This is a pretty Solid Discussion, but I am inclined to think that G may not promote its "web properties", however, it does push its One Box solutions, which I think are th real threat to publishers. http://explicitly.me/google-one-box-results-the-real-threat-to-publishers

@rishilakhani - I'm impressed to see that you have a great understanding of email marketing. And everything your stating may very well be correct. The determining factor in this scenario is, that mary & kens italian restaurant on the corner cannot afford to invest in those kinds of expertise, nor do they have the time to research and learn it. Simply not practicle.

First off, thank you - I have handled quite a few large E camaigns, as well as massive newsletter buys etc, so I def know what I am doing when it comes to email.

Secondly, I genuinely advise you to reword the article to state that it is the mid / small size businesses that you refer to more than the larger scale biz. I dont think in your article you define:

are still firmly of the belief that for the businesses we are targeting this article towards, that Social Media is the best way forward.

Who are those people?  If you dont secify its the SME,mom and pop, local biz, then you are making the whole post target towrds the whole online industry, irrelevant of size, which is where it goes wrong in my opinion.

Further, even for for those SMEs Email has a longer term role to play and I think you may be referring to biz that DOESNT have an e database, and if they had to choose between Social and Email, THEN they should choose Social. In that scenario, it does make sense.

You CAN whitelist a small biz email database, by asking users to add the marketing email adress to their contacts, which is something all email campaigns should encourage anyway.

Unless of course your target was to cause controversy.

It may or may not make it past the Junk Folder (chances are – if you are email marketing regularly you may be already going to junk folder & don’t even realise it!)

Thats not how email marketing works.

You have to whitelist your campaigns, make sure that the ISPs accept them as legitimate communication etc etc. A specialist agency in email helps you deal with all of that.

You have to continuously circulate and refine your lists - if you dont get click throgh on an adres, you should look at segmenting and re assinging those adresses to a side pile, and try verification / reactivation emails etc.

You are only reaching out to those people who currently exist on your list.

Once again - thats wrong. Long before the advent of "social Media sharing" emails had the "forward this email to a friend" facility - and actually thats where social media learnt it from. If your emails arent going viral if the offer is good, then you are doing it wrong.

Without sounding rude, I would like to actually see the credentials of someone writing about email being dead. What are the largest campaigns you have worked on? Real results?

Unfortunately his argument starts out really well - especially when talking about wrting for humans, however as Jill pointed out, his argument about title tags not helping SEO weakens the whole post.

Remember however, the argument is about bookmarking, ad there the argument stands / sort off - but should have steered clear of SEO argument as obviously may not have full blown SEO knowledge

Thanks Michelle :)

I wonder if we should have a historic cull on obvious spam that went hot? http://sphinn.com/story/58588/

Good call Jill.

Quick question Sebastian - is this manual going hot new? I think this would hav any way though :)

Mechanical Turk can be used for some seriously devious stuff too...

Hey Verified SEO - I WILL pay your fee, IF you prove to me who these "evaluators" are. http://seobullshit.com/verified-seo-open-challenge/If its tedster, I will pay 10 times the fee btw.

http://seobullshit.com/verified-seo-open-challenge/ Thats all :)

@netmeg I am still trying to crack dogpile.

Charles's scholarly articles regarding search engine marketing have been published on hundreds of websites in addition to trade journals and magazines.

Why havent I heard of you then?

His banner says he has been an SEM consultant since 1999 - but later on hwe says he has beein the SEM industry over 12 years...

Loved this as much as I loved Aarons piece.

@zegron - the drama is building on it. (love the fact that he linked to my post though)