For those of you participating in search engine marketing, specifically pay per click within Google Adwords, you understand the importance of doing it right to maximize ROI.

There are plenty of e-books, "definitive guides," seminars and tools to help support your efforts - but every once in a while you come across a (often simple) tool that becomes a permanent part of your marketing arsenal or process. Such is Microsoft's Commercial Intention tool.

 Why is this valuable? Fact is, most search marketers get overly focused on click through rates. The reality is good marketers are not as interested in click action as they are in conversion (i.e. download, register, buy) action.

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First, it was brought to my attention that my last blog post was a bunch of babble. Now that I read it, I have to agree. Sorry about that. Lesson: Don't blog when you haven't had any sleep just for the sake of getting a post up.

And now for our regularly scheduled program: For many, what Twitter is remains a mystery. Although I get it, I have to admit I have stayed on the sidelines with it.  I have yet to download Twhirl, so I can be distracted by everyone's tweets -- but I know I won't be able to hold out forever ("welcome to the brave new world," as my endless wormhole business partner likes to say).

Those who are actually using it, recognize its value, yet still find they are wasting copious amounts of time will appreciate the Penny Arcade post about Twitter.

When I start twittering more frequently, I hope I can keep it "tweetworthy."

Lots of traveling this week, but wanted to get some quick thoughts posted since my last post was on our Capture the Conversation blog last Friday.

As our economy is feeling the crush, companies are becoming more interested in how they can be marketing online. Not to say that interest is tied solely to the state of the economy, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Bottom line: Internet marketing is more cost effective.

Consider one aspect in Lehman's latest report predicting that the domestic online advertsing market will grow by over 23% before the end of this year, bringing it to just over $26 billion. The Internet may still be a child, but increases like this continue to demonstrate a shift in thinking.

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I know the Google Analytics Benchmarking feature was released in March, but I'm bringing it up again because I was reminded of it after receiving several recent Google email notifications. In summary, companies or website owners running Google Analytics on their websites now have the ability to anonymously share their metrics.

The benefit is they get insight into the metrics of others who are also choosing to share. So if you are running Google Analytics on your "shopping site" you can now see how your web stats compare to other shopping sites. The degree of categorization is obviously still in the works - and the value of this benchmarking effort should only increase as you are able to compare your stats to sites that are closest to what you would consider competition.

How will this get better? As a search marketer, the granularity of comparison you would hope for would be at the keyword level. If the benchmarking tool would pull keywords from the titles and meta descriptions that corresponded with your own website, then benchmark other sites using the same or similar keywords, that would be sweet!

Most of us want to avoid the hype when it comes to what's new in online marketing -- meaning we don't want to spend much money on experimental ploys simply because all the gurus are talking about them.

Chris Brogan brought up the question of what will convince businesses to delve in and experiment more with social media. The answer, simply, is results.

I'm seeing more businesses interested in pursuing social media as a marketing tactic, but they are at the same time eagerly grasping for the evidence needed to assist in turning their interest to action.

When you find something that makes sense for your business and can clearly present a case for moving forward with it, there is often very little convincing that needs to happen. At this point, however, I'd say there is still a lot of convincing going on.