While the benefits of pay-per-click search marketing are well known, the current economy is forcing marketers to take a closer look at the “free” kind of search marketing, better known as search engine optimization.

I recently encountered this tweet from Aidan Beanland, a Regional SEO Manager at Yahoo!: When the SEO manager is the last to know about a new site section that’s already live –> big fat FAIL.

This is, unfortunately, such a common occurrence for SEO managers that it should have a name: the Big Surprise (conveniently abbreviated as “BS”). The new site section nobody thought to tell you about.

A summary of why relevancy in PPC is still as important as ever. Using the Australian hotel industry as an example, the post highlights the massive opportunities for PPC marketers to achieve outstanding results through highly relevant ads. It goes on to suggest how relevancy can be improved with keyword research, ad group structure, negative selection, ad copy and ongoing optimisiation, and concludes that thinking like a consumer can pay massive dividends.

Elekta Medical is beginning to 'see things differently' as they take steps to organically improve their search engine rankings. Here are the remaining six items (which brings us to a total of thirteen) that keeps them in perfect website health!

It turns out the number thirteen is not always an unlucky number. Just to be on the safe side, I'll split this post into two. Part one will certainly give you enough food for thought if you have even the slightest desire for your website to be in overall better health.

Writing for the Internet starts with an outline for your Internet marketing articles. This important writing step will allow you to draft articles quickly without missing any important information which will set your article apart from others. Develop your outline according to your writing style, do your research, and your articles will show the quality in your finished product. Here's how writing for the Internet is done.

"Attracting local search traffic is much easier than optimizing a Web site for a national or international audience," says Pamela Swingley of Savvy Internet Marketing in Orinda, Calif. "Local search is starting to really heat up."

There are three key elements you'll need to focus on: content, search-engine rankings and design.

Some keyword research is surface-level, fire and forget type stuff. If you just need to see relative volume levels, then a basic keyword research tool is all you need. If, however, you want to really dive deep and get the full skinny on your keywords, I'd recommend having each of these data points.

If anyone if familiar with Jill Whalen's "100% Organic" column on Search Engine Land, then you'll know this article is a great read. Here is Jill's latest rant on Page Rank sculpting. "With the latest brouhaha over PageRank sculpting, the boondoggle nature of many techniques that pass for SEO has become clearer than ever."

Search engine optimization is the cornerstone to your inbound marketing efforts. While is not always budgeted to hire a professional firm, we have 8 common mistakes to avoid.