Changes at Linkscape are under way. Nick Gerner tells us the company will update its index and crawl data more frequently, providing a condensed timeline for Open Site Explorer, Competitive Link Finder, and Linkscape Visualization. He also includes stats from the latest index, which updated on Jan. 17. The next update, scheduled for March 11, will keep the company on track.

Marketers may want to consider carefully whether to add social media buttons to direct response marketing campaigns, such as in emails or on landing pages. While the Internet continues to exude socialization on tools, such as Twitter, Facebook and, now, Buzz, the signals gained from this key performance indicator may interfere with other important KPIs. Marty Weintraub writes that while it's often a good decision to drive traffic from landing pages and email blasts with "follow me/friend me" links, there are several issues to consider.

Buying links isn't always the work of spammy, cheating SEOs, according to Chelsea Blacker, who confesses to doing so. Busy SEO professionals can't always do everything themselves. So why not have someone with link-building knowledge do the work for you? Although it's not the accepted practice, it may ease some of the pressure and get the job done faster, she claims.

Tad Chef didn't like Buzz at first and tried to ignore it and move on, similar to the way he tried to ignore Google Wave and Google SearchWiki. Now he believes you can't ignore Buzz. The platform will make too big an impression on social networks, he writes, and provides a variety of reasons why.

Trevor Claiborne details how to increase conversion rates, using a an example from voice.com, which grew conversions from 5% to 22%. Claiborne runs through the big lessons, such as knowing your clients -- and not stopping at the final test if you're looking for better results. Sometimes it takes more than one try.

Rand Fishkin explains how social networks, from Google Buzz to Facebook, will change online marketing -- and how marketers can take advantage of the change. For example, Google's decisions during the past year will alter search ranking factors, and SEO professionals and marketers should pay close attention to these shifts.

Geography, networks, ad serving, conversion tracking and automatic matching: these are the top five Google AdWords settings that can cost you a mint if you get them wrong. Since the interface has undergone significant changes, Goodman digs in to provide a refresher.

Michael Martinez believes he can see Google Caffeine at work in search results, a difficult statement to support since "despite all the false reports circulating in the various SEO forums Caffeine is not a ranking algorithm update." To support his claim, Martinez provides an example using an interview he did with Craig Horner. He points to the rate in which Google identified and indexed the celebrity interview with Horner, along with the speed in which several fan sites picked up the story, too.

The Twitter community and blogosphere was ablaze Thursday with the rumor, or rather misunderstanding, that Google would begin giving SEO advice and certifing marketers for taking SEO clinics. The news, completely untrue, came from a description in a Norwegian AdWords Blog post. Alan Bleiweiss makes a point to explain that Site Clinics are not SEO consulting services. And just because a clinic may validate that SEO work is done properly doesn't mean Google is going to certify anyone, he writes.

Danny Dover shares a chapter of a new book he is writing -- with a working title of "Search Engine Optimization Secrets." The chapter discusses finding SEO problems, 15-minute audits, global navigation, and homepage preparation. Wiley Publishing has signed on to publish the book.