Jessica dishes out a few initial positive and negative thoughts on the display network features in Interest Category Marketing, which is still in beta. She expects it will roll out to more AdWords advertisers in the near future. Having an understanding of how features like advanced targeting and non-targeted keyword-based campaigns work by doing some advance planning never hurts.

Trying to predict where Google is going is something SEO professionals do frequently. Peter Da Vanzo admits to not having a crystal ball, but makes a few predictions anyway. Among them: Google won't do all that much about black-hat sites.

Get serious about ad continuity on landing pages, which means matching color, images and copy to reflect the mood of the message, suggests Kristina Allen. She points to Bloomberg University's Department of Instructional Technology for tips. Evidently, the university offers a guide to using color to reflect moods.

David Harry attempts to demystify search behavior by helping us understand the importance of rankings. He makes a case that clicks are more about bias than relevance, and to support his thesis he provides a long list of screen shots from heat maps, graphs and charts.

For paid search marketers thinking about tapping SEO, Josh Dreller provides a frequently asked question guide to get started. He runs through the basics such as how Web content gets collected by search engines, provides insight why search query rankings matter, and serves up links to some must-have SEO tools.

Here's yet another post comparing SEO and social media channels. Rand Fishkin describes why consumers search and why they tap social, what drives traffic for each, and difference in how they convert (or don't) into Web site traffic. Takeaways include why segmenting search and social is important. Unless marketers separate, analyze and iterate the two, he writes, they're doomed to miss opportunities.

Do you know how Web site bounce rates get calculated? Neil Patel first defines the term, then provides tips by industry, with insights on how to improve your site's bounce rate. Obvious factors that might affect bounce rates include landing page design, links to external sites, and page load times.

Bill Sebald tells us how to gain more traffic from "vital" words in social signals. He explains how increasing followers, friends and producing at least 10% new social content each month can change search engine rankings. While he describes the algorithm that ranks these listings as "a little choppy," in the long run the method seems promising.

Pointing to a study from SEOmoz, eMarketer affirms that more SEO professionals understand the value of social to boost rankings. In fact, nearly 71% of respondents admitted to using social media as part of their SEO strategy. Improving visibility was the primary reason nearly a fifth of respondents gave for doing social media marketing at all; 13.5%. chose link-building.

Geordie asks whether AdWords has gotten too complicated for marketers just beginning to experiment with paid search and wonders if it's time to evaluate other options. Wrapped around an interesting observation -- "The next generation of searchers growing up won't have brand loyalty to Google alone" -- the post provides tips on paid search strategies for marketers at small-and-medium size businesses just starting to explore online marketing.