It never hurts to review the basics. Dan Patterson gives SEO experts and newcomer tips about link building and other fundamentals to ensure sites are set up for search engines bots to crawl. For starters, Patterson breaks down the SEO strategy into three key points: Architecture, Content, and Links. While the tips don't cover all the basics, Patterson does go into detail on each, providing a solid foundation to build on. He suggests spending some time reviewing your site to ensure you cover the basis before launching into PageRank Sculpting and other advanced techniques.

On vacation in the Russian River, Jill Whalen attempts to tie the topic of organic SEO to experiences during her trip to Sonoma County, Calif. She gives us three things learned from her vacation that "kinda sorta" relates to business and SEO. Providing an explanation for each, Whalen lays out the three top lessons. No. 1: For those planning a vacation, don't over-schedule the workload and remember real-life stuff will often get in the way of best-made plans. No. 2: Customer service is the most important thing you can offer as a business, online or off. No. 3: …

In another episode of Whiteboard Friday, Matt Cutts talks about nofollows. He explains what SEO experts should do when sites have many nofollows. "If it's within your own site, and on pages that you trust, it's good to let that PageRank flow," he says. "The best time to use nofollows is when you have links to external sites you can't vouch for or don't really trust." Cutts says if you're doing paid links, use nofollows to make sure they don't flow PageRank. On your own site, Cutts recommends not having nofollow tags to allow Google bots to crawl …

Allowing deep links to any page, following extensive tracking options, and sizing images properly in your data feed will help to increase sales volumes. Rae Hoffman serves up guidance to merchants with an affiliate program, or an affiliate network. Among other advice Hoffman offers up: Consider putting together a specific affiliate bonus incentive or contest for top producers that makes sense for them. It will motivate your top producers to aim higher and increase sales by making the bonus real and attainable.

Google has been testing a new layout of its search results page, wherein paid search ads are shifted left, hugging up against the organic search results, according to Zack MacLean. Some say it's been happening for the past few weeks. MacLean writes that a comparison of click-through rates from Aug. 11 through Aug. 13 to the total click-through rates from the past 10 Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays shows that CTRs increased. In fact, CTRs increased 10.3% last week, compared with the past 10 weeks. There was no material change in conversion rate.

Amber steps through five tips to manage compliance in PPC accounts to make approval processes run smoother. She starts by suggesting clients tell you in advance about words they like and dislike, so you don't use the wrong ones, and ends with some advice on making ad text changes in an Excel spreadsheet rather than in AdWords editor. Although Amber offers insights on a handful of tips, the most important is to have patience, she writes. Think about ads thoroughly. Don't write PPC ads too quickly. And, for gosh sake, make sure they are proofread and authorized before …

David Mihm takes a closer look at SEO, location and data to discuss how each influence local search rankings. He brings up an interesting point about a physical location for a retail store or office might influence search engine optimization of that business. When making a decision to lease or buy space in a physical location, businesses might want to consider how the address in the city or the town ranks online, Mihm writes. Will the location optimize well search engine rankings? Is it a town or city that people often search on? Mihm also looks at clean …

Check site maps, contextual linking and update content often. Marketers and SEO professionals have heard it before. But if you're new to the optimization game, Cassiano Travareli wants to remind you, in case you forgot, these processes are important to get your pages picked up and indexed by search engines. New sites, as well as those with new page content, often wait to get indexed because of SEO errors. Site owners need to understand the errors to get sites indexed faster.

Determining words to optimize on Web sites that allow potential buyers to find your products and services could prove difficult. Think of search engines as the "middle man," connecting the searcher with the content, Bill Slawski writes. These engines often make suggestions based on words searchers type into a search box because they know more about how search engines find the content. Slawski points to a recent Yahoo patent application that looks at several strategies used to refine and suggest queries. The different strategies Yahoo uses are created through "query rewrite providers, or programs that rewrite queries to …

Caffeine will "profoundly" influence the SEO industry and may impact rankings or traffic. Those words from Kevin Lee set the foundation to hypothesize how Google's Caffeine search engine could significantly "shake things up" and impact PPC search strategies based on the Mountain View, Calif., company's announcement. Google's potential major change to its organic search results algorithm could affect index size, index speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and personalization, Lee writes. For example, content is only new for a short period of time. He reminds marketers that as the industry moves into real-time search, it will become important that search engines index …