Rae Hoffman tells us the importance of creating custom category hooks. The lengthy post is geared toward SEO professionals using Thesis 1.4, or a more recent version. Thesis works best for those planning to customize every category on the blog, but can get a little complicated, she writes. Hoffman provides the code along with the instruction to get started creating custom categories and tag pages. If you get lost, consider reading "Hooks for Dummies" before continuing to follow her instructions, so the code makes more sense.

David Harry provides an extensive list of factors affecting search rankings. He admits it took flowcharts to map out the post. Harry covers more than 10 categories that affect rankings, each listing several subcategories with pointers on how to apply the strategy. The lengthy list runs through link-related factors, header data, link age, domain history, Web-page hosting location, and much more.

Google has added the "suggestions" feature worldwide to Image Search, a week after it rolled the feature out globally to its other two search engines, Web Search and Google Video. It's a way to explore trends and generate ideas. I've noticed that the tool, while convenient, has a hiccup that Google needs to fix. People can query red and expect to see the suggestion "rose," but search results will also suggest "redtube," a pornography site.

Yahoo is working on changing search algorithms and updating indexing, according to Dan Rampton. The search engine during the next few days will roll out changes to the method used to crawl, index and rank sites. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land expects the updates to be "fairly significant." People can get updates and share their thoughts with other Yahoo Search users at the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.

Much ado has been made about search engines not indexing Twitter's tweets. But Gyutae Parks has managed to generate 35,967 extra hits to his Web site in just 14 days by using the microblogging site to direct traffic to his site. Parks began by writing an article that would appeal to Twitter users. The topic: "6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search - Google Beware." Writing the article was simple. The trick was getting people to pick up and share the content. Parks also provides a trending graph to demonstrate the lift of visitors to his …

In a very long post about the sometimes-tempestuous relationship between newsapers and search engines, Danny Sullivan makes a sarcastic suggestion for Rupert Murdoch, who has been worried lately about Google stealing "all our copyrights." One simple line of code could put that to rest, Sullivan notes. The code "User-agent: *, Disallow: /" is all it takes. "Done," Sullivan writes. "Do that, you're outta Google. All your pages will be removed, and you needn't worry about Google listing the Wall St. Journal at all. "Oh, but you won't do that," he continues. "You want the traffic, but you …

Testing ad copy means reviewing performance statistics, determining the benefits, and developing calls-to-actions that drive the best click-through and conversion rates. John writes that testing the text of an ad is one of those tedious tools/tasks that can quickly become a pay-per-click manager's friend. John provides a list of must-reads to get the basics in testing ad copy. Don't create the ads and walk away assuming everything will work as planned. "Nobody can instantly understand all of the nuances of a keyword (or group of keywords) and its competitive landscape, and write the perfect ad from the …

Brian Carter provides a brief overview of advanced reporting techniques that SEO professionals could miss by limiting their research to the AdWords starter edition. The beginning guide gets you started quicker, but keeps you ignorant longer because it leaves out some important details, Carter writes. The biggest hindrance to following the starter kit is not having the information to track leads or sales. Carter suggests instead that you work with the standard or advanced edition. Doing so will give you an advantage over competitors, optimize your account, and increase your return on investments.

Budgeting for 301-redirect pages when building a new Web site is critical. Many company execs don't realize the importance of having enough caching power, so SEO professionals need to make sure their clients understand that content management servers require enough space to cache the content. Will Critchlow has been working on a project that forced him to think about the least expensive way to insert and display redirects on high-traffic Web sites. Tapping into his recent experience, he offers up some dos and don'ts.

With a new tracking option in AdWords Rich Media and Video templates, Google has found a way to help lower bounce rates for display ads. It also provides insight into why site visitors click on some ads rather than others. Ryan Hayward defines bounce rate as the percent of users who leave your Web site after viewing one page. These new templates let sites show several products and define multiple destination URLs within the same ad. Google Analytics lets you add tracking parameters to the end of each destination URL, telling you exactly the items users found most …