These tools may seem like an uncommon approach but give you those extra ideas and concepts.

1. Google Sets will tell you what Google itself considers relevant (neighboring) terms:

3. Searchradar not only displays a keyword tag cloud but also demonstrates the usage of this keyword and its synonyms in short context. It also offers a handy FireFox and Internet Explorer extensions that display relevant topics within Google search results.

4. Keyword Map is also a great fun to play with. It will show you keyword variations either in alphabetical order or on a map:

• they will help you to get new ideas for your upcoming blog posts if you are stuck for inspiration;
• they can improve your writing style by enriching it with synonyms;
• they will give you a deeper understanding of your niche;
• they will show you new directions to develop outside but nearby your current niche.

(Search Engine Land) –  At various times it’s been called AMP or APEX, but today Yahoo introduced its new “unified digital advertising platform,” which the company is now calling APT. With the platform it gained through the Right Media acquisition at its core, Yahoo is positioning APT as a dynamic, open marketplace (dispensing with the term “exchange”).

The central idea is very simple: simplification of buying and selling advertising across the internet. The first customers — indeed the apparent drivers of the initiative — are Yahoo’s newspaper partners.

Search is not a part of APT at this point. But previously Yahoo President Sue Decker said that it would encompass all ad types and formats across Yahoo and its partner network:

We are building a cutting edge ad platform that runs across all formats, whether it is search, display, video. It is capable of harnessing the power of Yahoo and the power off Yahoo. But it will also take advantage of emerging formats like mobile, all in an easy to use system.

APT was formally unveiled in New York today, with an appearance by Jon Hamm, the actor who plays advertising executive Don Draper on the popular AMC show Mad Men. Lots of sweeping and dramatic claims are being made for APT and how it will affect online advertising.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang blogged about the launch:

Our confidence in APT’s ability to transform the marketplace isn’t based on theory or conjecture. It’s because of the feedback we’ve been hearing from partners who have been working with us side-by-side as we developed and then began testing the platform. In fact, William Dean Singleton, CEO of Media News Group (parent company of the San Jose Mercury News), also joined us on stage today, using words like “extraordinary and “sea-change” to describe how APT will take MNG into the future.

Yang characterized it as a “platform that would be to 2009 what radio was to 1924, TV to 1947, color TV to 1965, and the Internet to 1993.”

Google, AOL and Microsoft all have their own “next generation” ad platforms in the works or various stages of development. For example, just yesterday AOL announced its own: BidPlace.

Clearly APT is consistent with what advertisers, agencies and publishers want: reach, targeting and simplification. But we’ll get to see in the coming months whether it can deliver for them — and for Yahoo.

Content is still king. Optimize your online content helps to see a significant increase in traffic and conversions as a result of improved organic search rankings. And if you’re a btob company or invested in building a brand, a simple but often overlooked way to increase your keyword rankings is to optimize the content of your email newsletter.

If you follow current best practices, you’re already posting your full newsletter articles to your site, where recipients will click through to read them, along with other content, over the few days following distribution of the e-newsletter. These posted, optimized articles will continue to generate significant traffic for years as a result of organic searches.

So, how to get started? Think about important keywords, phrases and crosslinks that would help with SEO and develop the newsletter content and article titles around them. Initially, this can feel a bit challenging as you try to balance using action words used to get readers to open your email or click a link and optimizing headlines that target specific keyword phrases.

Consider these tips, too:

Use a teaser and optimize your titles and headlines for keywords Use motivating subject lines, titles and one to two paragraph “teasers” in the e-mail to motivate readers to click through to a Web site version optimized with keywords in subheads or secondary titles following a colon or dash.

Review your e-mail clickthrough rates, Web analytics and internal search data to determine topics and keywords for future articles.

Target second- and third-tier keywords Optimize articles and pages specifically written around less competitive but important phrases to return a higher ranking.

Break up the newsletter Always post and optimize a complete Web version of your newsletter, but also divide it up by placing all of the articles, tips and other content individually on the site in a resource center or similar area.

Follow SEO basics Optimize article URLs, title tags and links to reflect your targeted keywords. Incorporate crosslinks to related articles on your site, and link previous articles and newsletters to your freshly posted content.

Yes, another way to optimize, another acronym to add to the pile. But what is Digital asset optimization? (DAO I guess) It’s basically taking your digital assets, i.e. flikr photos, youtube videos, pdf’s etc. and optimizing them for the search engines. This type of optimization is a direct result of the Web 2.0 movement. We have already seen these being indexed. Here is a good example of digital asset optimization in action.

Ok, enough of the definition, how do we optimize these assets? There are two ways to do this for both on page and off page. What do I mean by this?

On page Digital Asset Optmization :
This would be considered the images, blog posts, videos, pdf’s you have on your site. Ways to increase indexing are first naming the file with your keywords you want to rank (and the ultimate them of the asset, duh!) If you have a video or image of your company’s offerings or even strategy- label it as xyz_strategy.jpg. Most site programmers and designers label it with their own interpretation of what’s in the image rather than keyword focus.

Next, add an alt tag. This should be done for the major images, not the graphic images that make up the website, i.e. spacers and border images.

Lastly add the keyword you want to focus in the content as many times and it fits. No, I’m not saying add sentences like, “check out xyz strategy because xyz strategy is the best xyz strategy.” That’s considered keyword stuffing and is prohibited by most of the search engines. And always focus on one or two keywords. Trying to rank one page for 15 different keywords gets you nowhere is the search results and also lessens the chance for a visitor to convert.

Off page Digital Asset Optmization :
This would be your Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Twitter, Delicious, and every other social networking application TechCrunch reports on.
Most of these sites provide areas to include, title, description, and tags to use in their own search results but Google has been indexing of course, YouTube results and I’m sure once deals are in place others will follow.

Digital Asset Optimization has become a important compliment to traditional SEO so keep this in mind when creating that rich media.

This one is up for debate and borders on the fringe of black hat SEO. For those of us wanting to keep our SEO jobs, Google does a great job in telling us what they considered cloaking.

From my perspective, I believe any content presented to the visitor should be the same as to a SE spider.

Here is a breakdown of the of the definitions as posted on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog:

Geolocation: Serving targeted/different content to users based on their location. As a webmaster, you may be able to determine a user’s location from preferences you’ve stored in their cookie, information pertaining to their login, or their IP address. For example, if your site is about baseball, you may use geolocation techniques to highlight the Yankees to your users in New York.

The key is to treat Googlebot as you would a typical user from a similar location, IP range, etc. (i.e. don’t treat Googlebot as if it came from its own separate country—that’s considered cloaking).

IP delivery: Serving targeted/different content to users based on their IP address, often because the IP address provides geographic information. Because IP delivery can be viewed as a specific type of geolocation, similar rules apply. Googlebot should see the same content a typical user from the same IP address would see.

Google also created a video presentation of these bad, bad strategies.

Cloaking: Serving different content to users than to Googlebot. This is a violation of the webmaster guidelines. If the file that Googlebot sees is not identical to the file that a typical user sees, then you’re in a high-risk category. A program such as md5sum or diff can compute a hash to verify that two different files are identical.

I’ve always heard of these shady techniques and wonder why rogue SEO’s play this game. They are jeopardizing their clients and more importantly their reputation.  Just create unique, compelling content that will increase relevancy, ranking, and ultimately-conversions.