In a long post, Carrie Hill challenges search marketers to take an old standby strategy and "throw it out the window." She provides a new spin, on targeting landing pages with demographic profiles. She reminds us that keyword research is the backbone of search campaigns, whether building a framework for a Web site, looking for new page ideas, or finding phrases that pages can rank. In a checklist, she describes everything you should look at when segmenting and targeting your audience.

Aaron Wall has been watching the interaction between Google and big publishing companies. It's been entertaining, he writes, largely because the media companies claim search is an either/or game they must win. Wall gets into the topic of niche Web sites to make his point. He provides an opinion on why sharing free content provides social proof of value, and how supporting a pay wall and site with general purpose information will fail. To support his hypotheses, Wall even pulls in quotes from Eric Schmidt.

Ron Jones takes a deeper dive into usability concepts and introduces new thoughts on behavioral design and how Web accessibility factors in. Among the benefits of these concepts: Search engine crawlers can easily access sites that have been enhanced with site accessibility. "Adding descriptive alt text to important images is an SEO best practice," he writes.

If you have interest in sprucing up your Twitter avatar for the holiday season, perhaps look in on David Harry at HuoMah. He started decorating avatars last year in the spirit of the season. Now some "peep" has encourage him to bring back the idea, which he's now calling a full-fledged tradition. But instead of posting the photoshopped images on Search Engine Land's Sphinn, he's offering them up on Twitter. Although he's busy doing SEO stuff, he welcomes the chance to spread a little goodness and cheer to brighten up the online world.

The sentiment that SEO isn't dead, it's evolving, came from a panel discussion at a Search Engine Strategies conference this week in Chicago, explains Chris Boggs. The evolution of search engines will define the importance of future organic search metrics, according to Boggs. He goes on to summarize the discussion and serve up advice for companies that want to increase the chance of appearing within the personalized results for a target audience.

The Search Engine Roundtable SEO forum points to Microsoft's search engine Bing as being the first to post a logo or theme. Check this out by clicking on over to Bing's homepage, which celebrates the beginning of Chanukah. There you will find answers to such questions as why a menorah has nine candles, and where the final torch lights the first giant menorah candle in Israel's torch relay.

Kevin Lee explains that all too often PPC search advertising campaigns are neglected as marketers chase the "hot new forms of online marketing or PPC enhancement." He explains the top 11 mistakes marketers make in basic search campaigns. Failure to track the correct things, or at the correct level, ranks No. 1. Others include not properly testing the content network, and poor foundational keyword research and expansion strategies.

Yoelle Maarek joined earlier this year as Yahoo's senior director of Yahoo Research. She stepped into the role from a stint as Google's director of Google Haifa Engineering Center, which she opened in July 2006. Maarek talks about new developments and challenges in search.

Rea Hoffman points to the problem of real-time spam that Google unleashed when it decided to launch the real-time Web. Testing the hypothesis, a quick search for Viagra showed the real-time results at the very top of the SERP, right under the news results. So, Hoffman tweeted in Twitter about Viagra and dropped a link to Sugarrae.com Sugarrae.com. Sure enough, her tweet and clickable link went right at the top of the Google SERP. Aside from real-time spam, Hoffman details other real-time dangers.

Advertisers could have another music destination to explore. Google on Wednesday launched Vevo, a video site devoted exclusively to music and powered by YouTube. The site hopes to "redefine the way people watch and engage with music online, as well as change the way the digital and music industries do business with each other," writes Chris Maxcy. Top artists cataloged on the site are signed with Universal Music Group, Sony Music and EMI. Advertisers will have an option to take advantage of the library of premium music content on both YouTube and VEVO.com.