Reports out of the Newspaper Association of America’s annual convention this week focused on the perceived drama between newspaper publishers and Google. Observers have been fixed on the rifts between the search firm and newspaper publishers, which some say suffer because of search engine-facilitated distribution of their content. However, the NAA itself at the San Diego event promoted search engine marketing as a potential revenue stream for its member publishers.

During a presentation Monday, the NAA’s SVP Business Development Randy Bennett, along with VP Advertising Mort Goldstrom, suggested a variety of ways newspaper firms can enhance their digital ad offerings. Among their recommendations: search engine marketing services.

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Small businesses will soon be overwhelmed with the amount of choices they have to market their business online through SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Mobile Marketing. A great great of this is the start-up dotMenu, which started out by simply hiring stay at home moms to go out and scan in menus from local restaurants for $2 a piece. This allowed them to keep overhead down, efficiency up, and grow within the constraints of cash flow. In 2008 dotMenu ended up taking 3,000,000 online restaurant orders.

The consistent trend of people connecting, sharing, and collaborating on the internet is only going to have a positive effect on small business marketing. When companies and individuals become more open, competition grows larger. When competition grows larger, innovation begins. Products will start to become more transparent, ROI for marketing efforts will become clearer to small business, and the businesses that provide real value will rise to the top, whether they are small or big.

Every time I attend a Kelsey Conference I am amazed at the overwhelming amount of new start ups attending the conference. But the one thing that is more overwhelming than that is the fact that all these start ups are striking partnerships with companies 1000x their size without even a blink. 2009 is going to bring an enormous amount of opportunities for small business to get online, with the big question not being ‘should we be online, but who should we be online with?’

Now that small is the new big, things are going to be a lot more clear for small business.

“Our local media customers are always looking for new ways to engage their audience, increase traffic and drive new revenue streams online,”

… said MediaSpan Executive Vice President of online services, Steven Barth.

“eLocal Listing’s proven SEO platform meets this need by providing powerful local search technology as well as added revenue and growth opportunities.”

eLocal Listing’s Premium and Standard Products, which utilize the Found Fast Technology™ platform, will enable local and regional media publishers to incorporate eLocal’s powerful search engine optimization solutions to get their clients found on the major search engines.

“We are pleased to partner with MediaSpan, enabling their publishers to offer a more valuable advertising experience to their clients,”

… said Tim Judd, CEO of eLocal Listing LLC.

“Combining eLocal Listing’s online advertising solutions with MediaSpan’s traditional TV and radio advertising packages will create a strong marketing media mix and will increase revenue for MediaSpan’s publishers and broadcasters. In these challenging economic times, the ability to reach local customers both on and offline is key for the best long term growth of local media, their advertisers and MediaSpan.”

MediaSpan’s publishers and broadcasters can expect to begin incorporating eLocal Listing’s online marketing products into their advertising packages in the second quarter of 2009.”