The following are things I would like to see happen this year in the Online Marketing world.

1) A new wave of technologies similar to Social Media and Bookmarking. I loved how anyone could market to services like Digg and Reddit and not solely have to rely on Search Engines. It would be quite fun to use new services this year to have similar marketing effects for a given blog or website.

2) More useful services with intuitive interfaces. On this point I am specifically referring to services such as Gmail, Google Analytics and FeedBurner. All 3 are very powerful tools which provide so much in an easy to use format. We’d see a dramatic decrease in abandonment rates if all products were this simple.

3) Enquiro Released its second Eye Tracking Study (comparing Google, Yahoo and MSN) and I wish we could have more usability tools in addition to eye tracking and analytics tools such as CrazyEgg to really help search marketers gain more insight on the end users.

4) For Google and Yahoo to provide search volume numbers. Services like Keyword Discovery and Word Tracker do a reasonably good job but only offer a small percentage of actual searches. Imagine what search marketers could do in regards to predicting potential search traffic for their clients.

There are many more but these are the main 4 that came to me at 11 pm on a Wednesday evening.

Cory Bates over at UseTube reveals subtle hints on why Google’s Senior Engineer Matt Cutts will be soon leaving the search giant.

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2006 brought us strategies in online marketing that went beyond traditional SEM tactics. In 2007 these latest tactics will become the bare minimum; in this article I will mention a few items that I think businesses should really take advantage of.

Visibility on the internet can now be achieved through Social Bookmarking, RSS (Feed Management) and Blogging rather than just search engines. This is not to say search engines aren’t important anymore, rather, you should know there are many more short term options available. These options all revolve around the exposure of content through syndication and sharing which basically allows anyone to capitalize on these opportunities.

Blogs

In my opinion, Blogs are a great compliment to any website. When done correctly they are written from more of a human perspective which makes them very appealing for visitors to read. Blogs can serve different purposes for varying websites, here are some examples:

• Support Based Website – Get a few of your support technicians to resolve frequently asked questions in detail as well as talk about upcoming product enhancements. This does a few things for your business: It creates a community feel where your customers can go to find answers to their issues, it allows for marketing of your latest product releases and it reduces support time for issues that can be answered via the blog.
• Service Based Website – Encourage your senior frontline team members
  to become thought leaders in your industry by getting them to create their own blogs. In the Search Marketing industry you will often see analysts blogging in order to establish themselves as an authority in the industry and to add further credibility for their organizations.
• Sales/Marketing Website – A blog is a great way to spread the word about your product or service. It allows for your sales/marketing team to talk directly about the benefits of your company’s product and furthermore converse with visitors in order to begin the process of converting them into customers.

RSS Feeds (Content Syndication)

Content rich websites such as news portals and forums are driven by visitors reading and subscribing to the information. Setting up an RSS feed is crucial in gaining the broadest range of subscribers. Here is how RSS can benefit your business:

• Adding a link to an RSS Feed on different sections of your website provides users with feed readers a personalized way to view the content. By providing snippets of code entices users to click through to your site.
• For visitors not accustomed to feed readers you can offer RSS subscriptions via email (providing them with daily updates to your latest content).

• Services like FeedBurner gives you the ability to manage your RSS feeds and create separate URLs for all these RSS feeds. These new web pages are content rich and get indexed in search engines quickly creating more visibility for your business. (See
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/webanalyticsworld).
• Webinars and Conferences which are offered in audio/video formats can also be incorporated into RSS feeds. Users can subscribe to these types of RSS feeds & Podcasts through software such as iTunes and Juice.
• You can also incorporate Ads such as Google Adsense within your feed allowing you to potentially make revenue through your RSS Feed. I recommend this be implemented with some testing because some users may be “turned off” by the ads.

Social Bookmarking/Content Sharing

Content sharing and promotion through sites such as Digg, Delicious, Reddit and Technorati was an extremely hot topic in 2006 (this is closely related to the Social Bookmarking concept). With hundreds of categories and a wide range of users, businesses can advertise their latest product releases and news items before the pages even get indexed in search engines. The process is quite simple but being successful requires some effort. Here are some basic guidelines:

• Set up an account at Digg or Delicious, this will take less than a minute
  You can then proceed to submit your most interesting pieces of content to these services
• Don’t submit every single content item because everything is not worthy of being submitted. Other users vote for submissions (so they build authority) therefore you don’t want to gain a bad reputation. This type of viral marketing can have both negative and positive effects.
• Think of interesting titles and descriptions for your submissions, this will entice user to click through to your website (be honest and be creative).
• Make sure to submit your content to the appropriate categories.
• Don’t give up because it does require some practice and testing

2007 will bring new ways to promote your business and in order to harness these methods it will require everyone to quickly get up to speed on the latest concepts. However, don’t forget to take advantage of the services already available because they provide some great opportunities for online success.