Understanding your competition's SEO, link building, and social media marketing campaigns can help to identify potential new threats, according to Loren Baker. After identifying the competitors' sites, start looking into on-site factors that help them rank in the search engines. Baker provides a checklist to determine what you're doing right and wrong.. Some of those points on the list include tracking URL site structures; determining the directory files and URL structures of page listings; and running a check on broken links, files and nonexistent pages.

Josh Weller sets up nine SEM problems, each one with a solution, to step marketers through a variety of topics, from building brands, to building credibility. Make consumers aware of the company's products and services through a variety of SEM techniques, he writes. Channels other than paid search can make consumers aware of products and services before jumping into paying big bucks for keywords that no one searches on. Although organizations are investing in SEM, most are unhappy with performance, according to Weller. In these lean advertising times, it's best for marketers to examine ways that …

Rand Fishkin looks at three content classifications -- editorial, machine-built, and user-generated -- defining "unique content," for each, why it's important for Web sites, and how to generate it. Search engines can identify weak content by analyzing the structure of a Web page. Finding something unique on a Web site can boost rankings in the SERPs. Some sites have an unfair advantage. For example, if a small news Web site posts an interesting article and CNN publishes it, the larger Web site will get the credit. The search engines are working on becoming more fare about …

In theory, catalogers know certain regions of the country and specific ZIP codes respond to catalog offers at a greater rate than average. Is there similar behavior in paid search? That's what a Rimm-Kaufman Group study attempted to find out. Using Digital Element data, the company tied 3 million PPC clicks to their ZIP codes for one data set, and nearly 2 million click-throughs for the other, George Michie explains. He steps through the process of linking the census data with information on location, average household income, population, land area, average age, average home value, number of business …

Some of the common SEO problems Chris Boggs details include navigation choices and duplicate content that can dilute the strength of inbound links, he writes. Try to add compelling and unique content to replace boilerplate product or brand descriptions that can lure people to pages deeper in the site. Boggs reviews a handful of trends on e-commerce platforms and lists the findings. The majority of the sites are major brands, so consider the sample enterprise-level commerce platforms, using IBM WebSphere Commerce, Microsoft, ATG, among others.

Dave Harry defines how a personalization layer would work for phrase-based IR. He suggests the concept relies on a variety of signals for personalizing and finding relationships in phrases before changing the search results -- not by seed sets, but documents where the user has expressed a prior interest. "Of course, you may be asking 'Great, Davey baby... but how should I use this?' No worries, there are many ways," he writes. When creating content or crafting link building programs, forget about keyword stuffing and density, which is "crap anyway," he writes Harry suggests collecting a list …

Kevin Lee's bold prediction that many "successful, profitable online business[es' or offline business[es] that get leads from online sources" will spend "25% more on paid search within the next year" might raise a few eyebrows, but Lee explains his thought process. The fact that search engines continue to adjust SERPs, that there's continual improvements on ad and campaign structures, economic recovery, and changes in consumer search behavior, are a handful of reasons some marketers will spend more, Lee writes.

Matt Cutts began biking to work in July. Being an engineer, he likes to time himself and hopefully beat the previous day's time. He reviews an Android application called My Track, written by Googlers, that lets users plot their location through GPS and upload it to Google Maps. It shows the biker's total distance, speed, elevation, and more. Uploading the information to Google Maps through an application called My Maps allows you to plot your track and compare time spent moving, vs. time spent at stop lights waiting for the light to change from red to green, …

Think extreme sports. Well, how about extreme SEO? Roger Stellers delves into a variety of "extreme" optimization techniques aimed at attracting consumers to a company's Web site in their local market. He explains that the techniques aren't for everyone, but some of the techniques could come in handy for adventurous clients. Stellers details a case history of how he he used such tactics as creating 12 different geo-targeted landing pages, and creating an "informal keyword-rich business name change," for a particular client.

Google is being investigated by the "Italian competition authorities," according to Jack Marshall. He writes that the allegations suggest Google is abusing its dominant position "and strangling publishers' ad revenue." A complaint from the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers prompted the investigation. The organization alleges the search giant is not transparent enough in how it indexes and prioritizes newspapers' online content. Marshall reminds us that Google has a turbulent relationship with publishers, specially pointing to Google News. Content indexed by Google drives traffic to publisher sites, but publishers are "wary" of Google generating revenue from the articles …