It's an ongoing dilemma: SEO experts and usability professionals don't understand the others' role. Shari Thurow believes both are equally important and must work in tandem. People who work to make the Web site experience better sometimes remove important keywords from a page thinking it benefits site visitors. Often removing those keywords make it more difficult users to find the information they need. Web page content should, in part, focus on keywords, Thurow writes. If they don't, searchers can abandon the Web page. She provides tips on the type of information usability and SEO experts need to share …

ToysRUs spent $5.1 million on the domain name Toys.com, but Google has reportedly delisted the URL in its search engine, according to Andrew Allemann. The value of Toys 'R' Us' multimillion dollar purchase has now been "relegated to type-in traffic and potentially some of the inbound links to Toys.com," he writes. In a post earlier this month, Allemann explains ToysRUs.com ranks No. 1 for the term. Toys.com ranks No. 4. He warned Toys 'R' Us could lose Toys.com's ranking for the term "toys" by forwarding the domain to the company's Web site, ToysRUs.com. "It also appears the toy …

Ryan Caldwell runs through a list of 10 quality indicators for a Web site, from listing a physical address on the Web site, to optimizing internal linking. In fact, Caldwell believes you can never have enough quality indicators. He took a philosophical approach to reach this conclusion. It started with a tweet to Twitter followers, and ended in a rant philosophizing about when gains of sand stacked in a pile become a heap. The point isn't so much about how many grains of sand make a pile as, what does it take to build an excellent SEO strategy.

Auction site eBay gave merchants a $20 coupon to spend on its pay-per-click (PPC) ad network. The eBay AdCommerce program allows eBay sellers to promote listings through ads displayed in the sponsored results section of search results. Sellers must redeem coupons by March 31. They can use them for campaigns that run in April, according to Ina Steiner. While eBay's gift might appear generous, most likely sellers won't be using it, writes Steiner. The keyword-targeting tool, which works like Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, don't do much for eBay seller, Steiner writes. She provides insight into why …

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is out of touch with reality. That's according to Ray "Catfish" Comstock, who bashes Ballmer for thinking his company has brought innovations to the world of search. After all, Google first pushed Universal Search, developed Webmaster Tools to better understand how search engines index sites, and began to use quality scores to influence PPC results, he writes. Comstock runs down a list of Google's successes and Microsoft's mistakes. He also makes several recommendations, but doesn't suggest ways to correct what he calls the years of non-innovation that has the company trailing its biggest rival in …

Winning the search marketing war by having your position for a keyword rank higher than your competitors might not keep you as profitable as you might think. "Google doesn't publicly disclose how active its millions of advertisers are and how competitive they are with each other," writes Kevin Lee. "One thing's clear: there's only room for 10 to 15 paid listings in a SERP." Lee analyzes the concept of the "Winner's Curse," in which the winner overpays. Don't mistake the value of the click, Lee writes. He suggests researching a variety of values to determine the keyword's worth, …

The search engine Stumpedia has launched an Internet advertising model it calls "pay per chat." The feature allows consumers to post short text messages such as questions that are sent to advertisers who can respond to the requests, according to David Wallace. The benefit? "Consumers get personalized responses in the form of price quotes and answers from advertisers that compete for their business within seconds, not hours or days. Advertisers get targeted online sales leads from real people with real consumer needs and pay only for the leads they respond to," writes Wallace. He steps through the …

Lisa Barone hits on an interesting concept: You can find more than links in social media. You can find really great content. And one of the best places to find free content is on Flickr, which provides photos (those that are Creative Commons-licensed) for commercial use. For example, strategists at TheBinocularSite.com, looking to reach out to communities that use binoculars, launched a list of bird-watching spots, using Flickr photos of those locations. Bonus promotional benefit: the photographers became cheerleaders for TheBinocularSite.com, linking back to it on their sites and talking up the piece they helped to illustrate. Barone …

Wow, it's an overwhelming thought. With 120 million blogs across the Internet, how do people find your content? Without a good search engine optimization strategy, your expert advice could get lost in the crowd. Don't let the staggering statistic fluster you. Aune offers up advice on 20 of the best SEO plugins to help choose the right tags, tell search robots what to work on, and optimize your post titles. Along with the list, Aune provides a description of each plugin. For instance, Meta Robots WordPress plugin offers a solution to add robot metadata to any page you …

The Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization's (SEMPO's) "The State of Search Engine Marketing 2008" report shows "overwhelming interest" in behavioral targeting techniques, with three-quarters of advertisers claiming they would bid more for clicks targeted to consumers, according to John Gaffney. "As reported last week, North American spending on SEM for 2008 will total over $13.4 billion. Paid placement took 88 percent of that spending, or $11.9 billion," Gaffney writes. Other notable trends: SEM's "poaching budget" from other marketing channels; the widening gap between Google and other search engines.