Listening to what your readers are asking is the most effective way to: Brainstorm awesome link baiting ideas; Enhance your keyword research; Get new content ideas when you are stuck. Here are a few best tools for you to find out what other people interested in the topic are wondering about: Yahoo Answers Yahoo Answers is the most obvious tool to start with: it is both popular and heavily over-used question-answer service but still deserves the mention. Also,

Writers love metaphors, and one of my personal favorites is the comparison between writing and sports. They're both something anyone can do, but few can do it at a professional level. What's intriguing about the comparison â?" at least for this writing teacher and novelist turned blogger â?" is that while hardly anybody with an ounce of sanity who takes up tennis or golf thinks they'll eventually turn pro at it,

Yahoo and AT&T announced a partnership, where AT&T will sell Yahoo! display ad inventory to local businesses in the US. They will begin doing so later this summer. "Local businesses are looking to drive in-store traffic, and our alliance with AT&T Interactive will help them reach a local audience of highly-engaged potential customers on Yahoo!," said Jim Schinella, Senior Vice President, North America Region, Yahoo!.

Hey everyone, We're excited to announce our next Digg Dialogg guest, technology luminary Marissa Mayer from Google. Marissa joined Google as their first female engineer in 1999 and was among the first 20 employees. She is currently their Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, and has been responsible for leading & developing products including Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Earth and iGoogle.

MySpace may have found a way to differentiate itself from Facebook, Twitter, and pretty much all other social networks. MySpace Mail, a new email service, is supposed to launch tomorrow. Yes, just like you can register for email addresses ending in @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, and @hotmail.com, @myspace.com will become an option, too, according to Staci D. Kramer . Which might sound like overkill, given the existence of those alternatives and MySpace's built-in messaging system,

As you may know, YouTube has a new channels design in the works. It was actually supposed to be out on July 15th, but was postponed (not for the first time). WebProNews recently ran down a nice sized list of new features that YouTube will be including in this new design here. Last week, YouTube updated users about the delay , as well as some more features. "So when's the new date? That part's a little trickier - rather than try to predict it,

If you register to attend SES San Jose 2009 by Friday, July 24, you can save up to $200. But you already knew that. The bigger question that you - and other Chief Marketing Officers - are looking to answer is this: How do you measure the return on investment in going to a search engine marketing conference ? Now, measuring marketing ROI isn't a hard science. It's more of a social science.

Shoe retailer Steve Madden has filed a lawsuit against eBay over the alleged sale of counterfeit watches on the auction site. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan Tuesday, claimed eBay has failed to remove counterfeit watches from the site bearing the Steve Madden brand name. The suit accuses eBay of trademark infringement.

WebProNews recently ran an article looking at a study, which indicated that spending on mobile advertising would reach $760 million in 2009 (20% more than last year). A spokesperson with mobile advertising firm Crisp Wireless took notice and set us up with a Q&A with CFO and former member of Yahoo Search's Strategic Alliances team, Tom Foran. It's looking more and more like mobile marketing will become unavoidable for businesses in the future. As competitors get on board,

Brendan Regan at FutureNow made a repeatable observation . The we-we tool Brendan mentions is new to me, but I think it has some value. If anything, it should teach new copywriters that search engine optimization isn't the world. It's only a small part of the picture when it comes to writing website content. It's a necessary part, but you can kill your prospects for success if you focus too hard or too heavy on the right keywords. When writing content for your website,