Search industry parents had their say last week on our sister site, Sphinn, as a discussion about teaching kids SEO, social media and online marketing was the most popular conversation piece.

Our “Discussion of the Week” asked, How Much Do You Teach Your Kids About SEO/Social Media?, and we had a range of comments covering issues like privacy, computer literacy, blogging and more. Our favorite comment came from Sphinn member Stoney deGeyter of Pole Position Marketing, who talked about raising his three kids:

I have not pushed what I do on them in any way, and probably never will. If they don’t have an interest or a knack for it then there is no reason to try to try and create interest that just isn’t there.

You can still add your thoughts to the discussion or read what others have said.

A story suggesting that Google search result click-thru studies are a waste of time was the number one story among Twitter users last week, and a story about guest blogging was the most popular among Facebook users. Below is the full recap of last week’s Sphinn activity.

Most Comments

• Discussion: How Much Do You Teach Your Kids About SEO/Social Media? – For a lot of kids, social media is just for fun – a way to chat with friends, share links or funny pictures on Facebook and so forth. Then there are teenagers that have already used social media and SEO to create and sell start-up websites/businesses for LARGE sums of money. In our "Discussion of the Week," we want to know how much effort do you (parents) put in to teaching your kids about online marketing? Do you get into the intricacies of SEO or just talk in general terms about online visibility? Or not at all? Do your kids have a blog yet? And if you're not a parent yet, feel free to answer hypothetically about how you will handle this in the future. The floor is open!
• PR agency loses biggest account with a single tweet – PR agency Redner Group got sacked by its biggest client, video game publisher 2k, after it tweeted that it would punish bad reviews of  the game ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ by withholding future releases from reviewers.
• 5 Common PPC Optimization Mistakes – Article exploring 5 common pitfalls of PPC data analysis when optimizing PPC campaigns, and suggests 12 practical tips to avoid them.
• The One Minute Paid Search Account Diagnosis – Good ideas for a quick and simple diagnosis of an existing Google AdWords pay per click account.
• Why Google Panda Is More A Ranking Factor Than Algorithm Update – An interesting take on what Panda is and isn't.

Most Tweeted (not already listed above)

• Why Google SERP CTR studies are a waste of time – A detailed look at how the changing nature of search results, and the limited ability of search engines to accurately discern user intent has rendered CTR predictions based on SERP positions meaningless. From the article by Branko Rihtman – "It is important to remember that as search engines try to index and incorporate into SERPs more and more types of results, it will be harder to predict the CTR over locations. Even averaging out the figures over a large number of results will give us a number that is not at all useful for predicting the traffic volume received from each position."
• 35 Smart Social Media Business & Consumer Insights from @BrianSolis – About three dozen truisms that can help you focus (or re-focus) on the important big picture issues related to social media/marketing … not to mention a few details, too.
• HOW TO: Get a Google Places Label – Interesting discovery from Scott Dodge about using Google Mapmaker to add your business name to the actual map display in Google Maps.
• The Ultimate Guide to Keyword Research – Extremely comprehensive keyword research guide…convering both sources of keywords and strategies / implementation.
• What Potential Impact Can HTML5 Have on SEO? – A brief overview of what impact HTML5 may have on SEO including page page segmentation and link types.

Most Liked/Shared (not already listed above)

• How Guest Blogging Can Send Your Brand and Reputation Straight to Hell – Nice post about how the popularity (and possible abuse) of guest blogging could lead us straight to its demise, causing loss of brand and personal confidence along the way.
• 3 Common Link Building Questions Answered By 4 Experts – Debra Mastaler, Eric Ward, Julie Joyce, and Ross Hudgens tackle 3 common link building questions.
• Where Should You Be Promoting Your SEO, Copywriting and Marketing Blog Posts? – Sphinn or SERPd? Facebook or Twitter? Does anyone have a use for StumbleUpon? If you want to know where best to promote your work, have a read of this.
• What NOT To Do On Local Business Websites – Some important reminders from Chris Silver Smith of things NOT to do if you want your local business site to perform well with search engines and consumers.
• Google Places Basics: Listing a New Business – A Timeline for Launch – Listing a new business with Google has its own quirks that need to be considered so I am highlighting my response here and following that up with a sample timeline for the complete process.

Hot On Sphinn: June 20 to June 26, 2011

• Groupon May Expire Sooner Than Expected – RD Gupta explains how when looking at the Groupon hyper-growth and plans for greatness, he sees a number of parallels to dot com busts of the past.
• Crutchfiled: An Attribution Nightmare – Interesting and thought provoking attribution scenario that commonly plays out for ecommerce websites with many points of contact.
• The Science of Social Timing Part 2: Timing & Email Marketing – Are certain times better than others for sending your email campaigns? In the second part of this series we’re going to investigate how timing can impact your email marketing. Data suggests that there are distinct windows in which to send emails if you want to achieve the highest open rate and maximize your readership.
• The Real Filter Bubble Debate – Gabriel Weinberg of search engine DuckDuckGo addresses the filter bubble and outlines how he believes personal signals should be used, integrated and displayed into search.
• Why Microsoft's Facebook Alliance Is a Threat to Google – According to Dave Williams, the partnership between Microsoft and Facebook could drastically change the way ads are targeted on Facebook, the biggest player in online display. Learn why in this article.
• The Anatomy Of A Compelling Call To Action Button – Compelling post with good considerations and examples of CTA buttons.
• 6 Essential PPC Landing Page Optimizations – Excellent checklist for PPC Landing Pages, including some I would have never thought about.
• The Panda Spillover: Losing Links through Article Marketing – Karon Thackston writes about how most sites have been doing article marketing all wrong, which is why they've lost links due to Panda.
• 17 Tips for Tip-Based Content – How to Research, Scale & Promote – Good considerations for creating "how to" and "tip" content. – Tips are the smallest documentable unit of "how-to" do something. Their presence – or absence – within a target market's SERPs provide phenomenal opportunities for link strategists and other content marketers…
• The Conversion Trinity: The 3 Step Magic Formula to Increase Click Throughs & Conversions – Details how to increase conversions rates by aligning your targeting (Relevance), ads (Value) and landing pages (call-to-action).
• How to Create Social Landing Pages: 5 Rules – Deep post with many considerations for developing landing pages for social media uses.
• WordPress Users: Watch Out For “Fatal PHP Errors” – Nick LeRoy provides a real life case study on how fatal PHP errors on his blog stopped search engine traffic in its tracks until they were fixed.
• 5 Creative Facebook Pages – When landing on some Facebook pages I am often not quite sure what the objective is and what message they are communicating. The creative should not overwhelm the goals of the page which could be to increase likes, to engage or to grow sales.
• Google's Quality Score Patent: The Birth of Panda? – Bill Slawski's terrific patent post about the possible roots of pandalized SERPs.
• The Dangers of Limiting Ad Spend to Hit EOQ Goals – An interesting take on why it's not a good idea to limit ad spend just to hit media spend goals.
• Building Faceted Navigation That Doesn't Suck – Filters on eCommerce sites are high valued by users, helping them to drill down with ease. For search engines on the other hand, those filters can appear as a crawling nightmare. This article talks about concepts that take the best from both worlds, in order to create sites for users that search engines can stomach.

This is the latest in a weekly look at the stories that were “hot” on Sphinn in the past week. We’ll post these recaps every week.

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Features: General | Sphinn

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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