Nonprofits have rather modest budgets when it comes to marketing. Many have turned to online. Testing will become a bigger part of what search marketers should do this year to quantify campaigns -- not only for nonprofits, but all companies. It has become more important to Andrew Chapman, manager of site analytics at PGA Tour. He uses testing often to check in on customers, making sure the profile remains up to date.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) will release a white paper Monday titled "Local Search: Managing Listings Across Digital Platforms." Sabrina Alimi, senior manager of the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, will present parts of it at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit.

Optimization from search to content works. Marketers know that. Now a study from Adobe Systems confirms it -- but the biggest issue points to a lack of investment and limited resources. All hold back innovation and content marketing strategies.

Aside from smartphones and tablets, social search engine optimization has emerged as the next focus for many marketers in enterprises during a time when more C-level execs continue to give attention to SEO, video offers search and social opportunities, and small and national businesses capitalize on local search, according to a study released Thursday.

Advertisers pay less per click these days, although many continue to invest more in paid-search ads. After peaking at an average of $0.46 per click in the third quarter of 2012, the cost continued to fall in Q1 2013 globally, reaching a five-quarter low of $0.39 for Kenshoo clients. Lower costs reflect the ability of marketers to improve targeting and messaging techniques.

Marketers should take trust levels into consideration when optimizing a Web site for search queries, as well as paid-search ads. Survey findings released this week demonstrate why.

Two recent announcements will prove Twitter's worth not only as a social advertising platform, but as a lead generation tool for the movie and the music industries. It turns out that a 30% increase in positive tweets is four times more effective in driving sales than a 30% increase in existing above-the-line advertising, according to a recent study.

Some might view Universal Technical Institute (UTI) as one of Google YouTube's unlikely beneficiaries, but the technical training school managed to reduce its cost-per-lead and achieve 10% higher enrollment rates on the video site, compared with display ads. It's been a learning experience for all.

Google releases Q1 2013 earnings today, just asThe Search Agency releases its quarterly State of Paid Search Report--Q1 2013 analyzing paid search and product listing ads for the quarter. It turns out the agency's clients spent more for search advertising across Google sites and the Yahoo-Bing network in the first quarter. Spend rose 21.6% year-over-year (YoY), according to the findings.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer spoke with analysts Tuesday during the company's Q1 2013 earnings call, explaining the "incremental" progress it continues to make on growing search volume across its engines and sites.