Count them down. No. 1: Avoid the use of Flash, DHTML and internal JavaScript. No. 2: No duplicate or irrelevant content. No. 3: Nix the keyword stuffing and hidden text. No. 4: Eliminate poor Meta data. No. 5: Always use alt, link, and header, such as H1, H2, tags. Rob Fleming created and further details this list because as a SEO professional the majority of his time is spent correcting errors made by customers. He believes teaching existing and potential clients a few tricks will make his job a whole lot easier.

Adam Goldberg details the nuances of attribution management, getting beyond the scenario where marketers claim that "branded keywords were the only ones converting and their remaining keywords were just driving traffic." It's a several step process, but begins with technology that allows marketers to see the collection of ads or purchase path that leads to a conversion, Goldberg writes. Implement a simple model that attributes profit and revenue evenly across the ads in a purchase path. It will show you have been giving too much credit to brand terms.

Kevin Lee make a prediction: "trademark holders will increasingly mandate search engine bidding rules within their distribution contracts in response to trademark policy changes being made by the search engines." He evaluates Google's decision to change trademark policies and looks at related PPC ad issues from an advertiser/marketer perspective, with an attempt to see search engine, consumer, and regulatory perspectives, too. The biggest change in Google's policy is that it allows companies selling a trademarked product or service to bid on that trademark and include the trademark in the ad, according to Lee.

Gyutae Park gives SEO professionals advice on how to avoid getting tagged as an "SEO criminal." He warns that if you label yourself as an SEO professional who engages in aggressive link building tactics, Google will treat you harshly and judge you by a different standard. Park details seven red flags to avoid. They include unnatural link profiles, using nofollow link attributes to sculpt PageRank, relying on SEO links to get a spammy site to the top of the rankings, and buying or selling paid links.

What can billboards teach you about your Web site? Te-ge Bramhall writes you only get seconds to see the message as the car whizzes by, especially traveling at 60 miles per hour or faster. Similarly on a Web site, you only have seconds to catch the site visitor's attention before they click on to another page. "If you have 2 seconds to make a good impression how do you do it?" she asks. Make it memorable, she writes, using an example of the billboard ad from Robbins Diamonds that pictures a woman flipping you off with the …

Is it time to build an SEO business plan or update an old one? If you're ready to jump into making SEO a full-time occupation, Peter Da Vanzo has a few business models to choose from. He weighs the pros and cons of each. For example, the client service model includes SEO agencies and independent consultants. Da Vanzo explains that this model has advantages for people well versed in SEO, but new to business. The SEO publisher model is more focused on affiliate, AdSense and other content. In this model, the cost of entry is low, but competition is …

Mary Bowling Local businesses want to pay close attention to the design of the company's Web site to guarantee Web designers give lots of thought to SEO. Mary Bowling writes that people searching for information on local businesses, as well as search engines that crawls your site, want to know the same things about your business: Where is it? What goods and services are offered? Bowling suggests paying more attention to the home page and the meta descriptions. Make it clear to people who land on your Web site where you are and what you do. Meta …

Panelists at the Revenue Bootcamp Conference discussed the best ways to drive traffic to your site. Charlene Li, founder of The Altimeter Group, moderated panelists SimplyHired's Dion Lim, Quick Sprout's Neil Patel, and MySearchGuru's Anita Cohen-Williams. In the video clip, panelists agreed SEO has changed. Some believe organic SEO, rather than paid search, provides the most benefit to companies looking to be found on search engines. SEO isn't dead, one panelist said, it's just changed and gone back to basics, similar to what the industry experienced five years ago. It's all about being found in search engines -- …

Add a call-to-action button, minimize navigation, put the important information above the fold, and make copy on the site easy to scan and read. These helpful hints are just a few of the 10 from Amber that aim to help optimize PPC landing pages and increase conversions. And those needing a nudge to make changes should consider this. Amber writes the changes could increase conversion rates by .5%.

Bill Slawski points to a recent patent application published by Microsoft that discusses several approaches on how they might serve up suggested query keywords. While this is a Microsoft patent, the chances are good that other search engines are using a similar method. The patent application lists a couple of issues Microsoft is trying to solve, along with three algorithms it might use to identify query suggestions, Slawski writes. The patent filing also lists different classifications of query suggestions, such as related searches, most searched, refine by searches, and also try searches.