Paul J. Bruemmer of “trademarkSEO”:http://www.trademarkseo.com/ does a good job of Defending the Art and Craft of SEO at iMedia Connection.
bq.. Organic search engine optimization (SEO) is an effective marketing strategy that provides marketing accountability. There are several reasons why organic links are so valuable. The reasons cited below come from industry research:
# Well-optimized sites enjoy sizable gains in unique visitors and conversions.
# Search users prefer organic listings to sponsored listings.
# Organic listings produce more conversions than other online strategies.
# Search engine listings provide branding.
# SEO provides an excellent return on investment (ROI).
p. I recommend reading the whole article if you are trying to get your head around SEO.
It’s also important to understand that SEO and SEM are really not related.
One Degree Posts
It looks like Amazon is getting into back-to-school mode by announcing they’ve added “textbooks”:http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/15115321 to their Canadian site.
It’s interesting to note that they’ve had to make the process of finding books a little more complicated, effectively putting an advanced search on the “Textbook Store main page”:http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/15115321. This is probably too be expected given the obscurity of authors and topics for some required texts, and the duplication of titles in this space (“Introduction to Economics” generates 314 results).
They are also really emphasizing the value of resale by giving half of the page to explaining how you _sell_ your textbooks.
Think about that for a moment – a good chunk of their sales floor is taken up with information on _selling, not buying._ Why might that be?
Fortune Magazine‘s August 8, 2005 issue has a series of great cover stories related to “The Future of Advertising.” (I bought the Canadian edition but it looks like it has all the same stories as the US copy.)
I believe all Internet marketers (and advertisers) should get this issue and read every story. The articles are very informative and support what a lot of us know and think: more ad spending is going online, whether for:
* Search Marketing
* IPTV
* Better Targeting of Marketing Messages
Julie Roehm is DaimlerChrysler’s director of marketing communications and oversees the sixth-largest pool of ad dollars in the US. Last year she spent 10% of the budget online; this year she is allotting closer to 18%; next year, she says, she will allocate more than 20%.
More and more this is the trend and those people who know online will benefit.