In other words, while the tools are helpful, marketers should not rely on them alone. A successful PPC campaign actually requires a lot of work on top of the tools. For example, tools such as Kenshoo allow marketers to measure how much they are spending and whether or not they are making money based upon their bids.

According to Enge, the tools will return a figure very close to the ROI that you requested, but several other factors will be inaccurate. To avoid this, he suggests using human input. One way to do this is through negative keywords. He said that, although it seems obvious, a lot of people neglect to do it. Negative keywords allow for marketers to see which queries are generating clicks and much more. Enge recommends Epiar’s negative keyword tool for anyone needing the service.

Another area that marketers often leave out is ad optimization. It is extremely important for marketers to test before they push out an ad. He referenced a case study in which one company had a 473 percent gain on an ad campaign simply because it tested. They were able to come up with this aggregate number by taking the click-through-rate and multiplying it by the conversion rate.

With an enterprise PPC campaign, there is a lot of money to be made, if it is done right; but there is also a lot of money to be lost, if it is done wrong. Enge also advises marketers to utilize the adCenter from the joint efforts of Yahoo and Microsoft.

“If people weren’t playing in that territory before, they absolutely should be now,” he said.

Fortunately, Enge shares tips for cleaning up the data. First of all, he suggests going to the search engines. Companies should get listed with the engines and go through a validation process. Once users are validated, the engines are more confident that they have the right data.

Secondly, he suggests going to major data aggregators such as InfoUSA, Acxiom, and Localeze. These aggregators provide data to many sites, which the search engines crawl. As a result, it is very important that they have correct and updated data.

Lastly, Enge advises users to go to major portals such as SuperPages, Yelp, YellowPages. Once your business is correctly listed in all these places, your data problem will likely be solved.

Incidentally, Eric Enge co-authored a book entitled, The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization. He says he delves deeply into topics surrounding local search in the book. For more information on the book, visit here.

Eric begins by saying syndicating content is a great way to build inbound links and that marketers should not shy away from it.  The problem with syndication however lies in the fact that search engines can perceive your syndicated content as duplicated content – and that isn’t a good thing.

For example, you can have a content item on your site, have it syndicated to 10 other sites and you might find yourself in a situation where another site actually shows up in the search results for your content.  Is that a deal breaker though?  Not necessarily.

in the video Eric cites some real work examples where sites making heavy use of syndication increased their traffic by more than 50% over the course of 9 months.

There are some techniques you can implement in your syndication strategy to minimize duplication issues and still garner the benefit of syndication.

1. Use synopses.  Syndicate abbreviated versions of your full content, not necessarily the entire piece verbatim.  This is a technique widely employed by major media outlets and can have the extremely desirable effect of having your content obtain multiple results in a single search query.

2. NoIndex Your content.  Using a no index tag on your syndicated content means search engine crawlers will not index the content on the syndicated site leaving your site as the primary source for search query purposes.  Plus links back to your site from the syndicating site are still followed.

3. The third option or technique would be to create variant copy of your content for the express purpose of syndication.  With this strategy, slightly reconfiguring your content to be a better fit for the syndicating site or more customized to the theme or subject of the syndicating site can have the dual benefit of keeping your original content associated with your site as well as making your material designed for syndication more attractive for the sites where it would appear.

As WPN special guest correspondent Eric Enge points out, images provide users with a more engaged and satisfied search experience. Taking that point one step further, Schwartz says, “It’s [image search] really solving kinda a fundamental need.”

As Bing continues to differentiate itself from the other search engines, one key area it is focusing on is images. Schwartz says Bing is trying to offer a richer image experience for users directly from the search results page by blending images into the results. Bing wants to give users the option of completing their tasks in image search.

Moving forward, Schwartz says Bing is working to make image search safer and will continue to innovate to enhance each user’s search experience.

Do you see the value in using image search?

Webmasters also have the opportunity to provide topic tags, which are keywords that a searcher might use in a query. As Pittman tells special guest WPN correspondent Eric Enge, the more information that the user provides for the image, the better Google can index and surface the image.

Google is even developing RDFa tag structure, which would allow it to work off of a new language vocabulary that users could embed into their Web pages. The html structure would provide a means for search engines to identify various features of the image and thus provide more accurate image results.

Despite all the additional exposure images could bring to websites, Google is not seeing images being utilized as well as they could be. Pittman encourages webmasters to embrace images since they improve understanding and, ultimately, click-through rate (CTR) once they are indexed by the search engines.

Are you embracing the use of images?

Your social media strategy should include a specific angle. Have a goal from the beginning and don’t wander from it. If you keep a steady focus, you will be able to build upon it.

In the Real-World Low-Risk, High-Reward Link Building Strategies session at PubCon, Tamar Weinberg recalls Eric saying:

1.    Study what has worked before
2.    Write a compelling article
3.    Write an interesting description
4.    Vote for posts in front of you on the upcoming pages
5.    Make sure you stand out!

To elaborate on that last point, you want your content to be unique and authoritative. However, it still needs to be relevant. If your content is great but no one associates it with your brand, you probably won’t get a link.

Know in advance to be ready for criticism. Critics will be watching closely and waiting for a mistake. Remember to keep your focus in mind at all times.

On the subject of spam, Enge believes it is here to stay. It is important that companies understand spam, since some of it is valid. They need people to be able to sort through the Spam and pick out all the good content.

Enge has recently started podcasts on his site about analytics and search. Although it’s still a learning process, it has already done well. Since the tags within the podcast can be treated as a marketing tool, it is important to make good use of them. RSS feeds are being crawled during each podcast. It is a bad idea to allow podcasts default to 302 redirect. These are helpful tips that most people are not aware of, but they should be if they are interested in doing a podcast.

Eric Enge is a busy man! In addition to all the topics discussed already, he is a contributing writer for Search Engine Watch. Whether it is right or wrong, he enjoys incorporating his opinion into the news. Despite Danny Sullivan starting Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch is still doing well. This proves that a lot of space is available, which means there is room for everyone.