This is the last in a series of posts inspired by sessions and conversations at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose . A conference like last week's provides rich pickings and I hope you found coverage of the Search Industry Update , Semantic Search.

by Jennifer Laycock Perhaps the biggest misconception about viral marketing is that it's a style of pushing your message. Companies convince themselves it's like launching a blog or running a paid search campaign...it's simply something you decide to do. With that in mind, companies set out to create a viral campaign, set it loose and then sit back and ask themselves why nothing seems to be happening.

I'm not the first and I won't be the last to suggest that there is a tendency in the world of search marketing - in which I and probably you dwell ??" to get caught up in the common knowledge and language of our industry to the detriment of communicating with the outside world. There is a whole universe out there of marketers, PR people, industry executives and others who don't know enough about search engine marketing yet to really understand how powerful it is.

by Mack Collier For many businesses, social media can seem to be this mysterious black box that they don't really understand. But a recent conversation with my friend Tim Jackson reminded me that social media really isn't as mysterious as many companies think. Tim is the Brand Manager for the Masi bicycle brand. When he was hired 4 years ago, he found himself in a situation that many small business owners can relate to.

UPDATE: I added a response from Google. When Google bought Jaiku last October it spawned a great deal of talk about whether Google would be looking to throw its weight behind a micro-blogging service to lure people tired of Twitter's downtime. Well, that was a long, long time ago, making some of feel that we were in a galaxy far, far away. In subsequent months,

Article Directories can be a great source of online publicity. Submitting articles to directories does multiple things. First it can establish you in your field as an expert. By providing information on your service or product you can make yourself known in your field of expertise as an expert. By nature the internet is an information resource. It is well known that most people turn to the internet when looking for information.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, In November 2007 I blogged about a wacky lawsuit involving the movie/book/TV phenomena called "The Secret" and an SEO, Dan Hollings. Several months have gone by and both parties have been busy. Background Summary The Secret (and all the international conglomerations and people that have a finger in ownership of The Secret ) sued Hollings for trademark infringement and violations of his alleged duty of loyalty.

Many business owners whether large or small who have not yet taken advantage of the internet to drive in fresh new business have been able to come to the conclusion that they have made themselves invisible to a great deal of potential business. As more and more shoppers venture online to do their research before making any purchase, large or small, having a presence online will be vital to the success of any growing business.

If you've been using reddit for any period of time, you've likely come across these five innocuous characters: "Q G Y H 2." He's our most prolific redditor to date, with a total of 182,510 karma points (at the time of writing). But there's been some recent speculation surrounding this particular redditor. Dr. Chris Slowe has dug a bit deeper and found some startling facts.

Writing small, punchy ads requires plenty of art and science. In today's Profitable PPC column, " Killer PPC Ads: The Fundamentals ," David Szetela offers some guidelines to help you get more clicks and stymie your competitors.