April ’09: Best Search/Marketing Posts

Here’s my roundup of the best search/marketing posts I found and read during April. 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.

By the way … this collection of articles is really, really terrific. April was a great month for search/online marketing content.

Local Search

• Mike Blumenthal: Google Maps: Manic Merging of Business Listings due to Algo Change
• Martijn Beijk/Blumenthals: Tracking Local search Traffic with Analytics

Small Business

• Lisa Barone/Outspoken Media: Small Business SEO: How To Launch That Web site
• David Ingram/SEL: A Google Alternative For Small Business: Breadcrumbs & Business Directories

SEO

• Tom Critchlow/SEOmoz: How to Rank Well in Google Products Search & a Big List of Places to Get Reviews
• Vanessa Fox/O’Reilly Radar: Practical Tips for Government Web Sites (And Everyone Else!) To Improve Their Findability in Search
• Stoney deGeyter/SEG: Q&A: A Few Things You Need to Know About Keyword Usage
• Mat Siltala/Search Engine People: The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist
• Stoney deGeyter/SEG: 61 Pre-SEO Campaign Questions You Need To Answer To

PPC

• Brian Carter/SEJ: Why The AdWords Starter Edition Is Bad For Business
• Avinash Kaushik/Occam’s Razor: Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool: Monetize The Long Tail of Search
• Brad Geddes/bg Theory: Your Broad Match Keywords Are Not Converting Higher than Your Exact Match Keywords

Social Media

• Glen Allsopp/PluginHQ: The Definitive Guide to StumbleUpon
• Lee Odden/Online Marketing Blog: 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips
• Aaron Weiche/Five Technology: You’re A Small Business, Why Be On Twitter? 100 Reasons.
• Lee Odden/Mashable: Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success
• Rob Ousbey/Distilled: Ten Minute Guide: How-To Become a Wikipedia Pro
• Chris Winfield/10e20: The Best Niche Social Media News Sites Right Now

Blogs & Blogging

• Jeremiah Owyang: 8 Principles for the Modern Blog … at least for 2009
• Mack Collier/Viral Garden: Secrets of the top Marketing and Social Media blogs
• Rand Fishkin/SEOmoz: 21 Tips to Earn Links and Tweets to Your Blog Post

Design & Usability

• Jordan Kasteler/Search Engine People: Optimizing Post-Conversion: Maximimizing Your “Thank You” Page