A round-up of interesting posts, resources and articles from around the web today. From site maps to link bait to the Google/Yahoo deal, find out what stories I thought were interesting enough to share with you today.
- Barry does a nice job of recapping a recent Google Groups discussion on Google Sitemaps and whether or not you need to create one for your site. I'm with Barry on this one...I'd rather fix the issues that cause a site to have problems in Google than rely on a site map, but also understand that with some sites, you need the "quick fix" option. Take a read and decide for yourself.
- Matt McGee has launched a new reader mailbag over at SmallBusinessSEM.com. He's got a column up today from a national company with local franchises who asks about the best way to generate some link bait for each of his franchise pages. Check out Matt's response.
- There's some good tidbits of advice about how to write for the web in an article by Michael Agger over at Slate. While I don't agree with everything he writes, his intro alone is worth the click thru. Of course I find it more than a little ironic that the author lost my attention about three paragraphs before the end of the article...
- If you haven't already heard, Google and Yahoo have signed a deal that would have Google supplying paid search ads to Yahoo for the next decade. Greg Sterling has a great post over at Search Engine Land that explains the move and outlines the pros and cons. If you're interested in learning more about the difference between the Google deal and the Microsoft deal, Danny has a nice side-by-side comparison chart.
- I literally have more than a dozen books sitting in a stack on my bookshelf waiting for me to tackle them. They're all marketing books and many are ones I've been meaning to read for ages. I finally cracked open Groundswell and have started reading it, and am partway through The Tipping Point. If you're looking for a few books of your own, try the 5 Influential Books All Bloggers Should Know post over at ProBlogger. They're all in my library and as a group, provide a nice well-rounded philosophy for online marketing.
Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, an educational web site aimed at translating the search marketing world into something that small business owners can understand. Jennifer specializes in common sense search engine marketing, viral marketing and customer outreach via social media and blogs. A former search marketing consultant and in-house trainer, Jennifer’s clients have included companies like Verizon, American Greetings and Highlights for Children. Her primary clients now are a little girl named Elnora and a little boy named Emmitt.
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