As online marketing and advertising begin to outstrip traditional advertising media - TV, radio and print -  as the medium that will drive customers to their office or storefront (whether that is a digital online office or storefront on a company’s web page, or the old-fashioned ‘bricks-and-mortar’ variety) businesses, large and small, are grappling with how to advertise and market their products and services online and what is the most effective way to do this. 

David Wei, CEO for Alibaba.com, a leading website providing business-to-business (or B2B) networking and connectivity, has observed that, “Going global has never been easier and more affordable for a small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME), especially from the relative comfort of one’s own factory, shop or home office.”  

Mr. Wei notes that, the “Internet has ushered in new tools to bring trading partners together using search engines, portals and online marketplaces.”  Mr. Wei notes that online marketing and B2B marketplaces like Alibaba.com are replacing traditional marketing venues like  trade shows, catalogues and trade associations, just as internet advertising is gradually replacing traditional print, TV and radio as source for advertising placements.

 Importantly, Alibaba.com’s CEO, points out the choice that all businesses, particularly small-to-medium sized enterprises (or SMEs), must face when taking their advertising and marketing campaigns online, or starting up a fresh marketing campaign, is whether to channel time, money and effort into paid advertising and marketing (the banner ads, and pay-per-click sponsored ads on Googl or Yahoo! etc.), or whether to invest those resources in organic marketing.

Pay-per-click has its place and a company can bid and pay for advertising spots, just like it would do for TV and other old media ads, but pay-per-click has its limitations.   “A search engine is more consumer-traffic driven with no budget guarantee,” Mr. Wei suggests, “so costs can accumulate without any reasonable assurance of sales. There is also a serious global issue of click fraud, whereby competitors click repeatedly to increase your pay-per-click advertising costs.”  ”At this time,” Mr. Wei says, “there is no known solution that can eliminate 100% of click fraud.”  With pay-per-click it can thus become difficult to know that you are paying for what you get.

The alternative to pay-per-click is to market and advertise online using the internet’s organic search capabilities to get your products and services noticed and ranked at the top of the search engines’ results page. There is nothing like having your site appear “above-the-fold”, so to speak, on the Google results page for the key words that describe your business to drive sales. While this is not “paid advertising” per se, there are definite costs in terms of the aforementioned resources of “time, money and effort” that an SME will need to expend building an effective online marketing campaign organically.

Mr Wei’s advice for small-to-medium sized enterprises is, that “it is best to have someone in-house with keyword marketing expertise. Otherwise, you should consider using marketing firms which have a proven success rate of getting companies to rank higher in search results.”

Sound advice. But even if an SME tries to build an in-house capability for online marketing, how can the business influencer or decision-maker be assured that the person they are looking to hire has the search engine optimization expertise to successfully orchestrate a full online marketing campagn, particularly if one’s marketing mix is to use both pay-per-click and organic search engine optimization? The answer may be to test the online marketing waters first and take your online marketing and online advertising campaigns to a company whose search engine optimization specialists have organic and pay-per-click experience.

My new boss is now officially as jaded as the lawyer I used to be. . . . On my way out yesterday, I poked my head in his office and asked him to look over an article I’d posted on eZine.com for a client, to see if I’d gotten the right mix of keywords – not too many, not too few – in the article’s content. He opened the article and looked up at me with “You’ve got to be kidding me!” written all over him. “To be honest,” he said, “I look at this and all I see is blah, blah, blah . . . link!” “Wow,” jaded, I thought. The article, its content and length was more than he was used to seeing in SEO land, apparently.

And that seems to be the critical balance in SEO copywriting. Yes, we all want to get content up there on the web that has the all-important incoming link to our site, but how to best achieve this while getting the double-boost of attracting readers to the site, blog or social media space you are writing for? After all, in the short-term link building gets the page ranking boost you and/or your clients are looking for – but it’s short-lived. I think my bosses and I agree, and we wouldn’t be the only ones in the industry, that social media marketing – MySpace, Facebook, del.icio.us, dig etc. – is the next wave to ride. But how best to ride it and turn it into a strategy that pays for itself and for our clients? After all, almost by definition users on social media sites - perhaps with the exception of the SEO-types I now rub shoulders with, but I know( or at least hope), that they too tap into what is out there on the internet for fun and frolic) – do not want to be bothered with in your face, blatant marketing content. What’s a poor hack to do?

I think the answer must lie with almost the very first thing I heard about SEO when I first interviewed for this gig. “Content is King!” With Google still trying to figure out how to monetize its social marketing phenomenon - YouTube, all of us seem to be focusing on how we can utilize social marketing media to boost the page ranking on the search engines. What we seem to forget, as I see it as an admitted SEO newbie, is that the blogs like this that we publish are already social media. Readers come to them not only for the information that they want, but to be informed by it. That’s communication, an inherent social medium.

As I write articles for the directories, content for web pages and blog blurbs like this one, I try to keep in mind that their is an end user out there who will, I hope (Are you out there?) read what it is I am writing and feel motivated to take some action as a result . . . post a comment, link to the site, return to see what is new in a week or two’s time, link to my client’s site. That is how the internet grew, and I feel that all of us in SEO should bear that in mind while we’re trying to make a buck or two for ourselves and our clients.

Google faces a great challenge in figuring out how to turn a buck, or bigger buck, on YouTube. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt was candid about that during his recent interview on CNBC. Ultimately, however, if you want to put readers eyes in front of the advertising, products or services you are marketing on line, whether for clients or through affiliate marketing, you’d best be assuring that the product that is going to capture their eye is also going to capture their imagination. Down in the caverns of Google Labs and Google Research, I’m sure they have this uppermost in mind. Good thing they have the cash to back up the imaginative ways they will undoubtedly come up with for marketing their products, ads and services through YouTube, which is becoming greater asset for them every day, if they can only figure out how to capitalize on its social marketing potential. I for one will be keeping an eye on how that plays out how to do the same on a smaller scale in the social marketing milieu the rest of us small fry swim in.

Stephane Malhomme’s recent article in the Financial Post’s “Small Business” section (April 21, 2008) regarding search engine optimization and how to get your small business website to the top of Google’s search results page was interesting and topical, yet did not fully cover the whole SEO story. The techniques that were discussed by SEO’ster Justin Cook in the article are known in the search engine optimization (SEO) field as “keyword stuffing”. This is the practice of placing key words that describe the product or service you are offering as many times, and in as many places as possible, in your web page’s hidden html code as possible.

While Mr. Cook, of Convurgency.com, is technically correct in that keyword stuffing can have the effect of quickly bumping your website from page twenty to page one of Google’s search result rankings, it will not keep it there. Moreover, Google and the other search engines are more than overly familiar with this outdated SEO technique. The practice can, in fact, have the opposite of the intended effect. Once Google, Yahoo! or MSN analyzes your website’s html code and sees that it is keyword stuffed - and they will - the page will in effect be punished for the practice and will drop off the search engine’s radar screen - perhaps altogether, depending upon how blatantly the practice is abused.

Search engines are designed, and continually updated, to ensure that the results that are most relevant to the end user searching for information are displayed first. Google’s entire business model is premised on this, and they jealously guard against entrepeneurial types that seek to ‘game the system’ utilizing technical shortcuts that are irrelevant to the end consumer, such as keyword stuffing. If they didn’t, users would obtain better, more relevant search results using a different search engine! Consumers would vote with their feet - or in this case their fingertips - and Google’s market share would tank.

In both SEO and search engine marketing (SEM), the maxim is “Content is King.” While it is important to ensure that the relevant key words are in the right places on your website - and in the right amount, and no more - it is more important to provide quality information - content that is both relevant and interesting for the end user (i.e., the person typing in his or her search query). It is important to include the relevant key words when adding content in the form of articles, pages and blog entries to your web page, but not to overdo it. Every person who links to your site as a “favourite” is worth more than all your efforts optimizing your website

When a small businessperson is seeking advice on SEO or SEM - whether hiring a professional to undertake that function, or in looking for courses to learn how to perform those functions oneself - caveat emptor still applies: Buyer Beware! If the person selling you SEO services or advice is talking about a quick, one-time fix brought about by a tweak to your webpage and is not telling you that the best results are achieved by continually adding new and relevant information for visitors to your site, shop around.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo’s board will reject MSN’s 44.6 billion offer to buy the web property. The Yahoo board feels that MSN undervalues Yahoo and is looking at alternative a partnership with Google.

Positioning for online advertising is sure to heat up in the next six months. Small businesses need to be get their game up to speed or they will get left in the dust as larger competitor’s grow in-house resources to meet the new challenges.

Media Daily reports that online advertising will grow 3.7% during 2008. The main catalysts are the Olympics and the US elections.

Internet spending will account for 10% of global media investment with a growth rate of 28%. Search is the largest component of internet advertising with 60% share and continuing to grow.

Learn about search engine optimization and pay per-click advertising, major tactics in online advertising.

Read the Media Daily article at http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=75176