Digital marketing insights.

...from my book, Findability: Why Search Engine Optimization is Dying.

Images have always had a unique kind of sales and marketing power, if only because the human eye is trained to pick up on visuals faster than on text or abstract ideas.

We spend a lot of time on our blogs advising business owners to stay away from the darker sides of Internet marketing and search optimization.

The chances are good, if you read our articles on an ongoing basis, that you're here looking to learn more about the best ways to promote your company and grow your business online.

Here at Kayak, we are big fans of LinkedIn (arguably the most important social media site for some types of businesses and professionals), as well as anything that reduces spam.

With spammers getting better at disguising what they do, are you confident you can identify every piece of spam that comes through?

Back by popular demand... these are the types of websites that both marketing and sales managers dream about. We've brought back 9 of the top bits of know-how every web marketer should observe.

In some ways, it's too bad that the ancient Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians aren't still around. With gods that represented everything from the weather to favorite sporting events, they might have had a field day with Google.

If you want to dominate your market, have lots of inbound sales opportunities coming from your website, and generally carry online marketing to its fullest potential, then it won't be long before you'll come across the advice to "become a thought leader in your industry."

If you run a successful business for long, you're bound to run into a competitor you just can't stand.

At Kayak, we constantly emphasize to our clients that they need to be leaders in producing online content and expressing new ideas within their market or industry.

With the initial rollout of the Google Penguin update more than a year behind us, you would think it would be "old news," especially in the rapidly shifting world of Internet marketing.

For creators, causes, and even entrepreneur dreamers, crowdfunding might be the best concept ever introduced to the Internet.

Content marketing, with its combination of tried-and-true tactics and creative philosophies, sometimes feels like a bit of a mystical art. In fact, it occasionally reminds us of those old, campy kung fu movies where enlightenment could be found simply by speaking to a master who lived on top of a mountain pass guarded by a thousand grueling steps.

On our blog, and most others that deal with the topic of social media marketing, it's all about the pieces, tools, and tactics. But, because sites like Facebook and Twitter are all about impressions and relationships, the tactics only tell part of the story.