Optimizing Your Optimization: A Holistic Approach

In the past week, there has been an influx of online marketing tips and how-to's on industry blogs covering everything from how to optimize eBay stores and contextual ad campaigns to social media marketing for business-to-business. We thought these were some excellent sources for creating a more universal online marketing campaign.

As with most things, a person crawls before he walks, so fundamentals are key. They include a hefty stack of reading, making sure your site structures are sound, and after that, practicing and testing. Later, you can get into the fun, experimental, conceptual stuff.

Think of it as playing the guitar: learn the finger placements, the chords, the music, the rhythm, practice, practice, practice, and once you have all that down, have at the gnarly.

SEO for the Noobs

Over at

Therefore, when bidding on contextual keywords, keep in mind the cost-per-conversion of the sites on which your ads appear, and adjust accordingly. And don't forget AdWords Discounter and Yahoo's Quality Based Pricing to help maximize your ROI.

Optimizing Your eBay Store
 
Tamar Weinberg tackles this topic over at
He also wins the Quote of the Week Award with, "Just because you win a game of whip it out, doesn’t mean people will like you."

Yeah, Mailcoat, like you'd know. ;-)

Optimizing for Universal Search

Last but not least is the likely evolution of search, specifically Google's testing of Universal Search, which incorporates not just websites, but blogs, images, videos, profiles, news, you name it. That means the SEO game will change if Universal Search becomes permanent.