Vanessa Fox tells marketers how to keep local businesses visible on the Web and in map search results. She explains how restaurants have an opportunity to gain support, not only from local residents in a community, but also vacationing consumers just passing through town. More than 90% of the people who use online services rely on search engines to find information. Fox provides tips on getting local businesses found, remaining at the top of search queries, and ensuring Web sites are search-friendly.

Michael Gray finds it helpful to set up "publishing paths" for Web sites that want to participate in social media. He explains why this is helpful, provides benefits and challenges, and examples to back up his claims.

Nathan Linnell looks for ways to measure social-media-referred visits. He also sheds light on how search should play into the analysis. Linnell steps through adding campaign tracking, and understanding the visibility you have on key social media sites.

Late Morris calls search marketing not only a war of budgets, but of acronyms, too. As some new to search engine marketing struggle to figure out the difference between SEO or natural and organic search, and PPC or paid search, Morris steps in to introduce and define several new models: CRO, SMO, and LPO.

Rand Fishkin talks about turning real-time conversation into SEO-friendly searchable Web content that helps target long-tail queries or build reputable content. Making the case that real-time tweets and posts belong to the person posting the content, Fishkin suggests ways to turn the chatter into Web pages focused on specific content through APIs and a variety of other tricks. He also suggests taking real-time chats in instant messages and turning them into pages for search engines to index if the content provides value to others.

Written in response to a post from blogger Derek Powazek, Todd Mintz explores the sins of SEO by analyzing the practice through religious, scientific, and mythological meaning. Mintz explains that Powazek began his argument by saying "Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls" -- but it lost impact after taking an "unfortunate tour" into search engine algorithms and content creation.

Ken Lyons provides an easy step-by-step guide for building links that anyone can follow. Lyons details how to determine why certain pieces of content attract links and others don't.

Christopher Heine describes how Bloomspot.com has been getting around Facebook's policy that prohibits the use of content misuse in ad copy, a system the social network site implemented last month. The company targets urban women, he writes. Heine describes the ad campaign and tells us about other advertisers also slipping through the cracks of Facebook's ad monitoring system.

Can your paid click and SEO strategies handle online sales growth? I hope so. EMarketer expect 2010 U.S. retail online sales, excluding travel, to surpass $152 billion, up 12.7% compared with the prior year. The research firm estimates 162 million people in the U.S. will research products online and much of this research will lead to in-store purchases, too. Still, more than 82% of online researchers, or 133 million people, will buy online.

No one knows exactly how Google calculates search engine result rankings, so it's useless to try to understand the algorithm, according to Fernando Chavez. Still, during the past few years he's developed a simple way to think about how Google might calculate rankings. Chavez explains his thought process, providing insight into PageRank, relevance, and more.