The recent Local University marketing workshop held here in the Twin Cities had a line up of local search marketing speakers that was by far and away the most proficient local SEM panel ever assembled. Ever. Being a search engine marketer myself, whom works on many local and small business campaigns, I thought I would share some of the little local gems and actionable items that I took away from the event.

WebRanking loves getting involved with great organizations like Local University

Disclaimer: The following is not intended to supplement or replace the information that can be gathered by attending a Local U workshop in person. It is only a small sampling of what can be gained from this event. If you are an SEO/SEM and not currently enrolled in an upcoming Local U seminar, you are here by advised to do so at the earliest opportunity.

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With Christmas only a few days away, those last minute acts of kindness probably aren’t going to be enough to get your name scratched off the naughty list and penciled into the nice one.  Sure, you might hope to slip by this year on some clerical error or a loophole in the revised 2009 Naughty and Nice Code of Ethics, but remember Santa is supposedly checking them twice (which makes me wonder if he has a Naughty & Nice app for his iPhone yet, or is still doing it by hand?). 

Yet whether your stocking this year will be filled with lumps of coal or gifts of joy, you are not alone.  We have sent out a request to our colleagues, associates and some talented search elves up north to come up with our First Annual Not Quite Definitive List of Who’s Been Naughty and Who’s Been Nice in Search for 2009.   

Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas.

* Google gets lots of gifts for attempting to innovate search with real-time results, social search, and more.

* StumbleUpon.com gets lots of gifts this Holiday season for leaving the hands off of eBay, listening to its community, and implementing changes around their desires.

- Jordan Kasteler

* Bing goes on this list for bringing more seriousness in competition to the search landscape. They’ve got a long way to go, but it’s the first positive step in a long, long time.

- Rand Fishkin

* Google Adwords new ad formats. This was a long-time coming in my opinion.  I am curious to see if Yahoo and MSN try to follow Google, or, wait until their platform merger.

* Google Analytics upgrades since October….specifically, more “Goals” and “Alert” system. 

* Google Webmaster Tools upgrades….specifically, their “Parameter Handling”.

- Clint Danks

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The Search Engine War against Paid Link Builders

Buying and selling links to directly influence search engine ranking algorithms has been a hot button in the SEO community for several years. The topic first started to really heat up back in 2005 when Google began taking stronger action against publishers and advertisers who bought and sold keyword targeted text links.

Today the search engine war against paid link profiteers still rages on, but with the majority of buyers and sellers going underground, the battle has become more of a guerrilla style conflict that is being fought through site by site skirmishes (penalties), media intimidation (education) and threat of treason (de-indexing).

Because of the problematic nature of purchasing links, it amazes me when I encounter new creative openly promoting links in the form of a commodity. Such was the case few days ago when I was deleting a bunch of spam from an old email account that I no longer use and noticed the following email that was just sent the day before.

Fortunately, due to some great partnerships this holiday season, we’ve been able to form what we call a MegaLink Package. This MegaLink Package includes 150,000 links plus 1,000 Twitter followers for a special rate of $1650 per month!!!

Here’s what is included:
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