldn't trust any single online authority as guidance," he writes, warning that misinformation, outdated guidance, and the unconfirmed reliability of SEO tools could get you into hot water. Many companies are looking for the magic bullet to reduce expenditures and cut costs. But similar to buying stocks and investing hard-earned savings in your future, Boggs writes that it's important to research guidance from professionals, too. He makes suggestions on blog posts to read and types …

Seems like a no-brainer: You need to understand human behavior to drive marketing decisions. But Aaron Kahlow believes many marketers don't understand that you need to listen to hear what the customer wants. Listening doesn't always mean hearing what clients say. They may not only tell you in words, but also in actions. You Web site is your core but you can tie in offline advertising. Your social media efforts are the differentiator. And, email and analytics go beyond the click-through and open rates. Expanding on these points, Kahlow provides advice on the best way to focus consumer …

Know what competitors do to optimize sites, and you if don't feel comfortable doing it yourself, find a polished SEOer and trust the experts. Test at the end of the process. Admit you make mistakes and don't sweep the problem under the rug. Khalid Saleh believes these are some of the nine steps you must take to improve conversion rates. One of the more out-of-the-box suggestions Saleh provides: "Take your laptop with you to lunch, find someone sitting alone and offer to buy them lunch if they would be willing to show you how they order an item …

Alex Cristache gives us five SEO mistakes to avoid. They range from ignoring basic search engine guidelines to ignoring title tags to believing that SEO is a one-time process, which is a little like a football player dropping the ball on the way to the goal line. Interesting that when Cristache serves up tips on basic search engine guidelines he provides links to "two of the most important search engines, Google and Yahoo." Details he offers should serve for a basic refresher course on how to improve traffic and SEO rankings on your site.

Is your SEO strategy based on outdated techniques? A few SEO industry influencers have Michael Martinez taking to the keyboard to address concerns about the future of SEO. If you are worried about the future of SEO because keyword optimization has become more difficult, he suggests taking the strategy to the next level and tells you how. Martinez makes a case for why he believes SEO will remain an important marketing strategy. He provides a few examples by tapping into a few trends like personalized search, universal search, and social media. "As long as there is search, there …

If you're going to use the term, you might as well get it correct. So, let's get one thing straight, SEM isn't pay-per-click (PPC), insists Marty Weintraub, who calls himself a "purist." We've come a long way in the world of SEM/SEO if experts like Weintraub need to use the phrase "in the old days when search engine marketing was nascent," to explain that SEM meant "all things search engine" and later evolved to imply "all things Internet marketing." But Weintraub doesn't agree with the latter definition. So, he puts his foot down, defines SEM and SEO, …

David Finklehorn tells us about the viruses attached to videos on Google Video. Trend Micro sent a warning to users of Google Video that up to 400,000 search queries have been planted with content that leads to malware virus sites. "Hackers are deliberately targeting the big names in the online industry and trading on Google's solid reputation as a reliable search engine which is virus-free," writes Finklehorn.

Dan Tynan can't see anything wrong with running a few text ads on your blog and pocketing the change. Just be careful with whom you do business, or you could find yourself "lumped in with all the text link spammers on Google's blacklist," he writes. Can you say goodbye to a career in Web 2.0 and hello to a day job at Wal-Mart? While researching a company called Linkstar for a blog post last week, Tynan came across others that offer to place text ads for its clients on small, low-traffic Web sites. They are nothing more than …

A new free Google tool looks at your Web site content and matches it against Google search queries entered by Google users to provide a list of relevant and actively searched keywords, according to Amanda Kelly. The Search-based Keyword Tool provides and filters a list to remove keywords you already use. Kelly describes several of the tool's features and steps through the process to use each. Some of those include filters to make it easier to find keywords for the parts of your Web site providing the greatest return on investment. The filters will help you look for …

Broad keywords drive traffic to the Web site, but specific keywords more often lead to sales. That recommendation, one in a long list, comes from Yahoo Smart Start Team in a post about building a foundation with strong keywords. If you want to increase conversion numbers, you might want to bid on more specific keywords that contain the brands you sell and even specific model numbers, according to the team. The post walks you through how customers make the decisions to spend money on specific items, from research to shopping to purchase, and helps you determine the best keywords …