Search Engine News

Jennifer Laycock

Four Tips On Writing A Web Site Home Page

by Nick Usborne - Over the last few months I have written quite a bit about writing landing pages and offer pages. But I haven't said much about the challenges writers face when writing a home page. Home pages can...

Jennifer Laycock

Be Wary of Google Partner Sites for AdWords

There's been a lot of talk about click fraud again in the last week or two, including some major articles in some mainstream media sources. While most of it rehashed many of the same old issues that we've been hearing...

Jennifer Laycock

Class Action Suit Filed Over AOL's Privacy Snafu

Danny Sullivan has an excellent blog post today that talks about the latest problems to plague AOL after they released member search records to the public last month. The class action suit has been filed on behalf of the 658,000...

Jennifer Laycock

Become a Beta Tester for Google

As if the simple "cool factor" wasn't enough to make most people want to get in early on any type of Google beta test, the company has now decided that they're willing to pay people for taking the time to...

Jennifer Laycock

Relying on Word of Mouth Marketing

Andy Beal points to a WOMMA study that looks at the most common forms of marketing practices used by companies in an Inc. 500 survey. The study shows that 82% of businesses rely on word of mouth marketing to help...

Jennifer Laycock

Still Confused by RSS? Honest, it's Really Simple!

Still Confused by RSS? Honest, it's Really Simple!Though RSS is taking off as one of the biggest things to hit web publishing since the blog itself, many small business owners are still a bit confused as to what RSS actually...

Jennifer Laycock

Q&A: Launching a Product to Bloggers

Every now and then I get a fairly interesting email question from a reader. One came in last week asking about the proper way to launch a new product or service among the blog community and when I answered it,...

Jennifer Laycock

Matt Cutts in an Egg Shell

Yeah, yeah, so it's supposed to be a nut shell, but that one just doesn't fit. So, I'd suggest that you head over to the SEO Egghead blog where you can read an excellent recap of 21 search marketing tips...

Jennifer Laycock

Google Strikes Deal with Intuit to Attract Small Business Advertisers

Matt Bailey points to the announcement that Google will be pairing with Intuit in order to offer quick and easy access to tools like Google AdWords and Google Maps business listings. The deal will also offer speedy access to upload...

Jennifer Laycock

Geographic AdWords Previews

If you're a small business that focuses your offerings and services on a particular area, there's a good chance that you've done at least a little bit of playing around with the local search options offered by Google AdWords. If...

Jennifer Laycock

Search Marketing Organization Forms in Portland, Oregon

It's always exciting to see search engine marketing professionals banding together to form organizations designed at advancing the industry. These days there are both national level organizations like SEMPO and SMA-NA and regional groups like DFWSEM in Dallas, Texas. That's...

Jennifer Laycock

Freshbooks to Offer Up Free Teleseminar Training

While articles, blog posts and discussion forums are a great way to learn new information about search and online marketing, there's also great value to be had in hands-on-training and online seminars. That's why it's always nice to see a...

Jennifer Laycock

Treating Your Customers Right Online and Off

One of my ongoing mantras when it comes to online reputation management is that you've got to rely heavily on that good old-fashioned business idea about treating your customers right. The basic idea is to show them respect, meet their...

Jennifer Laycock

5 Years Later, Google Remembers

It's been five long (or short) years since that fateful morning in early September and chances are high that almost anyone reading this post has crystal clear memories of that day. As it turns out, the Internet has a crystal...

Jennifer Laycock

Blogs Play Strong Role in Influencing Buyers

MarketingVox shares the results of a new study conducted by KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann that focuses on the role of blog content in influencing purchasing decisions of IT professionals. While it should come as no surprise that IT professionals are...

Jennifer Laycock

Hidden Content Sources for Your Website

by Kim Roach - People come online for information and those that offer the best content reap the greatest rewards. Unfortunately, this type of content is hard to come by. One of my favorite sources of content is public domain....

Jennifer Laycock

Wasting Time With Google

It's a well known idea in the world of search marketing that you should generally listen to what Matt Cutts has to say. So why I decided to ignore him when he suggested that readers avoid the Google Image Labeler...

Jennifer Laycock

Local Search, Don't Keep Putting it Off

If you are a small business owner serving a local market and you aren't already giving serious thoughts to your plans for local online marketing, you need to get cracking. New forecasts from research group Borrell Associates says that paid...

Jennifer Laycock

So THAT'S What They Are Called...

For quite a while now, observant Google users have noticed that the first search result in Google's organic listings have had some extra links attached to them. The links tend to lead to the most popular sub-pages of a site...

Jennifer Laycock

SEO Speedway – Getting Ahead and Staying in Front of the Pack

by Bill Stroll - In the world of non paid placement, organic or natural search marketing for websites is so much more than putting up a website and expecting the search engines to place your website in its rightful place;...

Jennifer Laycock

Online Reputation Management Catches the Eye of MSM

Main steam media is starting to catch on to the amazing power of a good online reputation. In fact, just this past week both the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times ran articles talking about the effect that...

Jennifer Laycock

Special Discount on ClickTracks for Search Engine Guide Readers

Tomorrow I'll be posting the next article in the Real Small Business, Real Big Ideas series and in it, I'll be talking about how Carrie is using ClickTracks software to gather the web analytics data that will help her improve...

Jennifer Laycock

Budgeting for Pay Per Click

by Nick Guastella - It can be difficult to budget for PPC spending because pricing is based on keyword bids, which are constantly fluctuating. Normally, keyword prices increase over time, although a slight decrease in average keyword bid (3 percent)...