Andy Beal wrote a great post this week called "How to Be a Twitter Guru," which is not actually (thank god) a guide to being a "Twitter guru." Instead Andy recounts a flip-out he had on Twitter (which, sadly, I missed) (start from the bottom): Possibly without meaning to, Andy has put Twitter through the filter of signaling theory.

If you're not familiar with signaling, it refers to behavior whose primary purpose is to "signal" or convey something about ourselves to others – whether or not it's true. Generally, what we're trying to signal is status. Some people, such as economist Robin Hanson, believe signaling is responsible for a great deal, even most of what humans do. (You can hear him talk about it in this podcast.) Here are some examples of behavi... > Read more

This is a guest post by A.D. Srikanth, a Web Developer and SEO Consultant. Check out his portfolio or contact him by email at adsrikanth[at]gmail.com for more information. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to visualize link flow within a website to see how links flow from one page to another? You can, by making use of a couple of free tools, and without having to code.

Following is a brief tutorial on how to create a visualization of the link flow on a site. For this purpose, I will be using Xenu, which is a free tool to check for broken links on a site, and, Graphviz, an open source graph visualization tool. In order to demonstrate an example, I am considering a random restaurant website. Some directories within the site, like images and others, are being skipped so that link flow amo... > Read more

On the off chance that you’re not right sick of hearing about the JC Penney SEO scandal – or that you had better things to do this week and missed it entirely – let’s go over some of the many responses to the incident. The quick recap: The New York Times alerted Google spam man Matt Cutts to JC Penney’s highly questionable, probably full-on black-hat SEO tactics that had it ranking in the top five for many highly competitive head terms (via a slew of paid links).

The Google slap was administered, and JC Penney’s rankings have plummeted, but naturally, this raised all sorts of questions, like how did such a high-profile company get away with such a large-scale violation of Google’s guidelines? I’m also wondering: Why is JC Penney’... > Read more

This is a guest post by Chad Summerhill, author of the blog PPC Prospector, provider of free PPC tools and PPC tutorials, and in-house AdWords Specialist at Moving Solutions, Inc. (UPack.com and MoveBuilder.com). How many PPC blog posts do you read in a week? How many do you actually take action on? I’m guilty of reading a lot and acting too little.

Much of the information published on optimizing your PPC campaigns is very interesting and insightful, but maybe not particularly actionable (or it can be difficult to take action easily). So when you see something that's actionable and easy to try, don’t just read and tweet! Actually try it! Slow down and ask yourself how you can leverage this new knowledge in your own campaigns. That’s what I did, just a few weeks ago when Tom Deme... > Read more

In response to declining quality of organic (non-paid) Google search results, including a recently exposed link-farm-spam scheme by JC Penney, Google today released Google Personal Blocklist to help users keep SEO spam such as content link farms out of their search results. Chrome users can today download the Google Personal Blocklist extension that enables users to block specified domains from appearing in their search results, similar to how you can blacklist (or block) certain emails using a manual email spam filter.

Google will also track the domains that users flag "and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results," wrote Matt Cutts, principal engineer at Google and a prominent anti-spam spokesman for the company, in a blog post. What is Google ... > Read more

In many cases, expanding your paid search marketing reach can have as great of an impact on results as refining your existing campaigns. As you look to expand your paid search campaigns, you want to focus on two core means of discovery: "Wider" - Going "wider" means identifying new keyword verticals that didn't previously exist within your campaigns.

This often comes in the form of new ad groups targeting wholly new keyword ideas that you hadn't previously introduced into your campaigns. "Deeper" - Going "deeper" in this context means mining your existing campaigns for new targeting opportunities. The best way to do this is by looking at the search query data generated by your existing campaigns. WordStream's latest product release offers some tool... > Read more

Earlier this week in digging into some Google insights for search data we learned that an increasing number of you are looking for information about Google's AdWords Certification program: The impetus for all this new-found search interest is likely a rebranding of Google's partner program and a series of changes on Google's end to how the AdWords certification process works, including several eligibility standards.

As with the need for free AdWords videos mentioned here recently, not all of Google's help materials are immediately helpful, and the same is true for the documentation around the AdWords certification program (possibly another reason for a jump in search traffic here). In this post we'll try to represent some of the nuts and bolts information around getting google adwords cer... > Read more

This is a guest post by Chad Summerhill, author of the blog PPC Prospector, provider of free PPC tools and PPC tutorials, and in-house AdWords Specialist at Moving Solutions, Inc. (UPack.com and MoveBuilder.com). When you have to read a help file to understand how to use a feature, doesn’t it bug you? Don’t you wish that things were a little more intuitive and easy to use? For whatever reason, the AdWords team seems to be masters at releasing very useful features (sometimes awesome features like Broad Match Modifiers) and then making them a pain to use.

You may remember my concerns about  ACE for ads a few weeks back. Again, ACE for ads is great, but no fun to use. I hate to be negative about negative keywords, which I love so much (see my posts on search query mining... > Read more

This is a guest post by Peter VanRysdam, the CMO of 352 Media Group, an award-winning Tampa Web design company, and the author of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World. Connect with him on Twitter: @Peter352. From the CEO’s desk, marketing looks like a pretty simple prospect. Slap together a funny video, post it online and wait for it to “go viral.

” If it were only that easy. In fact, the quickest way to doom a viral campaign is to try to make it go viral. Just like with search engine optimization, content is king when it comes to viral marketing. A remarkable message will be shared, while a blatant ad will be seen for what it is and join the long list of failed memes on YouTube. You don’t have to fall into that dreaded trap. I’m a firm believer in learning from mistak... > Read more

I won't try to fill any roundup shoes this Friday as the blog's real writing talent (no offense to Chad or myself) takes a day off, but I did want to talk about the Search Saga (I use saga instead of "wars" deliberately, as it's really more of a he-said-she-said spat than a technological arms race) and the latest news surrounding Google and Blekko and content farms (oh my?).

We'll start with the Google/Bing spat. I won't give you the standard roundup as Search Engine Land has done their usual impeccable job of that (check out their latest post for, well: the latest), Larry covered it yesterday and you can no doubt find it several other places on the Web. I also won't talk about who's "right" or "wrong" because I'm already a bit weary of the subject, and i... > Read more

Over the past few weeks, we've walked you through several scenarios demonstrating how you can use the newest evolution of WordStream to supercharge your AdWords account. Whether you're a novice or an expert, WordStream for PPC has tools that can make your job easier and your campaigns more successful.

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Scenario #5 “I know the best practices. I’ve been using AdWords for a long time now and have had a history of success. That being said, I’m always trying to find ways to squeeze every last drop of profit out of my account, add to my efficiency, and continue to grow PPC-related revenue for the business.” If you're an old hand at AdWords – whether you're an pay-per-click agency or an individual advertiser – and you're already ... > Read more

This is a guest post by Erin Everhart. Erin is the marketing associate for web design company 352 Media Group, a certified Microsoft Surface developer and leader in web marketing. She specializes in social media marketing, search engine optimization and content management, developing web marketing and blogger outreach campaigns.

She’s a frequent blogger across multiple sites and holds a B.S. in journalism from the University of Florida. She has an unhealthy addiction to salt, EM dashes and the Gators. Follow her on Twitter: @erinever. AP officially recognized blogs as credible news sources in September 2010, but people have trusted blogs a lot longer than that. In fact, due to an over-saturated, price-driven advertising market, blogs — and the recommendations and sharing of inf... > Read more