Does the city you live in have more than one Web site? Pick a domain and stick to it, rants Bill Slawski. Experiencing a problem with finding his town's Web site, Slawski began to catalog some bad online practices to help them fix mistakes that make the town's online content less effective. He plans to identify best practices on local government Web sites and offer the administrations some advice on fixing the problem, so other towns might learn from them. Stay tuned for more adventures from Slawski on SEO in government because he has dedicated a section on his Web …

What impact do reviews have on local search rankings? Mike Ramsey gives us the details in a lengthy post with many screen shots that provide great examples. He also offers his view on the future of local search and reviews, as well as some feedback on setting up a review strategy for your business. Some advice from Ramsey: "Do not fabricate fake reviews or the Local SEO gods will beat you like a red-headed step-child and drop you from visibility (No offense to any red-headed step-children)."

People who distribute malware have been working overtime to improve SEO skills and accelerate the pace at which the pesky attack code ties to search terms in breaking news, according to Matt Hines, citing researchers at Avast. Hines tells us that recent news triggering a fast response from "malware gangs" included former U.S. President Bill Clinton's heart surgery. As many as 70 individual URLs were incorporated in related attacks just after the news was announced. He provides other examples, too.

Take a look at data research from iCrossing, Econsultancy, ExactTarget and The Society of Digital Agencies analyzing natural-search referrals. The data show only a small number of referrals come from results after the first page of queries. It also provides the percentage of traffic originating from the first page.

Think of video, PDF and document files people can download from your site as assets valuable to visitors looking for information. Now ask yourself if you get your money's worth from your site? Herdon Hasty tells us you need to gain efficiency and maximum value from every part of your site and your brand's assets. He provides advice on how to gain the most from the tools you have.

Experienced SEO veterans need not read on, but if you need a refresher course, Stoney deGeyter serves up some good advice. What marketers can learn from how people search and the keyword buying cycles and are some of the topics he runs through in this series on the basics of SEO.

In a one-on-one interview, George Michie asks Linda Bustos, writer on eCommerce blog GetElastic, several pointed questions. The two talk about a variety of subjects, from the unregulated and the unstructured business of search engine marketing, to the evolution of Web design in the last five to eight years. When asked what newer features will have a big impact on retail, Bustos points to A/B split testing, "thanks to tools like the free Google Website Optimizer," because it can help retailers make more money.

A patent granted to Google on Monday describes how Google Books might grant different access levels to books and magazines based on the location of viewers, according to Bill Slawski. The Google patent attempts to address copyright issues that often come into play when trying to enforce geographic and political boundaries. Slawski tells us copyright laws can differ per country. He details the patent "Variable user interface based on document access privileges" and provides some details on the metadata that might be created for the scanned magazine and book documents posted online.

Megan Leap describes 10 types of landing page goals marketing need to measure. For example, landing page clicks. She explains that it's important to create a multistep landing experience that segments visitors according to their audience or offers of interest, and then deliver relevant pitches and information.

Carrie provides tips on best practices to restructure your Yahoo campaigns to target both search and search partners. She explains how the search partner network works, and serves up information on structuring and optimizing campaigns. Carrie also walks through seven steps to help you import duplicate campaigns into Yahoo through the "Import Campaigns" function.