If you win an auction but pay more for an item than you would have paid somewhere else, is that auction a success? How long can a company stay afloat if it pays more to acquire each new customer than it makes in profit? Keep these questions in mind as you set up your keyword bids. Limits must be understood in the context of profitability, compared to what you pay to acquire a customer through other channels.

You've paid for the click and now you need to make the most of it. We asked three experts to share their secrets on how to design the best landing page so that every pay-per-click lead from a search engine turns into a buyer.

Successful PPC and SEO starts with keyword discovery, research and organization. In paid search, discovery and research are important, since searches of the keywords you pick are what you're paying for. Organization is an often overlooked, yet critical, task. Intelligent keyword management and organization are important for organic search optimization.

CEOs and other high-ranking executives are some of the most active Internet search users at large companies, according to a study released last week by Google. The survey, done in conjunction with Forbes Insights, gathered responses from 354 executives at US companies with annual sales of more than $1 billion. Of the senior executives interviewed for the survey, 92% said that searching online was a valuable source of business information, and more than half said they preferred to do the searching themselves, rather than delegating the work to others.

On June 8, Borrell Associates released a report, underwritten by SEM software provider Clickable, which questions the current state of local search advertising service providers or "resellers." The study notes resellers are not doing enough to reduce churn levels that can be as high as 90% within a year. It also says these resellers are tacking on high margins for services to local advertisers and not offering local advertisers sufficient ROI.

Microsoft's Bing is likely to change the way we all search. And that change could mean quite a lot for your own company's search marketing strategy as well. Expect Bing to deliver a higher volume of long-tail keyword searches, require you to rethink search's relationship to other marketing channels and to take on a whole new approach to search strategy.

Diversifying your search advertising strategy can improve ROI. Here is what you need to know when evaluating a search engine or network.

On June 3, Microsoft will replace Microsoft Live Search with its new search engine, Bing. The new portal, which the company describes as a "decision engine," emphasizes categorization and depth in search results in an attempt to compete with Google for market share and, subsequently, ad dollars.

A new tool launched by search marketing agency Impaqt, called the Search Management Ad-Hoc Reporting Tool (SMART), offers marketers the ability to create sophisticated, customized paid search campaign reports, providing the agency's clients with greater control over their data.

The cost per click (CPC) and cost per action (CPA) advertising models have been vying for first place in ad spend for several years now. The debate over which method is better still has not been resolved. On the surface, CPA makes a lot of sense, especially for an advertiser. Who wouldn't want to invest in a plan where you only pay for advertising if and when a customer actually buys something?