To get a high ranking in search engines, you have to continually post fresh and relevant content. Easier said than done, writes Loren Baker, who provides insight on how to generate your own content as well as contract out the daily task. Among Baker's suggestions: tap into co-workers "for blog posts or article ideas"; search craiglists for local experts to blog; find the writers in your company and get them cranking out posts. Baker also provides links to content generation services.

Do you have doubts that email will survive as a method to reach potential and existing customers? The rise of social media marketing on Twitter and Facebook has put that thought in marketers' heads, but MarketingSherpa Senior Analyst Sergio Balegno believes there are ways to make social media and email marketing work together. In an interview with Sean Donahue, Balegno gives perspective on how to integrate the two channels in marketing campaigns, as well as the hidden costs behind social media. Balegno, explains that "there's the perception that social media is a low-cost tactic." While capital investments …

Marketers may have experience with the AdWords auction model, but Austin Rachlin reminds us of the basics for the newbies or those who need a refresher. Unlike the "prize being sold for the highest bid" model, AdWords works a little differently: the winner pays the minimum, amount necessary to maintain a position on the page -- only enough for each click to beat the next highest bid. The post also explains ad ranks, and more.

For those SEO experts who have "have done everything to their PPC account and still can't get the results they need to meet their goals," Amber Speer outlines a 15-point checklist to follow. For example: "Check your settings for old and new campaigns to be sure you're geo-targeting, you're testing ads evenly, and to be sure you have your ads running at all times of the day." The detailed instructions on each item should help you get more from tighter budgets.

What does "semantic Web" mean -- and how it will affect marketers' SEO efforts? Aaron Strout and John Cass write that two technologies -- natural-language search and content enhancement -- promise to bring companies much closer to customers, as well as deliver consumers more relevant content, but there are nuances to the technologies that marketers should know. So, Strout and Cass try and boil down the term to a few basic concepts. They remind us that search engines don't understand what they read, but rather scour billions of documents for keywords and return results based on a set …

Mary Bowling 's suggestions include two tools for helping marketers quickly get products and services listed online, Universal Business Listing and GetListed. While Universal Business Listing helps to distribute your business information to search platforms and business directories, GetListed identifies if your company's Web site is listed in directories. If it's not, the tool will step you through the process of submitting a listing. Bowling also features Google Trends and Google Insights for Search. The latter provide instructions on overlaying search data on location data, according to Bowling. "For example, if you're a tennis instructor in the D.C. metro …

Punctuation matters. Barry Welford explains the dos and don't of character marks such as + or % in domain names, and punctuation marks in titles and headers of blog posts and Web pages. Search engine spiders are particular, but not all see eye-to-eye on punctuation. Welford writes, for example, that Twitter allows both capitalized and lowercase URLs to return the same page, whereas Google considers the same pages, http://twitter.com/google and http://twitter.com/Google, as different. He provides other examples, too.

Picking the correct keywords has become critical, especially in an economy where every dollar spent in campaigns count. Laura Centore writes that there are numerous ways marketers choose incorrect keywords. Some things to avoid include selecting keywords with little or no research to back up picks, or choosing keywords based on needs and opinions without considering what customers search for. The lack of research, external perspective and testing can also negatively impact the strategy. Leave out the internal buzz words, code names and marketing terms from SEO copy, Centore writes, and focus on words that consumers relate to.

ROI takes on a new meaning -- return on insight, "the fusion of search and social media" -- according to Carly. She attempts to work through a few facts to find the answer to two important questions: What do marketers miss by neglecting to use and calculate the insight social media can deliver, and how can ROInsight affect traditional ROInvestment? Carly uses a fictitious example, taking us through the budget phases of a marketing plan, and then asks the reader to determine what the marketer did wrong. The answer is all about neglecting the now-vital social arena.

Google launches a new Image Search results page for Android, iPhone and iPod touch in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. The tool lets people scan up to 20 images on one results page and get the details on a particular image. Leo Ting writes that the feature also supports "search-by-style" filters that allow you to restrict search results to faces, clip art, line drawing and photo contests.