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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) WEBSITE MARKETING: A List of Links to Articles Related to Getting Top Search Engine Rankings on Major Search Engines Such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, Excite, AlltheWeb, and Getting Ranked on Other Top Search Engines.

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Increase Website Traffic by Giving Them What They Want : Many internet marketers still believe that link building, both one way and reciprocal, are the way to go. I find this to be an outdated method that wastes time that could be otherwise spent implementing other far better ideas.

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Increase Traffic to Your Blog from Search Engines - The Top 5 Tips : If you haven't already submitted to blog directories, you are missing out on some great one-way links. But before you head over there and start submitting, you should know a little about how to optimize your blog.
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Yellow Pages Introduces Local Search Guide : In response to the growing interest in local search, the Yellow Pages Association (YPA) introduced a new column this month called "Viewpoints" that features commentary and articles relating to the growth and development of the local search market.
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Research Supports Aggressive SEM and SEO : Two eye-opening studies indicate where marketers should direct search dollars and search metrics.
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Search Marketing in 2005 - Adaptation Ensures Evolution : The core temperature of the search engine sector is continuously growing warmer as interest in search-advertising increases.
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Why You're Missing Out on Hundreds of Visitors If You Aren't Podcasting : Not everyone is a great writer. But just about everyone can talk -- or get someone else to talk for them. So here are three reasons why you need to figure out how to have an audio-enabled site today.

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SEO Showdown: Real Results vs. the Straw Man : I've seen SEO "consultants" claim that their top ranking for "guaranteed top placement money back seo consulting firm" was a demonstration of their great abilities, when in fact, nobody would ever search for that, or try to outrank them. Claiming top rankings for meaningless phrases is like the "straw man argument" in debate, so I refer to it as "Straw Man SEO."
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Consumers Search Before Buying Online : Contrary to conventional wisdom, the study finds most users complete product-related searches weeks ahead of their actual purchases, with a greater reliance on general searches than is usually presumed by marketers, said Stuart Larkins, VP of partner services at Performics, a DoubleClick division.
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New Study Explores how Search Engine Use Impacts Purchases : Half of online purchases are preceded by product related searches according to a study released this week by DoubleClick and comScore Networks.
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How to Waste $2.4 Million Dollars in 30 Seconds or Less : While it may not have been the most relaxing or exciting way to watch the Big Game, if you spent a majority of Sunday night's Super Bowl at your computer, typing in brand and product names the way we did, you probably realized that a lot of companies still have a loooong way to go when it comes to Search Engine Marketing.
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Meet the Local Search Engines : Local search has been hot over the past year, with the major search engines jostling for eyeballs, offering new features for both searchers and advertisers alike.
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Moving Targets : Ready for destination advertising and video search engine optimization?
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AlmondNet Debuts "Post-Search" Search Behavioral Ad Network : AlmondNet is unveiling a new program today to deliver advertising across the web targeted to the topics someone has searched on recently, including queries done on major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
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Going Where the Searchers Are : One of the problems of traditional search marketing is that by targeting keywords and keyword phrases for products that you can easily sell, you may be passing up the chance to draw tons of traffic and and create new revenue from so called "trivial" searches.
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Personalized Search : Personalized search is the fine-tuning of search results and advertising based on an individual’s preferences, demographic information and other factors. Presumably, the better a search engine understands a user’s interests and preferences, the better able it is to target search results, advertising, sponsored links, etc.
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Search Engine Changes Blur the Line Between Myth and Reality : This year many common assumptions about search engine marketing have been made obsolete or require a different way of thinking. Many erroneous assumptions continue to be proliferated in hundreds of forum posts, emails and marketing articles.
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Search Engine Users Head Offline to Shop : While search engine marketing has long been touted for its ability to deliver targeted traffic and generate high conversion rates, the reality is that most searchers research products online, but purchase them from brick and mortar stores.
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AOL Expands Advertising Opportunities for Local Businesses : A new advertising format soon to be offered by AOL opens up a world of opportunities for small businesses that have not yet had a chance to build a Web site, or that have difficulty tracking the ROI of a traditional PPC campaign.

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Buy Your Own Search Listings : Apparently, an employee of a noted search engine sent a series of emails to advertisers within a specific vertical with the express intent of bypassing the agency relationship and any level of known decision-making hierarchy on the side of the advertiser. This isn't the first time such an email has been sent, but it was the most instantaneously notorious.
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Powered by Search, Online Advertising Continues to Grow : The growth in PPC advertising is expected to continue at a dramatic rate through 2005 as more and more businesses discover the effectiveness of this type of advertisement. The question that comes into play is whether or not that level of growth can be sustained.
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Search-A-Palooza '04 : Top-line gleanings of the trends, news, and, of course, a little of the latest gossip from Internet marketing's most hypergrowth-oriented sector.

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Online Ads & Search: Looking Back, Looking Forward : Paid search led the resurgence of online advertising in 2004 with a 34% increase in growth, and this trend is expected to continue over the coming five years.
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The SEM CEO's Predictions, Part 2 : In 2005, more of these vertical content properties will rebrand themselves as search properties.

How Everything I Know About Web Marketing I Learned from Your Local Gas Station : Gas stations drive sales at high double-digit conversions versus an average e-commerce conversion rate of around 1.8%. What are we missing? Admittedly, leaving the gas station and finding another is a hassle, however, these conversions are rooted in a fundamental design to lure the right customer and meet specific needs.
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Small Businesses May Benefit from Ego Surfing : Small businesses are tight on resources, which is understandable, but the few minutes it takes to run a quick search for your name or your business on a search engine could end up giving you the chance to address a problem that you never knew existed.
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Shopping around: comparison shopping Websites : Comparison shopping engines can help you boost sales and acquire customers — provided your company's product is a top contender among the search results. And that doesn't mean your company has to offer the lowest prices for the merchandise featured.

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Search Engines Drive Traffic to Shopping Sites : Specifically, Google contributed 4.26 percent of visits to shopping sites last week, while Yahoo! Search contributed 2.24 percent and MSN Search 0.54 percent.

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All Roads Lead Online: Convergence and the Future of Advertising : As media converge online, the distinctions between various forms of advertising will disappear. Branding and direct, electronic and print, it will all become part of one seamless marketing continuum online.
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Search-Engine Ready Corporate Communications : Media coverage leaves a trail of breadcrumbs. Do you know which ones search engines can follow?
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Shooting the Breeze with Ammon Johns - Worldwide Leading SEM Expert : Google in 2001 had about 50 PhDs, now they have about the same number of PhDs but their company, product range, their index, the search base has all grown exponentially. How can the same number of PhDs support the much larger Google?
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From the Diary of a Corporate SEM Manager : Search Engine Strategies events, search engine spam and shams, and the need for SEM managers in corporate America.
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Report: Agencies Control Most Search Money : Before this shift, most of the money went directly to search engines from marketers. Today, agencies account for 51 percent of the total spending on paid search -- a significant increase over the past 18 months, said JupiterResearch analyst Nate Elliott.
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Search for Some Perspective : Think about search in the context of the entire online shopping experience. ... Once users leave search, take the journey with them, each step of the way through the consideration process. At the end, maybe you'll create a customer for life.
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Search Engines and the SEO Business : Ask Jeeves and Lycos will now offer SEO services. Is it a conflict of interest or a natural evolution in search monetization?
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For the Love of Local : ReachLocal recently announced the launch of their end-to-end advertising platform that makes it easy for local businesses -- and their representatives -- to reach customers online.
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Last Local Search Hang-ups : If we have all the pieces, independent providers are on board, and local search is working, then why aren’t phone books all but antiquated?

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Adding Offline Data to Online Search : You know a lot about your customers: why not use that knowledge to take your SEM campaign to the next level?
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Web Feeds, Blogs & Search Engines : Blogs are increasingly popular, and can have a dramatic effect on search engine positioning. How can you best take advantage of this new search marketing channel?
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Packaged Goods in Search 2 : In the search world, category killers rule the revenue. Yet, as the search space has evolved so have new categories in areas we wouldn’t think search would be of any benefit. Collectively, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPGs) make up one of those areas.
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Search Online, Buy Offline: How to Tell? : Many people do extensive product research online but end up buying from brick and mortar retailers. How can you track the effectiveness of search marketing campaigns that result in offline purchases?

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Mobile Search Is Almost Too Good to Be True : If you use search to present your product or service, you should start looking at mobile search. It is going to expand and change the search industry in ways we haven't even contemplated yet.
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Packaged Goods in Search : Will CPGs be the next category killer in search? As with any marketing initiative, understanding user interaction with products or services is at the core of developing a solid plan. Search marketing is no different. While searches for packaged goods represent millions of user-initiated queries every month, many of these searches are left unanswered.
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When Client/SEM Communications Break Down : Three major communication breakdowns that can demolish SEM campaign results.
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Socially Networked Start-Ups Challenge Big Boys in Local Search : Think Yahoo! Local and Google Local are the only games in town? While the big portals are attracting the majority of local search attention, several start-ups with impressive pedigrees and innovative approaches are angling for the local market, too.
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SEM: Still an Adolescent? : Only when advertisers integrate their search strategies with the rest of their media tools will SEM realize its true potential. Today, at most companies you can only find search in its own silo. Synergies that could be realized by integrating SEM are lost.
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Filthy Linking Rich And Getting Richer! :...what I want to do with this feature article is to try and highlight how great the bias is for high ranking pages which are fundamentally ordered on link based algorithms, to attract more links.

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DoubleClick on Pay-for-Play : In the biggest news since DoubleClick acquired the performance marketing firm, Performics, a new search white paper hit the streets today offering a summary collection of guiding principles in pay-for-placement search and a taste of the upcoming DoubleClick Search Trend Report.
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Search engine evolution isn’t just for e-retailers : As Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and others fight it out in the Internet search engine market, the competition is bringing new opportunities to pure-play online retailers, but multi-channel retailers must work harder to fit search into their overall cross-channel marketing strategies, Joan Broughton, vice president of multi-channel programs at REI Inc., will advise on a panel at the Shop.org Summit next week.
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Shopping Search Tactics : Shopping search engines make it easy for people to research and buy products. They can also be a powerful and cost-effective customer acquisition channel for merchants.
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Why Search is Slowing :...as with the initial enthusiasm surrounding online marketing, when the party was over, the ensuing hyper mediocrity meant it was time to get down to business and begin to get smart. Let’s look at the numbers and a couple of smart movers that might just keep search leading the way.
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Original Search : Greg Sterling of the Kelsey Group says, "While IYP [Internet Yellow Pages] sites have less traffic than search engines, IYP users are typically 'ready to buy' and thus considerably farther along in the buying cycle than users of general Web search."
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There's Search in Them There Hills : Mining for search at the Summit finds brands are more search-savvy than some give them credit for.
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SEM Wants to Embrace the CMO : Search has earned its way up the corporate food chain, from Webmaster to marketing coordinator to director of online marketing and VP of online marketing. It's time to claim the CMO as our own.
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Can You Forecast Search? : From the simplest terms to the unknown factors, forecasting shouldn’t be a barrier to SEM.
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ThomasB2B Launches Paid Search : ThomasB2B.com is launching its new global online advertising network this week, featuring bid-for-position and pay-per-click pricing for advertisers wishing to reach business-to-business buyers. The Thomas Global Register Directory encompasses approximately 10,000 product categories.
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SEM and Branding Are Not Mutually Exclusive : Mention the term search engine marketing (SEM) among those who engage in it and you’re likely to get the same three or four responses. It’s about being on page one of all the search engines. It’s about being #1 on Google. It’s about increasing brand recognition among prospects and customers. Um, wait a second…repeat that last one again?
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Spammers hijack web site listings in Google : A large number of web masters are facing their search engine nightmare: Their Google listings have been taken over by another site.
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New Analysis Tool Helps Compare Top Ten Search Results : A new tool offered by the folks at We Build Pages offers a quick and easy way to compare the top ten listings for a particular search phrase.
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SEM Budget Multipliers, Part 1 : Tactics to get more impact and better results out of your search campaign -- with the same budget. Part 1 of a two-part series.
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Barry Lloyd Interview - Part 2 : The realization that SEM is a lot more than just tweaking meta-tags or placing the maximum bid for your client on a PPC engine is starting to take hold - which takes us back to what we were talking about at the beginning of this interview - accountability to the client.
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Who's Protecting Your Name? : A new study from the digital brand protection and intelligence company Name Protect suggests the relationship with brands and their search terms is not all sherry and giggles.

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The Growing Pains of Search : The little search marketing companies are unfurling their new wings and trying to peer over the edge of the nest. Suddenly, VC firms are looking at search marketing technology with stars in their eyes. It's beginning to seem that a few people are going to make a lot of money in this industry. And we've even got internal politics. All signs of an industry that’s finally ready for a run at the main stage.
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Barry Lloyd Interview : Barry Lloyd, well know to most in the SEM community as MakeMeTop, is a high-profile search marketer based in Ireland. In this interview, Barry talks about his background, his marketing driven approach to SEM, and where he thinks the industry is heading.

Why Nonconverting Keywords Will Drive Search Ad Spend : As any brand marketer will tell you, conversion isn't always the goal. There's ROI in nonconverting keywords, too.
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14 Etailer Search Mistakes : Search engine marketing has proven to be an extremely effective means of achieving online sales growth, but not all etailers know how to properly execute their search engine marketing campaigns.
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In Hurricane’s Aftermath, Google is a Priority : Not having Google made me remember my friend fondly as the perfect deliverer of my every search. But it’s not really. I hated not having my buddy at my side when the power was out. Googlelessness is a sad way to live. But as soon as the lights came back on, glad though I was to have my buddy back, I remembered the flawed slave it really is. Google answers to everyone, and not everyone is playing fair.

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Local Search Critical to SMEs : More than half of the recently surveyed "Hometowner" businesses — SMEs whose customers and suppliers are primarily within 50 miles of their physical location — believe the Internet will enable them to be more successful in their local market, compared to 35 percent in 2002.
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Search Engines and Competitive Research : Search engines can tell you a lot about your competition, if you know what to look for. A panel of experts offers tips on profiling your competition.
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When Search Engines Become Answer Engines : The website is becoming a less prominent locus of experience as people use search engines to bring up answers to their current questions. How can sites cope with masses of freeloaders?
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Feedster Preps Paid RSS Links as Ads Expand : Feedster Inc. is embracing RSS advertising with plans to add sponsored links into its feeds of search results.
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Search: Bigger Means Smaller : As search engine marketing grows, it's fragmenting into an increasingly complex palette of niche media opportunities.
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Search, the Final Frontier - Planning Search Budgets : Finding a balance between intelligent online advertising options and intergalactic online advertising costs will be a challenge for small business owners in the coming years. As with most challenging business problems, the best decisions come from effective planning based on solid information.
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Search Spend to Double by 2009 : Spending on paid search will more than double by 2009, but growth will slow as the market matures, a Jupiter Research (a Jupitermedia Corp. division) report revealed today. The firm expects advertisers to spend $2.6 billion on search by the end of 2004, and rise steadily through 2009 when it reaches $5.5 billion.
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Benchmarking and Baselines in SEM : Use internal benchmarking, or baselining. Beating your own baseline numbers is as satisfying as beating the competition because much of the lift comes from the competition. When you run smart, efficient campaigns, you take orders away from the competition while meeting ROI objectives.
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Marketers Reveal Dark Side Of Search, Cast Shadow On Agencies : SEM firms and interactive shops would do well to slow down, play nicely together, and have faith in the industry's ability to help them work out these kinks.
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Buying Brand Keywords: A Case Study : Every case is different. But in nearly every scenario I've looked at, it makes financial sense for the brand owner to buy his own brand.
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Panel: Still Early Days for Local Search : One problem of local search is that nearly two-thirds of U.S. small businesses have no Web site. While Overture hopes to entice them to advertise anyway through its business locator page, some see hope in new innovations such as call technology that traces a phone call placed to a business instead of a click.

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SEMPO Scandal Blast : Could SEMPO be nothing more than a marketing pyramid scheme?
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SEO and Paid Search Campaigns: Share the Data! : Failing to inform a natural search campaign with findings from a search advertising campaign (or vice versa) means a high lost-opportunity cost.
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Yes, Virginia, There Is SEM Brand Lift, Part 2 : The IAB's brand-lift study revealed some stunning results. Here's how brand marketers can leverage the information. Part two of a series.
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Affiliate Manager Interview: Jennifer O'Neal, StubHub.com : We will share SEO tips, PPC formulas, & top performing keywords with our qualified affiliates. This information acts to incentivize, reward, & help them…which ultimately translates into sales & growth for StubHub.
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Bringing Search Down to Earth : Don't get me wrong. I fully believe search engine marketing (SEM) and paid placement (via text-based communications) should play a role in most interactive marketing plans. Yet to make SEM an integral part of a brand advertiser's media plan to drive preference, favorability, and purchase intent seems a little overzealous.
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Google-envy and the Quest for Local Search : I believe the problem for local search is only partly technological, and partly a data acquisition issue. Both the essence and opportunity of real local search is and has always been, even in print directories, nuance.
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Report Says Search Needs More Inventory : A new report suggests that a lack of supply may drive prices so far up that it slows the growth of search advertising.
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Search Gains Importance at Online Retailers : Seek, find... and buy. Online retailers are throwing resources behind making the process easier for online shoppers.
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Dan Thies of SEO Research Labs Shares His Views on Search : By this time next year, I expect that "rankings" as we've traditionally seen them will be on the way out. The search results you see will be at least a little different from the results I see. It'll happen slowly, but it will happen.
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Yes, Virginia, There Is SEM Brand Lift, Part 1 : The IAB's brand-lift study produces some stunning results. Part one of a two-part series.
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Panel: Still Early Days for Local Search : One problem of local search is that nearly two-thirds of U.S. small businesses have no Web site. While Overture hopes to entice them to advertise anyway through its business locator page, some see hope in new innovations such as call technology that traces a phone call placed to a business instead of a click.
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Search Engine Marketing and Branding Challenges : Search engines are recognized as one of the best ways to generate qualified leads online. What about branding aspects? Should search engine marketing be considered as part of a brand-building campaign?
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SEMPO Scandal Blast : Could SEMPO be nothing more than a marketing pyramid scheme?
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Yes, Virginia, There Is SEM Brand Lift, Part 1 : The IAB's brand-lift study produces some stunning results. Part one of a two-part series.
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Growing a Successful Search Marketing Business : Building a search marketing company holds the promise of both meaningful profits and a lot of fun -- but it takes hard work and some savvy business sense to be truly successful.
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Integration Concentration : Clients are beginning to wake up and smell the malarkey, and it is only a matter of time before search shops are forced to live within the confines of normal margins.
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Affiliate Marketing and SEM Revisited :Affiliates extend your paid search advertising budget. Competing with affiliates on the same keywords is valuable because they help you dominate the page. If your affiliates are restricted from paid search advertising, they'll simply switch teams and bid for the same keywords on behalf of your competition.

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Behavioral & Contextual Targeting: A Primer :Marketers should note that while search is a great medium for retail and other direct sales-oriented verticals, contextual marketing also provides a unique opportunity for branding as well as direct sales for certain verticals.
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SEM and Online Publicity :Writing, linking, and thinking about SEO: a primer for writers, journalists, and PR professionals.
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Consumer Direct: Ultra-Targeted Ad Delivery : ACNielsen and Yahoo!'s joint venture promises to catch the eye (and dollars) of powerful CPG companies.
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SearchTHIS: Top 10 Questions : As Grand Exalted Emperor of all things Q&A in the iMediaLearning Search Tour, I bring you the top 10 most frequently asked questions to date. Unedited (who am I kidding?) and in the director’s cut format, because you deserve nothing less.
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The One-Two Punch: SEO and PPC : A new study stresses the importance of combining SEO with paid search ads.
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SEM, Sales Assistance, and Proactive Communications, Part 3: Online Chat in Action : Can online chat lift conversion? A number of marketers say it can, plus work as real-time analytics. Last in a series.
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SearchTHIS: From the Back of the Bus : Our mission was to produce an online learning course and road show with agnostic search engine marketing content to help educate advertisers about the delicate intricacies of search.
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Pandia cloned by copyright thief : If someone is stealing your content, you not only risk loosing well deserved traffic, you may also loose your search engine listings.
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SEM, Sales Assistance, and Proactive Communications, Part 2: Online Chat : Linking online chat to the search process. Part two of a three-part series.
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How's Your Reputation? : Actively managing what search engines say about your business can head off costly attacks.
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Managing Search Marketing Campaigns : While search engine paid placement campaigns can be immensely profitable, effective bid management can be time-consuming and can quickly become a drawn out game of chess, or tug of war, depending on your rules of engagement.
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NetIQ Quietly Changes SEM -- Forever : A new market was just created and NetIQ just cornered it -- the search engine marketing and advertising analytics market.
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SEM, Sales Assistance, and Proactive Communications, Part 1: Search Meets the Phone :The salesperson's role in the online purchase process. Part one of a two-part series.
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Geotargeted Search and E-Mail Indexing : Location-based search will enormously affect established industries, such as the yellow pages, as well as contextual advertising and e-mail marketing. The potential is huge, but it raises many questions.
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Inside the Searcher's Mind: It's a Jungle in Here! : We decided to try to peel back the shroud that covers common search behavior. We wanted to see just how people searched, and ask them what went through their minds during the search process. It was a fascinating study, and resulted in a 30 page white paper. Today, I want to cover just a few of the things we uncovered.
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SEM Power Politics: PACs, Nonprofits, and 527s : Smart non-commercial entities are taking advantage of negligible keyword competition.
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Search Engine Marketing Q&A : Last week's Q&A article was such a hit, I decided to do a similar one today since I still have lots of "shortish" questions to answer.
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Paid Search Programs Finally Growing Up : The search industry has come a long way since the days of running poorly targeted banner advertisements on search results pages. Enhanced keyword targeting capabilities and powerful new bidding and ROI analysis tools have raised the value of search as a promotional channel for online -- and increasingly offline -- merchants.
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Affiliate Programs: Moneymakers or Brandbusters? : Search engine affiliate programs offer the promise of greatly increasing your online exposure and sales, but be careful: They can also displace your firm in search engine results and dilute your brand image.
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Media Planners Face Tough, Time-Consuming Task When It Comes To Search : Online media planners are struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of the search world, and some agencies are wrestling with whether search warrants an entirely new planning discipline--one that may or may not require outside assistance.
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B2B Search: Playing the Odds : You can stick to a search campaign budget, be it hundreds, or hundreds of thousands, of dollars.
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Local Search Brings Consumers Home : Geotargeting aids consumers who want to plan trips around a single location, shop online/pick-up offline, and find neighborhood goods and services.
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Why Is Search So Hot? : What does search have the rest of online advertising doesn't?
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Questions for Dana Todd, Executive VP of SiteLab International : Dana Todd shares with ClickZ readers her thoughts on a wide range of topics, including Yahoo!'s paid inclusion strategy, the nascent markets for local and personalized search, and what will happen when the behemoth agencies stop paying lip service to SEM and actually start doing it.
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Legal Clause Limits SEM Campaigns Before They Start : Many of our large clients insist we add a specific clause to our services agreement. It requires we not mention them on our Web site, in marketing materials, or in public presentations. In short, we may not benefit from any association with their brand. We call it the "do not utter our name" clause.

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Yahoo!/Dynamic Logic Study Reveals Increase In Key Brand Metrics : The research, conducted on more than 80 campaigns that ran from the first quarter through the third quarter of 2003, revealed that online advertising on Yahoo! offered a 24 percent lift in message association, or the ability to associate a specific message or tag line with a brand.
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Diary of a Google Gazumpee : Back in November, when the Google Dance began, Barry Lloyd of MakeMeTop wrote an article entitled "Been Gazumped by Google?" GAZUMPED! What a wonderfully descriptive term. In fact, it succinctly describes what happened to us when our website went from #1 to oblivion a few months ago.
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A Marketers Guide to Search Engine Marketing and Staying Alive in 2004 - Part Two : This issue we focus the light more closely on the biggest search engines you need to know about, their position in the market and how you can use the knowledge you have for each of them.
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How to Survive Search Engine Changes : Position dropped? Yahoo! or Google updated its index? Take a deep breath -- and eavesdrop on a call to the SEM hotline.
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Local Search Growing, but Small Biz Advertisers Cautious : Local search is a hot topic, but both search providers and small business owners face significant challenges before location based finding services gain broad acceptance.
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Search Engine Strategy: Links or Content? : A debate is raging in the search engine optimization community, about whether content or linking is the best path to top rankings. In this article, I lay out the claims of both sides, reaching the conclusion that neither strategy is sufficient by itself. The number of people who truly believe you can do one without the other is small - they just happen to be extremely vocal.
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Has Paid Search Peaked? : eMarketer's new Search Engine Marketing report says US paid search ad spending growth peaked in 2003, but it will exceed one-third of all online ad spending next year.
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A Golden Opportunity: Politics and SEM : How (and why) political candidates should leverage search.
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Saving Your Web Site from the Search Abyss : Try inputting your business name into a search engine and see if it pops up on the first page. If not, then it is not a name. Rather, it is a dead weight, sinking your e-commerce dreams.
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Web Sites Test Local Search Marketing : Search engine giants Google and Yahoo are wooing local advertisers to what has been primarily a national medium. Both quietly are testing local search marketing programs, while smaller sites such as Citysearch have switched to Google-like pay-per-performance billing, effectively increasing their ad base.
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SEMPO's Search Engine Marketing Resources : The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization's (SEMPO's) Web site offers a wealth of resources for both search marketers and information professionals alike.
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SEM - Research Measures Success : Remember when homework from school often required some research on your part to complete? It is much the same scenario for search engine marketing: you need to apply yourself by researching in order to understand your competition and target audience. Your visitors need to relate to you and understand your message and what you want them to do.
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Agencies and SEM: Howdy, Partner : For something so simple, search is pretty darned complicated. That's why agencies need specialized SEM partners.
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Search Engine Marketing – In a Funk? : Looking to start your online marketing plan? Do you follow the PPC route or aim for pure and organic search programs? Read on for Lisa's take on both ideas.
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When Being First May Not Matter : Be obsessed with usability, and all of your marketing that focuses on driving users to the Web site will have a greater impact.
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BBC buys up 'Hutton inquiry' Google links : Just 48 hours before Lord Hutton delivers his verdict on the controversy surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the BBC has begun an advertising experiment that involves buying up all internet search terms relating to the inquiry.
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Build Brand Equity for Search : People do business with companies they know and trust. If a customer knows and trusts you, she's more likely to click your search result listing and more likely to do business with you.
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SEM Best Practices for Ad Agencies : How ad agencies can best serve clients with SEM.
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Slam Dunk or Scam Junk? : None of my search-engine colleagues have purchased browser-based keywords for their clients. Stories of overestimated traffic, lack of customer support and spyware are enough to prevent me from recommending it.
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Maximizing SEM Revenue in the New Year, Part 2 : Allocate a search budget for maximum ROI -- a how-to guide.
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Search Engine Wars - Innovate To Survive in 2004 : The message is clear: you can't rely on just one search engine for all of your traffic. You must use all your wits to emerge victorious from the search engine wars. Google is important, but it is not everything. Keep your eyes and ears open to new opportunities and old standbys: other search engines and directories, paid placement and pay-per-click, newsletters, and even more traditional channels.
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Search Engine Marketing Resources From SEMPO : The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization's web site offers a wealth of resources for both search marketers and information professionals alike.
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Yahoo! Drops Google (Get Out Your Wallets) : On your mark, get set, raise your SEM budget. A lot.
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Maximizing SEM Revenue in the New Year, Part 1 : Today, let's look at revenue maximization strategies with a fixed, predefined budget.
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Why Ad Agencies Fail at Search Marketing : Three reasons to think twice before putting your agency in charge of SEM for your site.

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Understand Search Results Pages : Understanding how search engines display results is crucial to a successful campaign.
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The "Secret System" of Search Engine Advertising : Search engines have become one of the fastest growing venues in the advertising market, bringing clients from the old world of traditional advertising to the new world of paid listings. Yet while ad revenue increases for the search engines, so do the concerns for some long-time search advertisers who have invested a huge stake in the industry.
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The 2004 Crystal Ball for Media : Search marketing will go on steroids in 2004. It will become local, personal, persistent, integrated... and far more powerful.
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10 Ways To Increase Your Search Engine Ranking - Part 2 : AltaVista director of Internet search John Glick said links that come from link farms are considered by his company to be spam, and if any site uses such links excessively, it might be dropped altogether from AltaVista's listings.
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10 Ways To Increase Your Search Engine Ranking : Be suspicious of sites that claim to mass-submit your URL to many dozens or hundreds of search engines. There are less than 10 major search engines that you should care about being listed in.
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Is 2004 the Year of Local Search? : Google, Overture, LookSmart and others have self-consciously embraced the concept of Yellow Pages as a metaphor for the business models and marketplaces they are trying to create. Borrowing that old Yellow Pages tag line, they are "bringing buyers and sellers together."
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The Year of the Black Sheep : The take away lesson of 2003 for all marketers is consumers like being in control and their capability to take control is just warming up. Technologies have enabled them to construct their world in unique and individual ways. The Internet ties it all together and the businesses that use them wisely are experiencing record growth. All marketers should adapt and insert themselves into the consumer's world at the right time, rather than flinging creative swings into the ghostly apparition of marketing past.
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Tracking for Decisions in SEM : Your mission is to make sure the very best decisions are made with the data you have. Don't confuse data availability with data validity and actionability. Make informed, intelligent decisions based on valid data, and you'll have a great campaign.
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