By Brittany Mayorga - August 15, 2007 - These days, college graduates with traditional degrees in, English, Communications, Psychology, and even Marketing are finding themselves woefully unprepared to compete for the growing number of new jobs born of the information age. This is especially true when it comes to Internet Marketing… a fast-growing, multi-million dollar industry.

University undergraduate students struggle daily with general education courses trying to discover their path in life - learning little if anything about the new and growing field of Internet Marketing.

Internet Marketing (sometimes called Online Marketing) is a vast and booming industry which is fast becoming a place where recent graduates can find opportunities in the "working world." Even four year colleges barely recognize Internet Marketing as a class, let alone a major, although in just a few years online advertising (marketing) has grown to be worth tens of billions of dollars annually.

Due to this fast growth, academics are struggling to catch on to this current trend. To bring them up to par, schools are actively recruiting Online Marketers, to explain their knowledge and teach their expertise at schools. Fortunately, online universities and distance learning educators have started to jump on the bandwagon and are now offering Online Marketing classes and degree programs.

Although colleges have been slow to recognize this growing industry, businesses from the smallest to the Fortune 500 have already been attracted by the technology and its capabilities for market research, promotion, expense reductions and boost in sales and ROI.

With Online Marketing, the tiniest companies can expand their client reach into the far corners of the world. Prospective customers typically use search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. to find companies selling the products they are looking to purchase. The challenge therefore, is for the company to make its website visible to the search engines. To accomplish this, the web site needs to be responsive to phrases (called keywords) that are likely to be entered into Google, et al by a prospective customer.

The process of making a web site known to the search engines is called search engine optimization. Beneath the umbrella of "Online Marketing", there are two main methodologies companies utilize to get their website noticed on the search engines… Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising and Search Engine Submission. There are many firms that can help organizations optimize their sites for the search engines. One of these is TMW Consulting, Inc. of Aliso Viejo, CA who offer packages for just a few hundred dollars on their www.submission-pro.com site that can improve a company's search engine rankings quickly.

Those who have established Online Marketing programs seem delighted with the results. With technology existing in every realm of our daily tasks, Online Marketing is here to stay!

Online Marketing targets a wide variety if not all types of industries and companies. Online Marketing has had a large impact on several industries including music, banking, real estate, and flea markets - not to mention the advertising industry itself. This has led to a hefty increase in new job positions for recent grads due to the broad spectrum of industries involved.

But one might wonder if businesses have noticed and implemented Online Marketing, it would only seem natural that it would be a major part of universities curriculum. Thankfully, universities and students want the best for their futures, and in no time, Online Marketing should be just as common as the other traditional majors offered at schools.