Look for a resurgence in organic search engine optimization and a move away from SEO “trickery” as search engines move to place more value on what a Web page is about rather than how it is linked to other pages and sites on the Internet. The ideas and information on a page – a Web page’s “content” – are going to matter more and more, rather than the page’s architecture and the links that connect it to the wider Internet, as search engines vie to better “understand” what a Web page is about and rank its relevancy to the end user.

The big push is on to understand the “semantics” of a page, trying to digitally comprehend the keywords and concepts of a Web page’s content and ranking them in their relevance to the end user – the person behind his or her keyboard or phone pad keying in search queries.

The debut of Cuil.com, the newest search engine and would-be challenger to industry leader Google, underscores the shift in how search engines now, and will, search and understand a page’s content. Specifically, the team of world leading search engineers that banded together to build the new Cuil search engine claim not only that Cuil (pronounced “cool”) will index a much bigger portion of the individual pages on the Internet, but that they will emphasize the content on the pages rather than the links on the Internet that point to a specific page. (The link structure pointing to a specific Web page indicates its popularity, and hence the reasoning goes, its relevance to the end user. The number of inbound links is a critical part of industry leader Google’s PageRank methodology.)

“Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics,” according to the new-kid-on-the-search-engine-block, “Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.”

“In addition to looking at the popularity of a Web page,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “Cuil also analyzes the concepts on the page and their relationships – grouping similar results under different menus.” Grouping different results under different concept-specific search result menus implies a much deeper understanding of the concepts and interrelationships on the individual Web page, rather than a mere ranking in terms of a “relevancy” that is determined in large part by a page’s popularity based on its links to other pages.

For businesses engaged in online marketing, the move toward a more “semantic” understanding of their Web page content will mean that their search engine optimization strategies will have to focus more and more on finding an SEO company that will help them produce the quality content that will make their organic search engine optimization strategy a success. Using so-called “ethical” search engine optimization techniques and building relevant pages with quality content and information for the end user will increasingly distinguish companies whose SEO and online marketing campaigns are a long-term success from those who look for the quick-fix and short-term boost in rankings brought about by using SEO techniques that are less organic to artificially boost the relevancy of their pages to their target audience.

You may be able to “game” the search engines for a while, but ultimately you cannot game the end users who always know whether the results a search engine displays are relevant to what it is they are looking for. The ability to “game” the search engines will, of course, decrease as they are better able to, and rely more upon, a semantic understandings of the Web’s content. To the extent that new search engine Cuil is better able to conceptually understand and sort the content of the hundreds of billions of web pages that are on the Internet – a number that grows by several billion each day – they may have a shot at making a dent in goliath Google’s market share.

There is no quick-fix key to online marketing success. Yet, with time and effort utilizing ethical search engine optimization techniques will improve your web site’s ranking and drive more web traffic to your company’s web site. But, the concept to stress here is ethical SEO techniques.

Search engines are all premised on providing their users with the information and web pages that are most relevant to the search query that users type into the search interface. Google’s famed “Don’t Be Evil” corporate ethos restated for SEO-types is: “Don’t rig the system to rank less relevant pages.”

There are a number of “quick-fixes” for web pages and web sites that do not rank well for keyword terms on Google and the other search engines. The downside of such “quick-fixes” – keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text, paid and dubious links etc. – is that sooner or later (most often, sooner) the search engines will clue into such well-known “Black Hat” SEO tactics, resulting in a permanent banning of the offensive website, or at least a temporary de-listing until the offensive and misleading tweaks are removed from the site. And Google, Yahoo! and the other search engines reserve a contractual right to de-list a site in their Terms of Service.

The Internet is the much-touted “Information Super Highway”. The price for claiming your roadside frontage is creating relevant content that users are looking for online. There are a raft of “White Hat” techniques that will attract web traffic and users to your website, but each of these requires a sustained effort to create relevant content and link structures. While such “White Hat” or ethical SEO techniques – blogging, article writing, participation in relevant forums and directories – take more effort and time to build a site’s relevancy, their effect is much longer lasting and you do not run the risk of having your site shut down peremptorily as a result of trying to game the system. In a “Don’t be Evil” world, “Content is King”, and the creation of quality content and relevant inbound links to your site is the hallmark of ethical and effective SEO and online marketing.

An interesting study about the effectiveness of online marketing versus traditional print and TV advertising was recently released “across the pond” in the United Kingdom. The Internet Advertising Bureau, the internet marketing industry’s trade association in the U.K., released a “Brand Engagement” study that shows online advertising for retail brands is the biggest driver for brand awareness in the current medias mix, “driving 40% of brand engagement, compared with press (31%) and TV (19%).”

These numbers highlight the overall effectiveness of relatively low cost internet advertising versus traditional media to raise product and brand awareness, when one considers the return on investment of the much smaller advertising budgets for online marketing. “The average online ad spend for all five brands in the study was just 2.5% of total media budget,” notes the IAB, “which suggests that internet advertising – which delivered 40% of brand engagement across all communications – is around 16 times more effective than the monetary investment would suggest.” The IAB’s research results regarding the effectiveness of online branding in the British retail sector were in line with, or exceeded, similar results in the British automotive, beverage and personal care sectors.

The research from the IAB in the U.K. seems equally applicable in North America, where the increasing sophistication of internet users and ever-improving technology is a driver which is increasing both internet use and the effectiveness of online marketing.

Yet, while study after study reports the increasing effectiveness of online marketing campaigns and internet advertising as marketing tools, as with any newly emerging technology, there is a lag in companies fully adopting the technology’s potential. “Whilst consumers’ online shopping spend continues to grow year-on-year,” notes Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the IAB, “there still remains a great discrepancy in terms of how much retailers are spending on their internet communications. We hope that this latest Brand Engagement study will help retail advertisers fully appreciate the brand-building capabilities of online, and in turn increase the medium’s share of their marketing budgets.”

Yellowpages.ca is increasing online Yellow Pages™ advertising rates between 10-25% depending on the type of YellowPages.ca™ ad you are purchasing.

The substantial increase in rates further indicates that YPG may have held on to the golden ticket a little too long. In an article I wrote on print Yellow Pages™ advertising last week, I mentioned that YPG had expertly handled the transition from print to online advertising till now, however, I believe that they have underestimated the velocity at which advertisers will move to internet products, like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Yellowpages.ca (YPG) has managed to hold off the exodus from print for a number of reasons that include their bundling of print and internet products, their feet on the ground in Canada and the fact that we are just too small a market for anyone to care. Otherwise, they would be getting hammered as most major US Yellow Pages™ publishers are right now.

This latest price increase leads me to believe that YPG now understands that when the print takes a hit, it won’t be a 1-2% drop. We will be looking at more serious numbers. The fact that the economy is in the dumpster will only add fuel to the fire.

Then there is the elephant in the room. Google has the band width and determination to develop the killer app that could make Yellow Pages™ advertising an afterthought at any given time. It is not what we know Google is doing, its what we don’t know.

As for the small business owners who are constantly being bombarded with the multitude of options; There may be a learning curve when it comes to search engine marketing but you need to get on board or get run over by their competitors.

Online marketing and Internet advertising are being recognized as a real and significant means to tap into the growing presence of consumers online. It is now recognized that despite a drop in U.S. consumer confidence and a none-too-healthy U.S. economy, there will nonetheless be double-digit growth in the money businesses are spending to advertise their products and services online.

Online advertising will grow by 20% this year, increasing from $19.9 billion in 2007 to $23.8 billion by the end of 2008, according to the latest market research released by JupiterResearch. This, at a time when a slumping U.S. economy is dragging down economic growth across much of North America and Europe. Traditional advertising, meanwhile, is forecast to grow only 4% in 2008.

These growth numbers highlight the importance of online marketing and Internet advertising to a burgeoning e-commerce sector. The current issue of Newsweek features an article on “A Second Coming of the Dot-Coms” which traces the growing shift of real and not speculative dollars online. Quite rightly, Newsweek attributes the resurrection of e-commerce in large part to the fact that “the majority (or at least a sizable minority) of the population in key markets like the United States, Europe and Asia now has access to broadband connections.”

The double-digit growth in ad spending online should highlight the importance of having an effective online marketing platform for businesses large and small. Without a planned online marketing strategy and a web site that is optimized so that search engines like Google can find and read it, small businesses and growth businesses cannot compete online. Large companies are pouring millions into Internet advertising campaigns that are dominating the bandwidth consumers are tapping into with sophisticated web sites and platforms that use the latest and most effective search engine optimization techniques to dominate their markets. Fortunately, the Internet is nothing if not democratic and small companies and growth businesses can effectively market their products and services and find their niche online using the same techniques and strategies as the largest companies and online players.