Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Email marketing are the two best bets for your marketing dollar, according to a new report from UK Based eConsultancy in conjunction with Clash-Media. “Viral marketing” landed on the other end of the spectrum based on the feedback of 600 companies.

* A greater proportion of lead generation budget is being spent on online (on
average, 53%) than offline (44%).

* Compared to 2007, PPC is getting a bigger proportion of online lead generation
budgets even though natural search is perceived to be better value for the money.

* PPC now gets a third of this budget (33%) compared to 28% in 2007. Meanwhile, SEO
now only gets 15% of the budget compared to 18% last year.

* Companies are now investing more in their in-house email marketing. The average
proportion of budget devoted to this has increased from 10% to 15%.

* The biggest fallers since 2007 are affiliate
marketing (from 50% to 43%), email marketing - rented lists (from 33% to 28%) and viral marketing (from 35% to 22%).

Read Full Detail News at - B2C Lead Report. Good News For SEO’s and Email Marketers.

Google consider mobile internet to be the next major advertising platform. Google CEO Eric Schmidt predict that mobile advertising will generate more revenue than advertising on the normal web. Schmidt was less enthusiastic about the advertising possibilities of online video portal YouTube and DoubleClick.

Cloud Computing was another trend the Google boss considered "very interesting". Google would also be going head to head with Microsoft and Yahoo in the management of large computer centers.

Source : Google boss has high hopes for the mobile internet

Google has rolled out Website Optimizer, a tool that Webmasters can use to test variations of a site's content and design to increase conversions. The free tool is available at www.google.com/websiteoptimizer, and the search giant has also launched an accompanying blog, tutorial and discussion board.

Source : Google Brings Free Website Optimizer Tool Out Of Beta

Alexa has changed their rating system - their official news announcement says that NOW more sources will be used to come to a rating, also they claim to be using NEW algorithms that will determine the rating even better.

Read More at Alexa rating system has changed

Yahoo says it has increased its excluded keyword limits from 50 to 250 to improve relevance in search results.

On the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog it explains what words types of keywords to exclude. "Identify the keywords that do not apply to your business but may be commonly used by potential customers."

Read More about this SEO SEM News at Yahoo Raises Limits On Excluded Keywords

For 2007, Search Engine Roundtable’s team of Barry Schwartz and Tamar Weinberg continuously bring excellent coverage of SEO and webmaster issues as discussed in the various search marketing forums that they cover.

Search Engine Roundtable does an excellent job of covering SEO, SEM and Contextual Publishing...

Source / Read more at Search Engine Roundtable : Best SEO Blog of 2007

With the recent admission by Matt Cutts to Stephan Spencer that Google is using Adobe Systems' Search Engine SDK technology, a new set of optimization opportunities opened up.

That fairly definite confirmation of how Google reads text within Flash files makes it possible to create Flash .swf files with some level of search engine optimization.

"It used to be the case that we had our own, home-brew code to pull the text out of Flash, but I think that we have moved to the Search Engine SDK tool that Adobe Macromedia offers," Cutts said. "So my hunch is that most of the search engines will standardize on using that Search Engine SDK tool to pull out the text."

Source / Read more at Google reads Flash text, so optimize it | Searchlight

Google prevent feeds from being returned in Google's search results.
Reasoning behind Google dropping RSS feeds from the results according to Official Google Webmaster Central Blog are --

. Feeds increase the likelihood that users see duplicate search results.
. Users clicking on a feed may miss valuable content available only in the HTML page.

Read more at :
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Search Engine Land

If search-engine rankings are supposed to represent a kind of democracy--a reflection of what Internet users collectively think is most useful--then search-engine optimizers like Fishkin are the Web's lobbyists. High-priced and in some cases slyly unethical, SEOs try to manipulate the unpaid search results that help users navigate the Internet. Their goal is to boost their clients' (and in some cases their own) sites to the top of unpaid search-engine rankings--even if their true popularity doesn't warrant that elevated status.

As online shopping grows, search-engine rankings can make a difference between success and failure on the Internet. This holiday season, 10.8 percent of shoppers will find their way to online retailers via Google alone, according to research firm Hitwise. And SEO firm Enquiro reports that the links on the very top of a search-results page--what users see without scrolling down--capture 70 percent of all users' mouseclicks. That's why the SEO profession has taken off, from a few hundred practitioners in the mid-'90s to thousands today, with many of them working inside big firms like Intel and IBM. "Having an SEO either in-house or as a consult-ant is now considered a necessity," says Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who notes that the companies are partly motivated by keeping their critics off all relevant search-results pages.

Experts in Search Engine Optimisation dismissed PPC as far less likely to bring about results in a debate last night (11 December).

The "B2B Marketing Debate" saw SEO exponents and Pay Per Click champions clash over effectiveness and results.

The debate, at The English Speaking Union in London, saw head of search at Bigmouth Media Andrew Girdwood argue that organic results were often perceived as more directly relevant, with a lower overall cost. He said: "“People don’t want to put more money in. For B2B campaigns SEO has a definite advantage over PPC.”"

Periscopex co-founder Simon Norris defended PPC as a marketing tool and said that its plus points were that it was easy to change, start, stop and completely transparent. He asserted that PPC was a better, more targeted way to gain leads.

Stuart Small, industry leader, business and industrial markets at Google, backed up the argument and said that with 85% of all B2B purchases starting in a search engine, paid search ads were vital to any business. He added that Google sees 80% of searchers clicking on organic results, with 20% clicking on search ads.

Source /Read More : PPC shot down by SEO experts