Hello there, it’s been a while, huh? Apologies – from now on this *will* once again become a regular feature. Here’s what’s been going on this week:

SEO

Rand Fishkin explains how search engines judge the value of a link - essential reading.

Social Media

Over at 10e20 Rebecca Kelley teaches Social Media - McHammer style, 2 legit 2 quit - marvellous.

PPC

Chelsea Blacker shares an adwords tip – including your keywords in display URL subdomains - definitely worth a test, methinks. 

Usability

Tom Critchlow has penned an excellent post on improving conversion rates, and deserves a link for the title alone

Aaannnd Finally, Friday’s Saturday’s Funny

Courtesy of xkcd:

Image credit Flawka

Happy, er Monday! Please find to follow my belated round up of the top articles in search last week.

SEO

Danny Dover has written an excellent guide to moving domains - definitely bookmark -worthy!

Social Media

Over at Search Engine Land Ciaran Norris highlights the spate of brands using social media as a band aid and urges companies to stop saying sorry and start getting really social.

PPC

Always wondered why Adwords conversion tracking doesn’t match up to the conversion tracking in Analytics? Matthew from Receptional does a top notch job of explaining the discrepancy.

George Michie talks about his research collaborationwith direct mail practitioners in an attempt to ascertain whether or not key learnings from the traditional catalogue shopping industry can be similarly applied to PPC campaigns.

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

Got some time to kill?  Waste a few minutes clicking on this Pringles Banner ad (don’t worry, you’ll not be taken anywhere dodgy) – it’s a really rather mavellous way to waste some time – hat tip to Ciaran for this one.

Image credit Yogma.

Happy Friday! As usual, please find to follow my picks of the top articles in search this week.

News

You can’t fail to have heard about the Microsoft – Yahoo deal which was struck on 29th July which will see Microsoft’s ‘Bing’ power Yahoo’s searches. Will it threaten Google’s dominance? In the UK it’s unlikely to, but it may mean that some advertisers elect trial advertising on Yahoo/Bing – time will tell.

SEO

Over at SEOmoz Rand’s written a fantastic summary on the implications of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal for SEO.

Meanwhile, a month on since Google’s ‘Vince’ Update, Richard from SEOgadget takes a gander at the results for the search term ‘car insurance’ – and asks brand or no brand?

Social Media

Matt Churchill talks about ‘Auntie’ getting all social media savvy with the launch of Shownar; a great post about how the BBC have been embracing social media.

Lisa Barone asks if Social Media is Becoming a Weapon - and how you might try to handle an attack on your brand. As usual, it’s facinating reading – and the comments are well worth a read too.

PPC

Thinking about outsourcing your PPC activity to an agency? Over at PPCHero Amber’s written a great post on the 10 questions you should ask when looking for a new agency.

Media

Matthew Robson caused a stir when he wrote a memo for Morgan Stanley on How Teenagers Consume Media, interesting reading, but I much preferred Dan Wilson’s response: How 31 Year Olds Consume Media :)

 Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

 Simon’s Cat

Image credit Unhindered by Talent

They say Thursday is the new Friday (or they did once, around 2005 – is Wednesday the new Friday now?) anyhow this week’s round up is a day early, for reasons which will be revealed tomorrow – so Happy Thursday! Here are my picks of the best blog posts in search for the week ending 24/7/09.

SEO

If like me, you think link building is the toughest part of any SEO project, you’d do well to read Garrett French’s post via Search Engine Land on how to research, create and distribute highly linkable content.

Still focusing on the link building theme, Shaun Anderson of Hobo-Web talks about reciprocal links, and whether or not they should be avoided.

PPC

Get some great tips from PPC Hero on PPC landing page optimisation - sterling work from Amber there.

Social Media

Over at Econsultancy, Patricio Robles asks does social media lead to better financial results for companies? As he quite rightly points out, correlation is not necessarily causation – essential reading.

Also well worth a look is the A-B-C’s of Social Media - not least because as Dr Pete said, they’ve come up with an ‘x’ which isn’t xylophone

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Thursday’s Funny

This brilliant picture is from passiveaggressivenotes (click the link to see it in it’s full glory). Hat tip to Rob - genius  

‘Thursday’ image credit adamwilson

Hello there, here are my picks of the best blog posts in search for the week ending 10/7/09.

SEO

Joanna Butler talks Gorillas, Meerkats & Michael Jackson and the importance of generating ‘buzz’ around your brand.

PPC

Over at Search Engine Land, Doug Drees comes up trumps once again with his excellent tips on Ad Scheduling to maximise your PPC results.

Social Media

Still not quite got your head around link bait? Stephan Spencer explains all.

Is that celeb you’re following on Twitter the real deal? Ciaran talks about the problem of hoax accounts on Twitter.

Blogging

Should your CEO be Blogging? Lisa says no. Thought provoking, funny, and so true… but you didn’t hear me say that – ok?

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

Wondering what SEO’s do on Twitter all day long? Well, after a long day, they like nothing more than to talk Princess Bride

Have a lovely weekend!

Image credit Jonathan Beard