The Forbes 400 Richest People in America, topped by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, has four Indian-Americans including Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla.

The other three Indian-Americans occupying a place in the list are Syntel’s founder Bharat Desai, venture capitalist Kavitark Ram Shriram, and software king Romesh Wadhwani.

From in.news.yahoo.com:

The list is topped by Gates, which has retained his position as the richest man in America with a net worth of USD 54 billion, for the 17th year in a row. Desai earned his engineering degree from IIT Mumbai and moved to the US after landing a programming job for Tata Consultancy Services in 1976.

He founded outsourcing outfit Syntel in 1980 with wife, Neerja Sethi, while earning his MBA from University of Michigan. Although he stepped down as Chief Executive last year, Desai remains the Chairman.

The Florida resident launched a deep value hedge fund last year and recently established foundation supporting entrepreneurship and education. Desai played for India in 1994 bridge world championship and says “his biggest failure” is “not being able to play cricket for India.

” Shriram is the founding board member of Google and one of the first investors in the company. “Shriram was one of the first people to write a cheque to Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998.

“He would advise them one day a week in their Menlo Park garage,” Forbes said. The University of Madra alumnus is still a board member and large shareholder of the search giant.

While Khosla occupies the 308th spot in the list, Desai ranks 252, and Shriram occupies the 288th position.

Web Travel Media, founded in 2006 by travel professionals and provider of modern media and marketing for all-inclusive resort vacation packages and cruise lines, launches a new website and travel marketing services for helping industry partners bridge the gap between existing “Traditional” marketing and “New-Age” solutions.

The leading source of travel marketing solutions for the travel industries offers varying services including Search Engine Marketing (PPC – Lead Generation), Social Media, Video Marketing Solutions, Email Marketing, and Website Solutions.

From News.yahoo.com:

The lineup of travel marketing solutions include: Search Engine Marketing (PPC) which is used to drive ticket sales and leads from interested travelers. Web Travel Media will help travel groups setup and manage marketing campaigns to increase sales of travel products and bookings.

Social Media Marketing is designed to give travel companies an online presence through popular social sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and in the professional networking site – LinkedIn.

One of the more popular services is the Travel Video Marketing solution which allows travel companies to use their supply of promotional DVDs and other videos which are created by popular resorts and cruise ship providers, and display these videos on the independent travel company websites for the benefit of the travel consumer. Also, by creating profiles on the popular video search engine YouTube, the travel companies can display a library of travel videos to show their potential customers more about the travel products the company offers.

These services by Web Travel Media are expected to help offer the travel industry a new way to present the highly sought after travel content on popular portals such as Google and YouTube.

Now that recession has moved out, to the delight of worldwide businesses, it is high time for every business to emphasize upon developing online presence and social media in its marketing programs.

The best thing that you can do for your business will be creating a well-thought marketing plan with paid social media a part of it and guiding your marketing decision on other marketing channels. For this, Facebook and Google can be amicable options.

From Actionableinsights.covario.com:

Facebook is the current king of social media with a user base of 400 million and growing (all privacy concerns set aside). Another thing to keep in mind with Facebook is the amount of time people spend on the site.

Think about it, do you spend more time on Google or Facebook? On Google, I get what I need and I’m out in an instant. On the book, I’ll get an IM, read about a friend’s latest break up and on and on. The advertising potential here is huge and currently untapped by large advertisers.

With Facebook you are able to target paid ads to your audience based on location, gender, income, interests, relationship status, age, language, education, employment, and more with an ad unit that is uses text and image. When building out Facebook campaigns, you get on the fly audience reach estimation so you always have an idea of how board or narrow your campaign will be. Using a well implemented analytics strategy and Paid Social Media Best Practices, advertisers will be able to continuously refine their Paid Social Media programs to yield the highest returns and also influence their other media channels through metric insights from Facebook.

In short, paid social media is the key to success if you want to take your business to the next level at the lowest possible cost and without any hurdles.

All you need to excel with web promotion is the right advice at the right time and place, especially when it comes to business promotion on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. This YouTube video helps you gain creative insights on enhancing visibility of a website.

Did you know that most of the small business websites generate little or almost no traffic?

The reasons of such a failure may be many but the five common mistakes made by small businesses while opting for online visibility are as follows:

Mistake#1: Improper On-Page Criteria

Search engines such as Google, MSN, and AOL look for specified elements contained within the pages of a website. A small business can optimize its website to drive web traffic by acting in a proactive manner.

It is important for a business to put correct Meta Tags and sprinkle primary keyword phrase throughout the text body. A hyperlink with the primary keyword being the anchor text is important for a good search engine ranking.

Mistake#2: Poor Website Structure

Search engines collect information from a web page that is required for indexing. If a website is structured in an unorganized manner, the search engines will not be offering enough visibility and ranking to it. This means that a business with a poor website will suffer even if it is the best vendor or service provider in the town.

Mistake#3: Not Building Enough Trust

It is important for a business website to possess unique and informative content so that the Internet visitors (prospective customers) can trust it. An online business is itself to blame if it gives even a single reason for the Internet visitors to leave its website.

Mistake#4: Not Building Inbound Links

Did you know the search engines identify the importance of a website by identifying links of external websites that point to it? A website with a good percentage of related and high-quality inbound links gets a vote of confidence and enjoys a good search engine ranking.

Mistake#5: Lack of Monetization Models

A website that drives thousands of unique visitors is of no use for a business unless proper capitalization of incoming web traffic is being done. By planning and implementing effective monetization models in its website, a business gets uninterrupted access to multiple revenue sources.

An online business can ensure continuing success by reaping benefits of online marketing in the best possible ways while availing the specialized services of an Internet Marketing Agency. These agencies eliminate all five of these and every other related mistake that may come in the way of an online business.

In today’s world, it is even impossible to think why some businesses plan their search engine marketing ahead of creating a website. In every marketing book of the world, it is written that search engine marketing should always be secondary to creation and maintenance of a business web site.

If you, as a business entrepreneur, want to reap optimum benefits of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) then focus on the actual needs of your existing and potential customers. Once they have been understood by you then focus on creating and delivering keywords accordingly.

It is always advisable to make use of words and phrases that your business expects its buyers to use. Moreover, it is important to note here that SEM keywords and phrases are not same for two businesses, even though they may have the same line of operations.

Try thinking about how the buyers will be searching and develop plans accordingly including those keywords. The first step in this process will be to first ascertain the target audience and thereafter slicing it into different buying segments. Thereafter, try to identify end number of circumstances in which your business’s targeted audience may find themselves. Try to find out their preferences and the thoughts of a perfect product, service, and business and constantly work on these thoughts.

Apart from that, try to make your website interesting and appealing. There is no use of creating or nourishing a website if it cannot serve the business purpose in the first place. It is best to use highly descriptive, easy-to-understand, keyword-rich summaries, and abstracts on search engines such as Google for easy and top-class findability.

If you can manage these tips, there cannot be anything that can obstruct the success of your business’s search engine marketing plan.