What is it really that makes a search engine optimization campaign successful? A lot of business owners would probably think of things like the number of pages and articles added to their website, or possibly the ability of their web design team to integrate keywords and phrases into their product pages.

Those are all important details, of course, and will ultimately contribute to the ranking you get on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and the other search engines. But there are two other details that are even more important… and they are ones that far too many online marketers overlook: research and testing.

Why will these two details make or break your search engine optimization campaign? Look at it this way:

Without the proper keyword research, you’ll likely end up optimizing the wrong keywords and phrases. Ever jump on the highway and drive 50 miles in the wrong direction? Well, the frustration felt from that will be minor compared to the aggravation of working hard to achieve a top three search engine position and a keyword that can’t actually help your business.

Testing allows you to make the most of the traffic your business website receives. It’s important to know which products, offers, and marketing messages your visitors are responding to most, and you’ll never know that until you are properly testing your pages. Whether it’s split testing, advanced analytics, or simply keeping an eye on web traffic and page view times, you have to have the right information if your search engine optimization plan is going to be as effective and profitable as it could be.

There’s a lot that goes into a good search engine optimization campaign, but research and testing are two details that you can’t afford to overlook. Use them both, and you can ensure that your campaign not only gets off to the right kind of start, but keeps moving in the right direction.

One of the hardest parts of the search engine optimization process, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, is generating backlinks to your website. Gathering backlinks can go quite a long way toward helping your search engine position, but it tends to be a long and tedious process.

With that in mind, business owners and search engine experts tend to take three different approaches, arranged here in their order of effectiveness:

By using link farms. If you aren’t familiar with the term, these are basically sites that are built just to link to one another. The major search engines caught on to this trick long ago, and so it isn’t very likely to help you, or your site. If someone you’re working with proposes this, just stay away.

By asking for links one at a time. This isn’t a terrible strategy, especially if you’re working on a coordinated campaign to gather links from others in your area or industry. Sometimes, a kind, personal note here and there can slowly raise the number of links to your site.

By posting great content that others want to link to. What’s so great about this approach is that, once you have generated a thought-provoking article, or maybe an informative video, the rest of the process generally takes care of itself. Why? Because others are going to link to you not because you asked, or as a favor, but because it’s good for their site, and their readers. Not only will this bring you a greater number of links, but also a lot higher quality.

When it comes to generating backlinks into your site for search engine optimization purposes, coming up with some unique and interesting content is always the best way to go. After all, what’s better than getting hundreds or thousands of links to your site without having to actually ask for them?

In a word, no. You should never copy a competitor’s website, in whole or in part, for any reason. You might think that lifting an image, or just a couple paragraphs of text, couldn’t really get you into any trouble.

And you would be wrong.

While the different laws that govern the Internet are constantly changing, the rules against theft and plagiarism are incredibly clear and consistent. Failing to abide by them could open you up to all sorts of problems with copyright, intellectual property, and even “duplicate content” issues that get you banned by the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

With that being said, however, there is another side to the story… although you can never, ever copy material from a competitor’s website, you can draw inspiration.

What’s the big difference between copying and inspiration? One relates to the listing of material and content, whereas the other is simply taking ideas that you see and applying them to your own business. Like the way a certain company has instituted their online newsletter, or arrange their product pages? Talk to your business web design team about doing something similar. See the video or logo that you think could help you win more customers? Work with an online marketing specialist who can help you put the concept to use.

The best thing about this sort of inspiration, besides the fact that it’s actually legal, is that it can take you in unexpected directions. By looking for ideas, rather than content, you’re no longer limited to checking out other businesses within your own industry. In fact, some of the best web marketing ideas have come from savvy business owners and web designers seeing something work elsewhere.

And besides, who is to say that you couldn’t make an idea work even better than someone else has in the past? This industry, as with most, builds upon continual successes, so don’t be afraid to find inspiration elsewhere and make it work for your business online.

LinkedIn has proved to be a valuable networking site for professionals across the spectrum of industries. Like a Facebook for professionals, LinkedIn can help you connect with others in your field – people you know and people you can get to know – through the site’s various features. Apart from individual benefits for the professional, LinkedIn’s newest features can really help you maximize the platform of your small business.

With LinkedIn’s new Company Pages feature, you can create a dedicated page for your business. Just like an individual social networking page, you can use this page to update others on your company’s latest offerings and news. It’s an easy way to keep the public updated on the happenings of your business, ensuring you stay at the forefront of their minds.

With LinkedIn’s beta LinkedIn Signal product, you can search public status updates for specific keywords. It allows a simple method for keeping an eye on your competitors – just search for status updates that feature competitors’ names to see what others are saying about them. It’s also a good way to keep your finger on the pulse of what others are saying about your company.

LinkedIn Skills is another way you can be made aware of trends and news in your industry. The tool is straightforward – it simply tracks and measures the rate at which certain skillsets are entered into the site. For example, if you see a rise in professionals in your field entering a particular skill, you’ll know that the industry is starting to trend that way.

As LinkedIn is constantly updating their site with new and exciting tools, it can be a valuable resource for your business. You just have to be diligent and stay on top of your accounts. It doesn’t look good to prospective clients and colleagues if your company’s page isn’t updated for weeks on end. It only takes a few minutes a day so make it a priority to put your company’s best face forward on LinkedIn.