Okay, back to some basics today. These days, landing pages are being used very frequently, even though they have evolved from the cheesy designs and glaring oddities. These days landing pages come with sexy designs and the best compelling copies, that can convince you in seconds. We’ve seen many good examples of modern, sleek looking landing pages, which are eye candies but when it comes to search engine optimization, I’ve seen that not all of them are fool-proof. Which is what we would discuss here today.

Article by Mani Karthik from Daily SEO Blog

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Being an international search guy, I’m often asked which is smarter: developing a multilingual strategy around a language or a country. Both strategies have benefits and challenges, but before you commence your program, make sure you know exactly your path. It’s much easier to get it right in the beginning, rather than re-engineering your site after the fact.

Although every need and budget is different, here are some benefits and challenges associated with each tactic.

Article By Michael Bonfils, Search Engine Watch. Read the full article here.

Late last year we introduced you to the AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative. At the time, we explained that new formats would be a major focus for us in 2010 and gave you a sneak peak into the types of new ad formats heading your way.

Article from Google’s official blog. Read the full article here

Google has decided to change the name of what was called the “Google Local Business Center” to “Google Places.” The rationale, according to the press release, is to better connect Google Place Pages with the place where local business information is claimed, entered and enhanced…

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Article by Greg Sterling from searchengineland.com

The lists are there monthly, and sometimes even weekly: which search engine has the biggest market share? Without exception, Google always wins.

Lately, Bing has gained market share in the U.S., like in March when Bing went from 11.5 percent to 11.7 percent market share. It’s a win for Bing, but these gains are only percentage points. Google is still the biggest by far.

A few years ago at a search conference, someone asked me if I saw a “Google killer” on the horizon. My answer then was that the only thing that could “kill” Google was Google itself. And that still seems to hold true today. Google might still kill itself, but no one is about to kill Google’s stranglehold on market share.

Maybe its time we start to look at this differently. Times are changing, as are search engines and traffic sources. The market share lists show us how big of an advantage Google has on other (major) search engines, but they don’t show us the difference with other traffic sources.

Recent developments show us a new way we should be looking at traffic sources. Yes, Google is still important and most probably the biggest traffic source out there. But there is more, a lot more. If you act now, you can get a lot of benefit out of it.

Article by Bas van den Beld, Search Engine Watch

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The premise that ad popularity and a high quality score leads to improved search advertising results may or may not be true….especially for B2B advertisers. I urge business marketers to challenge this assumption and understand the relationship between PPC quality score and ROI-based results.

In simple terms, ad position is primarily determined by how much an advertiser is willing to pay for each click (i.e. your bid) and the popularity, or click-through-rate (CTR), associated with your ad. Relevancy also plays a role… and very poor landing pages can lead to penalties.

More information can be found here on Google Quality Score, and Yahoo Quality Index. Details aside, Quality Score causes most advertisers to try and maximize response, or click-through-rate.

Note: Not surprisingly, this methodology also increases the click charges that go into the pockets of search networks!

Article By Patricia Hursh, searchengineland.com

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How many links do you need to your site? How much content should you create? These are questions that publishers grapple with all the time.

As with much of SEO, the answer is “it depends.” More precisely, it depends on the level of competitiveness in your market space, and the scope of what you’re trying to accomplish. Today, we’ll examine a couple of scenarios and discuss how this might impact your SEO campaigns.

Article By Eric Enge, Search Engine Watch

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