Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a vital role in increasing traffic from search engines, as well as increasing page rank.

Generally speaking there are 10 main “shades” of SEO. They range from Black to White. Black usually meaning spy ware, hacking web servers and pure evil. In comparison, white hat SEO on the other hand only offers content that users are searching for, optimizes the site for users and not search engines.

So which is better for your website? Depends, if you’re looking to make a quick buck and don’t care if you get banned from most search engines as well as banned from Adsense and Yahoo publisher network, then Black hat is for you. If you’re interested in spending hour after hour posting quality content then White hat is best suited for you. The best way to find a balance between search engines and readership is to stay near white, without being too focused on readers. The last thing you want it 10 returning visitors and no new traffic from search engines.

Online marketing plays a vital role hand in hand with SEO, no matter what shade your website is. Online marketing increases product awareness brings traffic, and basically gets your product heard about. The key to online marketing is how the targeted audience perceives your website. If you market your site to be a site talking about how to learn to speak Japanese, and your site is about Chinese, then you’ve falsely marketed your product/website which could potentially damage your product/sites reputation as well as your bank account balance.

One of the biggest advantages of Online marketing is the availability of information. Your audience can log onto the net and easily learn about your products any hour of the day. A good example of marketing is Apples huge online advertising campaign about the IPOD shuffle. It has the same features as many other MP3 players,there are even some that are better value. Apple through massive online and offline marketing has targeted their audience in this case Teenagers, then used techniques such as colors, music and words that their audience can relate to.

Compared to offline marketing, radio, tv and print. Internet marketing is growing increasingly fast. It’s also gaining popularity among businesses and even users who are trying to monetize their blog or website.