Here’s my roundup of the best search/marketing posts I found and read during January. If you’re new to this blog, this is a monthly feature that began way back in 2007. You can find earlier “Best Of”s for each month in the archives: 2008 Best Posts and 2007 Best Posts. I never include my own posts in these end-of-month recaps.

Local Search

• Martijn Beijk/Mihmorandum: Local Search Citations in Continental Europe

SEO

• Rand Fishkin/SEOmoz: Root Domains, Subdomains vs. Subfolders and The Microsite Debate
• Karon Thackston: Here’s What’s Missing in the Article Directories Debate
• Michael Gray/SEL: A Look At Article Directories and Their Influence in Organic Rankings

PPC

• Saad Kamal/SEJ: 9 Tips to Write Effective Google AdWords Copy
• Ron Jones/SEW: Search Ad Quality Score 101, Part 2

Blogs & Blogging

• Mara Rogers/Copyblogger: SpeedBlogging: How To Write Better Posts In Less Time
• Mack Collier/Marketing Profs: How Should Your Company Handle Negative Blog Comments?
• Rich Brooks/Flyte Blog: Why Blogspot is the Wrong Place for Your Business Blog
• Jim Cronin/Real Estate Tomato: 8 Things That You Are Not Doing On Your Real Estate Blog, But Should Be

Social Media

• Todd Malicoat: 7 Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Failed (and how to fix it!)
• Steve Thornton/TwiTip: Twitter versus Facebook: Should you Choose One?
• Jennifer Laycock/SEG: Six Lessons from a Wooden Boy: Lesson Three: Don’t be a Social Media Jackass
• Beth Harte: 25 Signs You’ve Got a Strong SM Consultant or Agency

Analytics

• Shawn Purtell/Unofficial Google Analytics Blog: 6 Tools Every Google Analytics User Should Have
• Avinash Kaushik/Occam’s Razor: Google Analytics Maximized: Deeper Analysis, Higher ROI & You
• André Scholten/Yoast: Track SEO rankings with Google Analytics