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

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.

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

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

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

Here are my picks of the best blog posts in search for the week ending 3/7/09.

SEO

Over at SEOmoz, Rob highlights the use  of  small sites for link building - essential reading for both in-house and agency link builders alike.

PPC

Are you prioritising PPC tasks effectively? Andrew Goodman looks at the Long Tail of Paid Search Account Effort over at Search Engine Land.

Meanwhile, over at PPC Hero Andrew explains PPC Metrics which all Campaign Managers Should Understand - an excellent post for those new to managing PPC campaigns.

Social Media

If you’re starting a corporate twitter account should you use a logo or a picture of an employee as the avatar? Great thoughts from Kristy Bolsinger – also check out the discussion in the comments.

Stuck for link bait ideas? Check out Lucy’s top ten list over at Distilled.

Blogging

I just love a ‘how to’ post. Wanna know how to add a custom default gravatar to your blog? Check out Sugarae’s post on the Outspoken Media blog.

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s (ahem Tuesday’s) Funny

Tango (a soft drink brand) have launched a new advertising campaign, and they are really tickling me – here’s my favourite:

To see more of their really rather wonderful campaign posters clickety click.

Have a lovely week – I’ll be back on Friday

SEO

Danny Dover has written a killer post on SEO best practices over at SEOmoz – essential reading.

Garrett French writes a very thorough guide to analysing SERP dominators for link building over at Search Engine Land – great actionable tips abound.

Struggling to write press releases for SEO? Angie Haggstrom’s on hand with 5 great tips.

Last, but by no means least – Matt McGee tackles the difficult question over what small business SEO should cost.

Social Media

Is there space for direct marketing in social media? If implemented well Lisa Barone thinks so, and does a great job explaining how to do just that.

Meanwhile Habitat illustrate precisely how NOT to market via twitter.

PPC

Kate Morris shares some excellent ad writing tips on the Search Cowboys blog - one part of the PPC puzzle that’s often neglected – review your ads, test and learn people

Brian Carter busts some ad-serving adwords myths over at Search Engine Land – explaining why the ‘rotate’ option shows your ads ‘more evenly’ rather than simply showing each ad version an equal number of times.

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

This week’s comes courtesy of xkcd

XKCD - Game Theory

 Have a lovely weekend

Thank crunchie it’s Friday! I’ve had a bit of a busy one this week, hence no blog posts – I’m sorry, I promise to do two next week.

In the meantime here’s my pick of the best blog posts on search this week:

SEO

Matt Cutts offers some clarification re PageRank Sculpting, following his comments at SMX Advanced. Rand’s synopsis over at SEOmoz is also worth a read.

Does your content educate, engage, entertain and entice? Lisa Barone argues it’s more important to create good content than try to keyword stuff your way to the top. I couldn’t agree more.

Social Media

You might be  great at Social Media, but if this great experience doesn’t follow through when your customers hit your website, call centres, stores etc – then you need to get your ducks in a row. Excellent advice from Kristy on aligning your messaging across all touch points.

PPC

Joe at PPC Hero’s done a fabulous post on using Google Wonder Wheel for Keyword Research – it’s a must read.

Online Marketing

If you work in-house you may well be familiar with the topic of Bruce Hendrickson’s post Take Me To Your Leader - the online marketing game’s really changed, are you ready to join the fray?

Search Engines

Should Google be worried about Bing? Patricio Robles at Econsultancy cites 5 reasons…

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

Nope, that’s not photo-shopped. That’s the power of social media. Happy Friday!

Crunchie image credit trekkyandy

Thank Crunchie it’s Friday!

Here’s the weekly round up

SEO

Do you want to learn more about SEO? Danny Dover’s Learn SEO in 30 minutes per day is well worth a read.

Link building is arguably the toughest part of any SEO campaign – fortunately Rob Ousbey’s on hand at SEOmoz with 8 great tips. It’s all about the kittens for me

Social Media

Just starting out on the social networking scene? Kim Krause Berg has some excellent advice. 

PPC

Do you geo-target your PPC campaigns? Perhaps you should – Doug Drees explains why…

User Experience

Sometimes we can all get a little web-centric in our approach, I therefore also like to look at real world examples of user experience. Clearly Dustin Curtis feels the same way. The flimsy doorknob and the forgettable reciept are lovely real world examples of user experience, and might encourage you to think about your business a little differently. 

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

404 error pages explained, courtesy of Dilbert.

Have a lovely weekend :) 

Image credit kennymatic

Search Engines

What could cause the death of Google? Boris writes about a potential Google killer… nope it’s not Bing, but you knew that, right?

SEO

Does PageRank sculpting work anymore? At SMX Advanced Matt Cutts said no.   There’s also controversy over Google’s new handling of JavaScript’s “onClick” function. Rand’s take on this, and his follow up over at SEOmoz are also well worth a read.

Molly over at Distilled is reminiscing about global hypercolor t shirts (weren’t they brilliant?) and more usefully from an SEO perspective reminding us about the 90’s SEO technique that still works.

Social Media

Dealing with negative online reviews of your business? David Ingram dispenses some excellent advice on how to handle it.

PPC

When it comes to PPC is the what more important than the how? Interesting reading from SEMGeek

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

A literal version of Total Eclipse of the Heart…

Have a lovely weekend

Image credit “T” altered art