How Many People Visited Your Web Site Today? »

If you don’t know, you are missing a vital step in determining whether web site is successful or if you are just wasting your money.

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Search Engine Marketing Exploding »

A report from SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) states that last year, North American advertisers spent $9.4 billion on SEM (Search Engine Marketing). That figure represents a 63% increase over the 2005 totals. Because of the popularity of Internet advertising, it is estimated that the amount spent per year will nearly double by 2011. What will that mean for your web site?

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Professional Web Design »

I got a call the other day from a potential client looking for a new web design. I will call the potential client “Carl”. Usually, in the first few minutes of the conversation, I can tell if things will pan out or if they are “shopping around”.

I think Carl set a new record. The third sentence he said was, “How much will that cost?” Third sentence! Not a good sign.

I say “not a good sign” because it seemed that “Carl” was only concerned with price – not results. Now, don’t get me wrong – the price of the web site is certainly important, but a business looking to establish a presence on the Internet should also be asking the web design company about the results they can expect to achieve. That is called “return on investment”.

What would happen if you had a beautiful web site, but it did not show up in the Search Engines? When I say “show up”, I am not talking about showing up if people do a search for the name of your company. You should show up for that. No, I am talking about showing up when people search for terms related to what your company actually does. For example, if you are a doctor in Las Vegas, do you show up when you search for the phrase “doctor Las Vegas“? That is what I mean when I say “show up” in the Search Engines. Showing up for competitive terms is a big measure of how successful your web presence really is.

We have written an article entitled “Professional Web Design“. If you are a business looking to venture into the world of the Internet, take a few minutes and read it over before you make any decisions. Hopefully, it will give you some ideas and educate you a little about what you can expect from a professional web design company so you can make a good choice.

Lenovo Will Pre-load Microsoft’s Web Toolbar »

Lenovo desktop computers and laptops will start showing up with the Web Toolbar from Microsoft pre-loaded. The two companies announced their deal yesterday. Until that announcement, Google was the default toolbar for Lenovo, so I am sure Microsoft is hooting and hollering for two reasons:

1. They grabbed some share from Google
2. This is the first deal of its kind for Microsoft

Under the agreement, Lenovo will set live.com as the default homepage for the computer’s Internet browser and it will add the Microsoft toolbar for web searching. Of course, the end-user can change these default settings but most users do not and that is why securing a deal like this is so important to companies in the Search Engine business.

Lenovo is the third-largest PC maker in the world (they bought IBM a few years ago) and so this deal should have an immediate impact on Microsoft’s share of the Search Engine market (currently, they are 3rd behind Yahoo and Google).

Wikipedia Takes on Yahoo!, Google »

Wikipedia is working on a plan to create a search engine to take on Google and Yahoo!. According to Jimmy Wales, their goal is to take about 5 percent of the Internet search market.

He announced Wikiasari last year as a competitor to Google and one that would be more difficult to spam. However, according to the Wiki Search site, Wikiasari is not the name of the new project:

Wikiasari is not and will not be the name for the free search engine we’re developing. It was the name of a former project.

Further, he says that, contrary to speculation, Amazon has nothing to do with this project. Amazon is still a valued contributor to Wikia, Inc., but they are not participating in Wikia Search.

His idea then was that Wikiasari would be human edited, much the same way as Wikipedia. I am guessing that he has learned from the DMOZ problems and will make Wikia Search better .