Well, it's the middle of 2010 -- and for a full-blown, proper SEO campaign we still need to build links. And building links is still about as much fun as playing with Mr Potato Head after you've lost all of the body parts. That said, there a few link-building tactics that can be fun and creative and perfectly legal in the eyes of Google. Consider the infographic.

Yes, the Hotchkisses are planning another vacation. We're heading over to the U.K,. where we'll be spending a few weeks in a speck of a village called St. Arvans in Wales. In this process, I have Googled, TripAdvised, Expedia-ed, Nile Guided, Wikipediaed and TripIted myself into a state of online vacation bliss. It's almost as if I've already been there. My question is, with the potential of all this virtual globetrotting waiting just a click or two away, do I really need to drag my wife and kids through the pain (not to mention the expense) of a nine-hour plane …

The world may not need another social network. But Google does. Google needs a place where people can easily congregate and communicate. A place that's as easy to understand and use as Google.com. A place that people "like." Why?

was sitting on my couch yesterday when a notice from Aardvark popped up on my laptop screen: "Are you there? I have a question about *cars* you might be able to answer." Aardvark, you may recall from my January column, is the artificially intelligent search engine that uses its artificial intelligence to connect the human asking the question with the human most likely to be able to answer it. It is so intelligent, in fact, that it knew that, even though I myself am pretty useless at car questions, my car-savvy husband was sitting right beside me. So I told …

Bing recently added selectively curated content geared toward the entertainment sector, and while it might seem retro for a search engine to elevate human-selected content above its almighty algorithm, the new features are intended to position Bing as the preferred search engine for pop culture mavens.

Many marketers and their agencies continue to track and optimize media based on last-click attribution. But changing consumer behavior demands that smart marketers shift away from this outdated model for optimizing their online media.

As the boundaries continue to dissolve between the virtual realities of our businesses and the brick-and-mortar reality, who we are online is who we are, period. This opens up an interesting challenge for organic search practitioners. They have to be prepared to step out of their cozy niches, wedged somewhere between the worlds of marketing and IT, and be ready to truly "get" their clients at all levels.

Over the last few years, it has become very apparent that the search engines we are used to dealing with -- those being mostly cerebral, via desktop search -- are beginning to morph into something entirely different when considered in a mobile environment (mobile, in this case, meaning any situation that doesn't require the user to be chained to a desk to conduct a search). While many marketers are still just getting a basic grasp of SEO and PPC, things are skewing at a rapid pace into other areas away from the desktop, like branches sprouting from two trunks growing …

You know how curly-haired girls always want to have straight hair and straight-haired girls always want curly? Meanwhile, those of us with wavy hair long for definitiveness, one way or the other. The hair always seems more attractive on the other side of the Good Hair Day. And, if the media reports are anything to go by, Google and Facebook seem to be eyeing each other with a similar brand of envy. A few weeks ago, Facebook began serving up Open Graph-enabled web pages in search results, while last week rumors solidified around Google Me, the follow-up social net to …

The new look and feel of Google's search results pages has received mixed reviews from paid search advertisers; however, the search results pages as a whole are giving more prominence to paid search real estate. As someone who specializes in paid search advertising, I have to ask, "Are paid search results delivering a better user experience?"