ADUTAINMENT: Advertising as Entertainment
JellyBasket.com - JELLY by the CASE or as a GIFT BASKET.

How to Incorporate Viral Marketing Techniques to Your Internet Marketing Arsenal
Viral marketing is not the last disease found, nor a virus to your desktop

Mortgage Marketing - Viral-Email, Referral Marketing Strategy
This is a devastatingly powerful way to extend your marketing reach. For this to work right you need a website that promotes your business.

Dealerskins' Digital Video Viral Marketing Project for Auto Dealers Takes Internet by Storm
Dealerskins, (www.dealerskins.com) a division of Dominion Enterprises and a leading provider of automotive dealer web solutions, has launched a video and viral marketing project to promote its highly successful nationwide user groups. The video can be viewed at; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn09XoUySFg It tells the initially sad tale of a dealership Internet sales team, and ends with a strong redemptive finale at a Dealerskins User Group. There is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Glengarry Glenn Ross with a cameo from company founder; well know ...

Internet Marketing And Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is a unique tool designed to create so much buzz about the article itself that even the largest sites will want to publish it.

Free Web Advertising: Chat Room Marketing Secrets Of Internet Marketing Gurus Exposed
Have you ever been to a chat room?Have you ever posted a message?If yes, now you may learn some free web advertising secrets on how to market your products and services in chat rooms.Chat Room Marketing is the use of online chat rooms to promote your product or service.

Best Email Advertising of 2008 to Be Named by Web Marketing Association
The Best email advertising in 86 industries will be judged as part of the 2008 Internet Advertising Competition awards. Companies or agencies wishing to nominate their work for consideration may do so at IACAward.org (http://www.iacaward.org?gad=CNvQkJkDEgjMICey2iA0NRi6nML_AyCb88Qv) before the deadline of January 31, 2008.

Social Advertising Changing Internet Marketing: Moving From Forced Advertising To Opt-In Ads
SplashCast CEO Helps Define The Emerging New Marketing Field At L.I.S.A Conference - First Forum Dedicated To Social Advertising

Viral Marketing: Internet Marketing Strategies
First of all, I realize that anything with "viral" in the name doesn't conjure up images of something you want close by, but there is a new type of Internet marketing known as "viral marketing" is worth investigating. Despite its unflattering appellation, it is an effective Internet collaboration marketing tool, and one that is important to understand if you want to expand your business.

Internet Marketing - How to Make your Online Advertising Business Produce Money on Internet Marketing
The success or failure of your Internet marketing business depends largely on the Internet users. If they are interested on the products and services that you are offering for sale, definitely you can expect hundreds to thousands of dollars in revenues from your online business. On the other hand, if they are just too lazy to hear what you want to say and what you are offering, better shut down your personal computer unit and find some other ways of earning money.

SIPA's 32nd Annual Conference Showcases Latest Internet Advertising Trends And Email Marketing Through Client Newsletters
The Specialized Information Publishers Association Will Feature Leadership Keynote Speakers (http://www.newsletters.org/Events/Annual/2008/index.htm), Jay Berkowitz, Josh Macht, Bob Bly, Chris Schroeder And Fredrick Marckini On June 1, 2008 In Washington, DC

Viral Videos: Lethally Effective Advertising Carriers
Are you one of those millions out there hooked on the viral video craze? This article describes the opportunities that viral videos offer to internet marketers.

Viral Video Evolved - Startup LonelyBloggers.com Launches With Viral Marketing Case Study
LonelyBloggers.com is proud to announce a 7 episode, 40 minute viral video series called LBTV that can be watched in it's entirety on YouTube right now. Despite recent reports that a viral video now cost up to $250,000 to produce, LonelyBloggers was able to produce our viral video series with only a $5000 budget. Internet marketers need to understand the growing importance of adding video to your marketing mix as people flock to video sharing sites like YouTube. This means potentially free website traffic as a result, all the time presenting your brand in an exciting manner. Viral Marketing has to be considered as a key part of your future marketi...

Video Email And Its Impact On Internet Marketing
Email is a revolutionary means of communication facilitated by the advances in information technology. With the acceleration of e-commerce as a consequence of these same technological innovations, email is now a significant means of marketing products and services through the internet. Through email, myriad companies and businesses have a convenient means of reaching potential consumers. Through email, marketing copies get delivered directly to a person?s inbox; companies no longer had to wait for consumers to come across their ads in the internet.

Using Viral Advergames For Worldwide Advertising and Marketing
Branded online games are being used more and more as an advertising medium by everyone from small businesses to big worldwide brands, but can branded games really help as part of your marketing efforts Branded online games (or Advergames as they are commonly known) can be one of the most effective viral marketing agents, if used correctly

Consorte Media Announces New Email Marketing and Video Advertising Solutions
New product offerings from leading Hispanic digital marketing company give publishers additional ways to monetize traffic and help advertisers connect with Hispanics online

SEO: Is it Marketing or Technology?

The question "Is SEO marketing or technology?" has been debated heatedly for the last decade. So far the debate has mostly been won by technologists, but overtime as the Online World has evolved to measuring business results, and the search engines have become more sophisticated to delivering results, the scales have started to tilt towards the marketing camp.

What exactly is Search Engine Optimization? Most online businesses along with SEO companies define SEO as a set of techniques that help ensure that the website is built such that the search engines treat them as relevant targets (destinations) for the appropriate Keywords. These Keywords are the ones a potential customer would type on the search engine to find you or your business.

This has led to the interpretation that SEO is creation of a structure such that your website is populated very heavily with appropriate Keywords. Based on how your website is populated with these Keywords the search engines will display your company or website in the search results in response to a search query. Hence, SEO is about finding the right Keywords and ensuring those Keywords are heavily populated on your website.

Now, I am in agreement with this definition, but I would submit that this interpretation is incomplete and misses the big picture.

The fundamental question to be addressed is whether the online presence we build is for the search engines to drive appropriate traffic or whether the websites we build are for the potential customer to get the best information when he or she interacts with the company in the Online World. SEO experts have always grappled with this question, till the answer was provided by none other than the sources themselves, the search engine companies, and they ruled in favor of the customers.

All of the search engines today are sophisticated enough that they dont look for Keywords on website; they actually measure you on the relevancy of your content and your website to the query initiated by the searcher. So, SEO is no longer "The technology of Keyword stuffing and links"; SEO has transformed into the marketing and art of making your website relevant to the search, and providing people with maximum pull to convert from visitors to Customers. Relevancy for the customer has become the single most important factor for a search engine to rate any business.

The art of providing this pull to the customers has always been thought of as a feature of the website and has always been delegated to the web-designers and marketers, but the changing preferences of people in the online world and the maturity of the industry is calling for this to change.

I have always been a firm believer that all potential customers require appropriate messaging addressing all their concerns before they engage with a website or a business. SEO/PPC Services must accomplish this task.

Take a moment and answer this question: What makes you decide to click on a particular result when you search on Google?

I hope your answer is the content of that link you see on the search results page, which are the 'Title' and the 'Description'. If you didnt then please conduct a search for something and observe the results you get back.

For a customer using SEO, the first interaction with a company happens when they type the Keyword in the search engine. The initial concerns of the customer needs to be handled right there. So, an SEO specialist must think about Title and Descriptions for a customers website not just from a technology (Keyword Density) standpoint, but more importantly from the standpoint of addressing the customer concerns. This philosophy has been used in PPC for quite sometime, but never made it to the SEO world due to requirements for Keyword stuffing.

Given that Title and Description play a critical role in people clicking on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), you would want to take utmost care in writing the content for these tags. Your SEO results are like Ads for your webpage.

You may not be ranked 1st on Google for a desired keyword, still you can acquire more (and relevant) traffic (reminds you of CTR?) to your website than the site which is 1st. Provided, the content you write in the Title and Description tags is relevant to the searchers. To breakdown relevancy further, I would recommend asking yourself the following questions, while you are writing Title and Description tags for your web pages:

1. Are you communicating effectively with all potential customer segments? People in different stages of their buying cycle. People with different level of knowledge of your domain, you product or its usability. People with different behavior types.

The search optimizer needs to develop enough domain expertise or utilize domain expertise where its available to identify all customer concerns, and prioritize the customer concerns to address them at appropriate communication outlets. Communication of value propositions and differentiation has also to be integrated into the thought process effectively.

2. Are you persuading the searcher to take the desired action? For e.g. if you are looking at getting people try your product for free, do mention the same, especially in the way that you are calling them for action.

3. Is your copy optimized for SEO? While ensuring the above points, do not forget to optimize your tags for SEO in other words, do include the keywords in your tags. Otherwise you will not even get the chance to benefit from the above ?.

Look at the following search results (in the actual order they appear) when a PMP (Project Management Professional) certification aspirant searches for pmp certification on Google.

Dont you think that the 3rd result is likely to drive more clicks than the 1st and the 2nd result.

The 3rd title/description addresses all initial customer concerns, namely: What does the company offer (SCJP Exam prep to pass SCJP Certification Exam), what have they done so far (Since 2000, 1M+ users, 50K customer), what did other people get from them (99.7% success), will they be valuable for me (Comprehensive report); can I try (free mock test); are they a very small company (ISO9001 certification); can I trust them (100% guarantee).

At the same time, this Title and Description has good usage of Keywords as well. SCJP, Certification, Exam, Prep, Mock, Test, users are all very important Keywords for this customer.

Since Google will only display around first 60 characters of the Title Tag and first 155 characters of the Description Meta tag, companies should ensure that they are addressing the above questions within the given limits. And, most of the times, it will require you to be creative. So, when you are looking for hiring an SEO professional, dont forget to add creativity as one of the key skills.

Now, let me make a giant leap and refer to your online presence as your sales person on the web. With that, your online presence should provide everything that your sales person provides your customer. Take some time and evaluate your online presence as if you were evaluating your sales person, and see how good of a sales person it is or another way to question would to evaluate your marketing efforts in equipping and training your salesperson.

From Titles and Descriptions, to the website content, navigation and usability, to content of PRs and Articles and Social Bookmarking, consider all your SEO efforts as part of your marketing efforts equipping, training, and building an effective sales person. Addressing customer concerns at every stage of the buying cycle is something that comes naturally to the exceptional sales person, and it needs to be replicated in your online presence.

If your online presence is designed to answer the questions your website visitors ask, you can not only expect higher Search Engine rankings but also better conversions, which is even more important than getting more traffic. The same applies to the keyword research. Ultimately, relevancy is the key and that is what a Search Engine now rates higher than any other parameter.

Given that Search Engines are always striving to produce high quality SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), the parameter that determines their success, a Search Engine Optimizer always stand to win in a long run by betting on usability.

In this article we explored how writing effective Titles and Descriptions can help your business and conversions grow. In the next article, we will explore other areas where a conversion-oriented philosophy will take even closer to your goals. Its not about traffic, it is all about relevant traffic and conversions. Read more learnings on online marketing article page.

Kapil Gupta co-founder of OMLogic Consulting, a leading online marketing company is passionate about Online Marketing. He heads Online Marketing implementations for various customers across Real Estate, Education, IT Services and Event Promotion. He is a leader in conversion oriented SEO/SEM Services and an avid speaker on Online Marketing & Entrepreneurship For more visit http://www.omlogic.com