The unprecedented agreement between Yahoo and Google, to present Google generated advertising on Yahoo search results, means a changing dynamic for web advertisers. First and foremost, Yahoo pages will now selectively include ads from the Google Content Network. What this means for advertisers that advertise with Google, is that some of their ads will display on selected Yahoo search results pages. This of course gains these advertisers on the Google network millions more potential viewers and buyers of their products. This also means that advertisers who primarily advertise with Yahoo now face competition from Google advertisers.

In the short term, those who advertise exclusively with Yahoo may face some adverse results because of the new competition for in the long-term however, the online advertising market will be stabilized by this merger. Certainly new challenges for web advertisers will result from this unprecedented agreement however; new opportunities will also emerge from the agreement between Yahoo and Google. Webmasters will need to pay careful attention to ever changing metrics and dynamics in the online search engine advertising industry.

Advertisers can expect to see many changes in the coming months including a tightening of online advertising now that two major competitors such as Yahoo and Google are now working together at least in some small portion of their online advertising empires. Other advertising giants like Microsoft and the other major search engines will soon begin to cooperate on limited basis as well.

As the online search advertising market begins to integrate more closely and more operators began to work together, new challenges for advertisers will emerge as well as new opportunities. Business people, advertisers and web content producers will all need to rethink their overall advertising strategies in order to stay competitive in this highly cutthroat market. No longer will it be enough to simply hope and pray that a campaign committed to either Yahoo or Google will bring successful results and traffic to a site however, it will become easier than has ever been to launch effective advertising campaigns online.

One of the problems faced by those who hire companies to enhance their search engine optimization is that many of these companies use automated software to build links and gain organic rankings for their clients’ sites.

Automated software tends to work toward quantity, not quality, which ultimately can result in site rankings experiencing a quick boost followed by a severe and longer-lasting fall; that is when SEO goes bad.

Distinguishing between link building and relative linking is imperative to the health of your site’s ranking. Relative linking joins sites of similar topics to enhance your site’s organic ranking, and though the market changes and shifts, topic relation does not.

Take, for example, a site selling caramel covered apples that links to a site that sells carrots. Both apples and carrots are food, and so a relation exists, making the link a relative link.

While it is true that an apple site linking to another site selling apples would carry a stronger relation and thus gain more value than linking to a carrot site, there still exists a relative topic that, once drilled down by crawlers, will not damage the apple site’s general value.

However, if that apple site links to a site selling pool-cleaning services, the relation dies. There is no common topic between caramel covered apples and pool-cleaning services.

Another way to think about relative linking is a movie rental store. Aside from new releases, movies are typically divided by genre: mystery, drama, comedy, children’s and thriller, to name a few.

If you were looking for a movie about Dracula, you would first look in the thriller section. However, if someone had misplaced a film about the well-known vampire in the children’s section, you would be unlikely to find it in a timely manner, if at all.

Linking your caramel covered apple site to a pool-cleaning service site is like misfiling Dracula in the children’s movies, with one exception: whereas you can ask the video rental clerk to provide some insight as to the location of the Dracula movie you seek, crawlers aren’t going to go to the virtual front desk to ask for help finding your site.

Don’t subject your to automatic link building software that could cost your site valuable rankings. Instead, be sure that you’ve utilized relative linking, and let your site selling caramel covered apples shine.

The internet is, for now, a great equalizing force in the business world. Any online business, no matter its size, can compete with any other business, no matter its size.

Just because a business is considered to be “small” in the brick and mortar world, doesn’t mean that it cant appear just as professional and well established as companies 100 times its size. Virtually every critical office task can be outsourced competently and cheaply today. Small business can run much more leanly than large corporations, and therefore are far more agile.

The internet means democratization. Offline, it’s not yet possible to buy 5 minutes worth of adverting in the hottest marketplaces available; online it is. The internet as is stands presents awesome opportunities for tailored marketing campaigns for small businesses. Even if you can’t afford a million dollar marketing budget your business can market to a small group of motivated buyers for a minimal amount of money. For a fraction of what it used to cost, companies can market, make sales and reinvest the profits in a matter of weeks not years.

The internet means you can be your own media. Can’t get profiled on prime time television? In the past, press coverage was vital to the growth of a company. Today you can create a media network rivaling the look and feel of CNN, in some cases free of charge. Media freedom is freedom to tell your story the way you want to, in front of massive audiences.

Small businesses are nimble. They’re in a unique position to capture opportunities while larger businesses take longer to mobilize their resources. Creating a respectable online presence is so inexpensive today it’s that it’s virtually free. There is no excuse for a small business not to look big ,except perhaps for its inability to capitalize on all of its advantages.

The biggest impediment to the success of a small business is its owners and managers own reluctance to act big. To do, rather than just thinking about doing, to act rather than perpetually planning and waiting for a better opportunity. This generation marks the nexus of the biggest change in the fundamental ways that business gets done in the recorded history of mankind. This window of opportunity will not stay open forever; it is inevitable that larger companies learn to adapt and begin to monopolize all opportunities once more.

For now however, great opportunities still exist for those of us who are brave enough to pursue them.

As the internet matures and more destination sites emerge (think Digg, Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube and many more) the way that users search for information is changing as well. How do we reach people who spend 90% percent of their time on sites that have their own integrated and proprietary search engines? What about people who are online but living their entire online experience behind the gates of MMORPG’s?

How on earth is an advertiser supposed to reach these people. Rest assured online marketers are working furiously to answer these questions. In some cases your competition already has the answers. Are you surprised that they aren’t sharing it with you?

Staying ahead of the game means understanding these technologies. Simply knowing that Facebook and MySpace exist isn’t enough to reach their users. So get an account and work it. It doesn’t take a lot of time to set one up and the wonderful thing about the online world is that is very forgiving of baby steps. So while you social networking account may not drive sales immediately, it won’t hurt you either.

The major theme to remember is that the internet doesn’t sit still. Unbelievably young kids are even now, developing the next must have technology and like the pioneers they are, this technology will be far away from the search results page on the search engines many of us advertise on. At my company Erunix we continually strive to stay abreast of these changes and deliver relevant solutions for them.

In a 24 hour world of ever changing dynamics, can your business really afford to wait? Success in a world of online market changes means staying ahead of the curve. It means anticipating the trends and meeting them at the crossroads, of today and tomorrow. That’s what I try to do in my own business.

We live in a world of change. Just years ago things were a lot more stable; you could open a business and do well without paying too much attention to which way the winds of change were blowing at the moment. In today’s world however, the only constant is change and we must pay as much attention to changes in the online market as we possible can.

Businesses should collect a series of strategies and reports for dealing with change. This information should be available to everyone from the janitor to the CEO; the next great idea doesn’t care who it comes out of. Freeing up information creates thinking organizations. Instead of simply delegating, try communicating with your human assets.