Tegardless of whether you like Cupcake wines, there’s much marketing wisdom to be learned from their example. They know their audience and have smartly crafted everything from their labels to their Web content to appeal to it.

Most companies don’t want to answer consumer questions well. They shrink away from telling the truth (the good, the bad, and the ugly) and instead lean on pretty ad copy to garner sales and "close deals." Such a strategy is not long for this world my friends, and we can thank social media and blogging for it.

Being a good SEO, there are a few things that I’d like to ask Santa for – not just for me, you understand, but for all the boys and girls out there in the big wide world of SEO. If you could see your way clear to delivering these items, we promise to be good again next year.

There's no judgment here about who makes the better hamburgers, but rather an assessment of which has the better online marketing presence. McDonald's wins by using techniques any online marketer could emulate.

If you listen carefully to what Don Draper says, you can learn some principles that are as true of search engine marketing today as they were of magazine ads in the early '60s. Here are five quotes and how they apply to SEM.

Marketing, much like the Internet itself, is always changing. You can’t take a technique that you learned five years ago, implement it, and expect the same success you had when marketers first learned about it. The problem is, all but the very best Internet marketers are refusing to evolve.

Feeding your website fresh, regular, content is a way to tell search engines who you are, what you do, what products and services you provide. And a corporate blog, with content that’s relevant, informative, educational, and entertaining, is one of the very best ways to integrate new content into your website.

Although marketing possibilities on the internet are myriad for those who have the time and budget to exploit them all, small businesses should focus mainly on organic search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising, web site content creation (which is actually a subcategory of organic SEO), and social media marketing.

There are definitely things about advertising that drive us crazy: the constant interruption, the obtrusive pop-ups, the stock photos of happy models, all the direct mail, etc. We've captured our top 10 annoyances in this slideshow.

Google has been working on making everything automated, relying heavily on algorithms, which creates cracks through which things like illegal Canadian pharmacy ads can slip. That has helped them grow; however, it is this writer’s assertion that maybe bigger is not better, especially when it comes to the nuanced world of advertising.

You've been duped into believing that when you place your ads on search engine results pages for your targeted keywords, you are taking part in the activity of advertising. After all, we call it "ppc advertising," the links on the pages are called "ads" and we call the people running the campaigns "advertisers." But Google and other search engines are not in the business of advertising.

After Buzz, +1, Wave, and others, Google Plus is the company’s strongest social-related offering to date. And it’s more than just a Facebook clone, offering some new concepts, ideas, and features.

Search "advertising" is certainly effective, but it doesn't have the power to persuade like, well, real advertising. It's really just search, driven by algorithms that connect words and phrases to consumers

Search has always been an attractive way to reach people the consumer right as they’re looking to buy, or at least researching a purchase. That’s why search will always be important, even if consumers become less dependent on it for more online activities and information discovery.

When you go to the Google Blog article that explains the new +1 feature, they say things like this: "The beauty of +1's is their relevance." And then they show you how to "get started +1'ing the stuff you like." See the problem? This thing is an apostrophe nightmare right from day one.

How did our company come upon inbound marketing? We actually found it while browsing for new Internet technologies and best online marketing practices. We really like the inbound marketing process: Get Found --> Convert --> Analyze. As we see it, there are 6 benefits of inbound marketing.

A brand can’t overeat, but it can do things like over-email and over-coupon.

I've been doing this marketing thing for many years now, and I well remember the days when marketing was about the sizzle instead of the steak -- branding is sexy and sales are not. But I really thought those days were long gone.

Google reacts after learning how a menacing merchant found a loophole in the search engine's algorithms that allowed complaints and negative reviews to actually bolster search rankings.

What makes the following work? Consistent and compelling content marketing.

I find the practice of spamming the Web with “spun” articles distasteful. But it’s worked for me.

Three years ago, Microsoft was targeting roughly 35% market share in search and 40% in online advertising within three to five years. It's going to take a serious Google gaffe to meet those goals. And it's just not going to happen.

The new book offers 20 marketing lessons "straight from Google’s playbook." The author discusses some of his guidelines and suggestions in this video.

Product, Price, Place, and Promotion are significant factors in search marketing just as they are in traditional marketing.