From an SEO standpoint, there is consensus among experts - Google, Yahoo and MSN are it. However, there’s a yappy little underdog called Teoma, which, despite its size, is a good contender in the search engine stakes. Teoma, which means "expert" in Gaelic, is owned by Ask Jeeves and powers the algorithmic search results on their properties (like Ask.com, Excite.com).

Yes, there's a big technology difference between Teoma and the other "big three" but Teoma does it differently with its localized approach. As Ammon Johns explained it in the MarketingProfs Thought Leaders Summit on SEO:

PageRank and link popularity is a bit like going out into the street and asking everyone who the best scientist is — you are going to get the obvious names: Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking. They’re popular answers.

Teoma looks within the topic. It finds the authority sites within the topic related to "scientists" and then asks "Who is the best scientist?" Chances are, Teoma is going to come up with names you have never heard of before, but are actually much better answers. It gives you the specialist answer instead of the popular answer.

Another difference with Teoma is that it is keyword-dependent. So when you type "blue widgets" into that search box, it pulls the community together and conducts a local search which refines and finds the authoritative sites on that particular subject.

The model of organizing the Web into topical communities and pinpointing the authorities (pages that have garnered a lot of inbound links from reputable, topically-relevant pages) and the hubs (those pages that link to a lot of reputable, topically-relevant pages) is an important model to grasp (read more about it in Mike Grehan's paper on topic distillation), because I predict that all the major engines will become keyword-dependent over time. If you grasp this concept now and are picky about the sites you garner links from and link to, then you'll be doing a lot to futureproof your SEO.

My 2-part article summarizing the recent Thought Leaders Summit on Email Marketing has now been published on MarketingProfs.com (part 1 and part 2).

It is for MarketingProfs premium subscribers only unfortunately, so if you have been thinking about subscribing , now is the time to do it.

MarketingProfs has kindly allowed me to make available the audio recording of the Summit, which is available here. It's over an hour and a half long; lots of meaty stuff in there.

The Summit panelists included renowned author Jim Sterne, Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk, and RSS guru Rok Hrastnik, among others.

We covered a lot of ground during the summit, including:

• whether email marketing as we know it is doomed
• the role of RSS - to replace or to augment email
• reliability of email tracking
• navigating past spam filters
• CAN-SPAM legislation
• extraordinary versus ordinary email campaigns
• top most effective email marketing tactics
• objectively selecting an email marketing vendor, and
• what the future has to hold.

This was the third Thought Leaders Summit that I’ve had the pleasure of conducting for MarketingProfs, the first two being on search engine optimization and business blogging. Another on Buzz Marketing is due out soon, so watch this space for details!

Listen to the audio recording of the Email Marketing Summit

(File size is 26 M (Show length 1 hour 46 minutes)

A pet peeve among panelists in a recent SEO Thought Leaders Summit was the engines' opposition to the tactic of link buying. Christine Churchill had some wise words to share about link buying:

Search engines like to take the hard line and categorize things as either black or white. In some cases, they are actually grey.

Say you are an artist and have a local frame shop you like to recommend. In turn, the frame shop might give you a small referral fee for sending all your wonderful clients their way. The online version of this is a link from the artist’s website to the frame shop’s website. It makes sense. It’s good marketing. It’s good business and that is what link-building and link buying is all about.

Many times, a link is a great lead generator. Let’s take the artist and the frame shop example again. You might get tons of traffic from that artist’s shop. It is a great business link.

You might buy links for credibility. Taken to the extreme, your link from the local Chamber of Commerce could be considered link buying.

Personally, I think link buying is a perfectly legitimate practice. I don't see the difference between a banner ad and a text link ad, as long as you're not intentionally trying to game the search engines and you expect to get traffic and brand visibility from those ads appearing on the websites you are advertising on, irrespective of the SEO effect.

My executive summary of the MarketingProfs thought leaders summit on "blogs for marketing" has been published on MarketingProfs.com as a two-part article series (part 1 came out last week, part 2 came out this week):

• A Business Case for Blogging: Thought Leaders on Marketing Blogs (Part 1 of 2)
• A Business Case for Blogging: Thought Leaders on Marketing Blogs (Part 2 of 2)

Sorry, it's premium content so you'll need to be a MarketingProfs paid premium subscriber ($5/month) to read 'em. Over the next month I'll drip-feed some of the highlights from this summit to you who are not subscribers (although I see no reason why you shouldn't sign up as a MarketingProfs premium subscriber... it's certainly affordable!).

MarketingProfs has kindly made available for 30 days the audio recording and the transcript from the Thought Leaders Summit on "Blogging for Marketing", a teleconference I led back in March. After that, only Premium Plus subscribers will have access to these materials. Panelists included some of the top-most expert marketers and business bloggers: Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Doc Searls, Debbie Weil, Steve Rubel, Toby Bloomberg, Shel Israel and BL Ochman. If you want to learn why should your company should start blogging, how to do it, pitfalls to avoid, opportunities to seize, what the future holds, and more, then this teleconference recording is for you! Get the materials here.

Yesterday I conducted another Thought Leaders Summit for MarketingProfs. This one was on email marketing. I had the pleasure of facilitating a conversation between some leading minds in the email marketing space, including Jim Sterne, author of several excellent books on email marketing and a founder of the Web Analytics Association; Shar VanBoskirk, consulting analyst with Forester Research; Eric Kirby, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Email Solutions at DoubleClick; Chris Baggett, founding partner of ExactTarget; Rok Hrastnik, owner of MarketingStudies.net and author of Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS; Chris Price, managing director of Permission NZ Ltd; and Neil Squillante, president of LandingPage Interactive.

We covered a lot of ground during the summit, including:

• whether email marketing as we know it is doomed
• the role of RSS - to replace or to augment email
• reliability of email tracking
• navigating past spam filters
• CAN-SPAM legislation
• extraordinary versus ordinary email campaigns
• top most effective email marketing tactics
• objectively selecting an email marketing vendor
• what the future has to hold

This was the third Thought Leaders Summit that I've had the pleasure of conducting for MarketingProfs, the first two being on search engine optimization and business blogging. I look forward to the time when we have a library of Thought Leaders Summits available for marketers covering all the key areas in marketing, particularly online marketing.

Our next summit will be on buzz marketing. The line-up for that one includes: Emanuel Rosen, author of The Anatomy of Buzz; Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Creating Customer Evangelists; Harvard professor David Godes; Jonathan Carson, CEO of BuzzMetrics; Dave Balter, founder of BzzAgent; Luanne Calvert of Mixed Marketing; and analysts Jim Nail and Gary Stein.

The audio recording, transcript, and summary of yesterday's Email Marketing Summit will be available in about a month's time. I'll let you all know when they're ready.