For those marketing a small business locally, Charles Stankovitch provides a ton of useful information on ways potential and existing customers can find you online. He focuses on local SEO, breaking down the topics into several categories, from Google Maps to Yahoo Local to Bing to Yelp before defining and listing pros and cons for each. For example: Sometimes SEO professionals are stuck on link building and forget about sites that simply list business information, Stankovitch writes. "If I go out to my car, and tell my Garmen GPS (or Streets & Trips on my laptop) that I …

Yahoo Neighbors could be "huge" and "important" for local and small businesses because it's an opportunity to add a layer of conversation to any local search someone conducts on Yahoo, according to Matt McGee. He describes the forum-like message board available in every U.S. town as a "collision" between "local search and local conversation." McGee makes it clear the differences between Yahoo Neighbors and Yahoo Answers. He explains that marketers and SEO professionals at small businesses shouldn't waste time trying to squeeze any measureable results from Answers. But Yahoo Neighbors is a "no brainer," because it's built …

So, you want to learn more about a design SEO agency model but don't know where to start. Partnering seems like the best solution, explains Peter Da Vanzo, who has experience running this type of mode. SEO is an add-on feature for Web design agencies. Da Vanzo helps you build a "white-label search marketing services" plan that puts the Web design firm at ease.

Yahoo has published a patent application that explores, redirects and attempts to understand if the owners of an original URL are also the owners of the URL being targeted by the redirect, according to Bill Slawski. Redirects can help people searching on products and services find information on pages that have moved URLs, but Slawski suggests giving it careful consideration before doing the deed, especially if there are many links and references on the Web to the old URLs. Slawski provides an example of the patent filing and application. There are so many pages on the Web, …

Gerard Tollefsen delves into improving click-through rates (CTRs) in Google AdWords. He starts by stepping through the process of calculating CTRs. Divide the number of users who clicked on the ad by the number of impressions (or the number of times the ad appeared on the Web page,) he explains. Get started by reviewing the CTRs of all your campaigns and identify the low and high percentages relative to the rest of the campaign, Tollefsen writes. Knowing how to make optimization changes will come in handy, too. He also explains why it's important to breakout keywords into …

Don't ignore the demand curve of search queries and long-tail search phrases, which Rand Fishkin defines as the unique searches people do when looking for your specific products or content. While each of these terms may only have between one and 10 searches per month, collectively they could represent up to 75% of your search traffic. Fishkin says most companies are focused on one or two keywords. They don't think about the amount of traffic in the long tail and how easy it is to reach them. He believes the long tail market is untapped. He says the …

In the last 10 years, it appears that Google has turned from "doing no evil to being the bad guy," according to Kevin Lee. He examines a few "sources of discomfort," from trademark policy changes, to quality scores and conversion data. Lee goes as far to suggest that search advertising has begun to look a lot like a toll or tax. Supported by a variety of examples, he writes that while Google aims to become a one-stop advertising and media portal offering great opportunities for scores of advertisers, the "media concentration also has many advertisers and regulatory agencies …

Barry Schwartz has summarized changes to a new Yahoo Search ad report and Microsoft ad preview feature. He mentions that Microsoft has added an "Ad Preview" tool that does more than show you a preview of the ad. It also helps reduce "unnecessary impressions and accidental clicks."

There are numerous reasons Lisa Barone will resent you for not putting the correct content on your mobile Web page, but there's no excuse for not paying attention to the future, which means search campaigns on the phone. "Mobile users are looking for you, phone in hand," she writes. "Don't screw it up and make them resent you." Barone provides sound advice, from getting rid of everything that does not help people find your company fast, to dropping most of the video, images and heavy pages that slow load times. Give people the condensed version of the Web …

Dan Patterson runs down a list of SEO and Web developer plug-ins for Firefox. He list several aimed at SEOs, and others specific to Web development and provides a brief description on each. Among those for SEO: Firefox, Rank Checker, SearchStatus, and SEO Link Analysis. Web development plug-ins include: Firebug, HTML Validator, and Web Developer.