Since Excel remains a staple tool for most marketers to track and optimize paid-search accounts, Bethany Bey serves up tips and tricks to boost campaign performance. In this two-part series, she looks at how to use Excel to project PPC account performance. Bey explains the various parts of the Projection Worksheet and then walks through the steps to fill out the document.

Rob D Young questions whether Yahoo is seeking a new CEO. Carol Bartz took the helm in 2009, but insiders suggest that confidence in Bartz's ability to turn the company around is at an all-time low, according to Young. Who would replace her if the chatter holds merit? Some believe Jon Miller of Fox Digital is among the new CEO candidates, Young writes.

Michael King pulls rank and provides a detailed post on the endless debate of agency vs. in-house vs. freelance SEO. He lays out the "key players," complete with cartoons, and talks about the pros and cons of the playing fields. King notes that he tells the tale with a bias because he works at an agency -- but he lends his insight from experience on all three options. He also reminds us that every opportunity is what you make of it. So -- if it don't work, change it.

Optimizing social campaigns may mean finding ways to gain more quality Twitter followers. Michael Gray explains how. He suggests choosing one account each week and following between 100 and 200 followers to identify the most successful accounts for reaching new Twitter followers. He provides tips on tools and examples of companies that have succeeded with this strategy. Above all, he writes, "automation is good, but social media is about being social."

Rob Young gives us a detailed review on Google's music site in beta, including the process to access Music Manager software. Yes, he writes, users actually upload their music into the cloud supported by Google. Describing the log-in and upload process that taps support from Google's cloud, he runs down the good and the bad, points out hurdles and makes suggestions on system improvements. The bad includes diminished playback quality, Android 2.2 or newer app, and similar to playing songs in iTunes on an iPhone, users will need to manage the music in Google Music.

Jessica Rooney gives us the rundown on the basics of mobile paid-search campaigns in 60 seconds. Thirty seconds into the video, she describes the need to set up a mobile site and to make sure it's visible on a phone at arm's length. It also should have a strong call to action; the ability to scroll down, not across; and separate mobile into its own bucket, rather than search and display.

Marketers are finding Facebook "Likes" on fan pages, and Web sites can get visitors to socially engage with brands. Kristi Hines takes us through the steps for creating a Facebook application for a Web site, installing a JavaScript SDK, and setting up a button to trigger the "Like."

A change in Blekko's slashtag algorithm puts the relevancy of results on par with Google and Bing for many "head search queries, although a larger index size would likely help them score better on tail search queries," according to Aaron Wall. He tells us about Blekko's new metadata search service, 3 engine monte, which serves up results from the three engines side by side. Users need to enter the keyword search terms, followed by "/monte" to see the three-engine results.

Kudos to Will Critchlow for retweeting a Twitter link leading to a video on link building that someone dug out of the YouTube archives. Although a few years old, the video love ballad uploaded in February 2009 remains relevant. The video explains how "HubSpot's Rebecca Corliss longs for the inbound links of colleague Rick Burnes, who refuses to link to her Web site in an emotional love story that comes full circle." Viewers also can view bloopers on the making of the video.

A little off kilter, but Neil Mason tells us two places where "right-brain creatives" can help with testing ads. He explains how the left-brain activity for managing, coordinating, analyzing and experimenting needs right-brain creative input. He reminds us that ads are built on Web analytic reports showing the parts of the site that underperform.