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Not long ago John Schwarz, an executive board member at SAP, sat down for a video interview about the current state and future goals of the enterprise software giant's popular BusinessObjects BI and analytics platform, which Schwarz is in charge of.

The discussion was wide-ranging, but a key statement buried in all the talk about BusinessObjects was an admission that real-time access to analytics was vital for the future of the enterprise. If the future of the consumer Web is real-time streams of information and communication channels, then what will keep businesses caught up will be tools to analyze and iterate just as quickly. For an absolute leviathan in the B2B space, this is a huge acknowledgment.

Analytics firm Webtrends has acquired testing and optimization services company Widemile, as announced this afternoon in a blog post by Webtrends. Webtrends provides analytics on customer activity online to big name companies such as Microsoft, Virgin Atlantic, ShopNBC and McAfee. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

What Webtrends is getting from Widemile is technology that boosts their ability to do multivariate testing and optimization based on real-time analytics. By integrating additional testing and optimization into their services, Webtrends is fast becoming a top outlet for businesses looking to do comprehensive analysis of their online presence.

I'm going through an SEO overhaul of our company's website. There is definitely a combination of art and science that I never appreciated until having to do it. So, to save others some time, here are some very basic things that any business should do to optimize the ranking of its website in search engine results. Nothing explained here is necessarily a secret or difficult to find out. The trick is to find a good cookbook and a process that is easy to follow.