User generated content is becoming a big part of search. And its progression is sure to continue with the announcement of Wikia launching their very own social search engine for the first quarter of this year. Could this be the change of search as we know it?

Checkout Danny Sullivan�s Q&As with Jimmy Wales from Wikia.

Update 19-01-07: Wikiseek has arrived!

I am very pleased that Lee from the Top Rank Online Marketing Blog has considered this blog as a must read search marketing blog. To be up there with so many talented bloggers in the industry gives me great pleasure and well done Lee for noticing my blog so quickly. Thanks!

Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing: Strangers into Friends into Customers is a true classic and the SEM resource of the month. The book was first published in 1999 and it shows no signs of dating.

By focusing on turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers, Seth Godin breaks from the norm of ‘Interruption Marketing’ that we have become so used to both online and off. He shares some great concepts for blogging and business in general.

“By talking only to volunteers, Permission Marketing guarantees that consumers pay more attention to the marketing message,” he writes. “It serves both customers and marketers in a symbiotic exchange.”

This month’s SEM resource of the month carries on from October. E-Consultancy has recently released another blinder: Paid Search Marketing (PPC) Best Practice Guide. This comprehensive and in-depth heavy-weight of a guide is packed with over 250 top PPC pages.

Another fantastic piece of work by Dave Chaffey, complimenting the SEO Best Practice Guide and will no doubt further assist you in your full SEM efforts.

Key Sections:

Part 1. Planning For Paid Search Marketing
Part 2. Targeting With Paid Search Marketing
Part 3. Budget And Bid Management For Paid Search
Part 4. Creative, Testing And Optimisation For Paid Search Marketing
Part 5. Communications Integration For Paid Search
Part 6. Appendices For Paid Search Marketing Best Practice Guide

The big 3 have joined in support of Google’s sitemaps protocol. It is nice to see them all playing ball together and now webmasters will only require one stop in showing the major search engines an up-to-date picture of fresh content that is available for crawling.

Links

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft adopt same Web index tool

E-Consultancy – has an annual individual subscription to all their SEM/SEO resources that will cost you £149. Ok, this may not be super cheap – but it really has some awesome reports. Personally I believe the 208 pages in the SEO Best Practice Guide justifies the price alone.

It really goes into great depth, although I wouldn’t advice reading any more than a chapter per sitting as it can get a bit intense. It’s not that complicated to comprehend, but it really will get you mind buzzing with ideas and how you can relate them in the promotion of your products or services.

There are loads of other best practice guides, buyer’s guides and various template files to keep you occupied too. I am really looking forward the Paid Search best practice guide which is due out soon. In fact, when I spoke to Chris, one of the editors from E-Consultancy at the ad-tech exhibition last month, he said it should be ready by the end of the month – fingers crossed, I can’t wait to get my geeky fingers on it!

Key topics to improve your results from SEO
- Techniques for advanced keyphrase analysis
- Developing an integrated search engine marketing strategy across paid and natural search
- Improve your page inclusion and reporting using Google Sitemaps
- Detailed coverage of on-page optimization factors including document meta data, copywriting and code structure explaining the factors which really matter.
- How to increase your click-through rate in the search engine results page
- 10 complementary SEO strategies for refining site architecture
- How to plan and execute a link-building campaign
- 10 key factors to improve landing page effectiveness