Pew found that the use of search engines, both the large generic kind and the small site specific kind, has risen dramatically since 2002. Where the use of email on a daily basis rose just 15 percent, the use of search rose 69 percent.

The best part is Pew gives us the demographic information to go with their study.

Those who are using search engines on an average day are more likely to be socially upscale, with at least some college education and incomes over $50,000 per year. They are more likely to be Internet users with at least six years of online experience and to have their homes wired for fast Internet connections.

Younger Internet users are more likely than older users to search on a typical day, and men are more likely than women to search on an average day, Pew reported. And those who use broadband connections at home are significantly more likely than those who use dial-up to have ever tried using search engines at all, by 94 percent to 80 percent.

With the explosion of content on the web, more and more users are integrating search into their daily activities with the expectation that utilizing this tool will garner the information they are looking for from an otherwise impenetrable mountain of information. Thus far major search engines have been able to answer this call (from the user’s standpoint) and each successful return of relevant information from a search query builds trust with the search engine and warrants it’s use the next time the user is seeking assistance.

As we tell all of our clients, just having a website does not mean it will generate traffic or dollars to the bottom line. Your website must be functional and findable.

I have long admired Opera for their educational aspect and their desire to advance the skill level of web workers everywhere. Looking over the outline of the documents it appears this is almost identical to the way I was educated at the University of Idaho and, as Sophia states in her article, it is extremely difficult to find a program like that – that is independent of computer science or graphic design. However, if the web is going to reach the longevity and revered status of print we need more educational institutions to begin teaching and sculpting artisans of this “new media” without the limitations of established programs, but also on top of or ahead of modern practices.

I can’t wait for the rest of the articles to come out!

Not much has changed in the past month. The title tags and the descriptions are still the global setup we implemented when the site went live and little to no content has changed since launch date as well. So, it’s no surprise that that a couple of our rankings have slipped a few spots. The content is slowly starting to get stale and I suspect the duplicate titles and descriptions will have a greater impact in the coming month.

However we can no longer say the site has only one link from our blog. We did release one article through a few article marketing websites and that has generated about a dozen links back to the site.

June 7, 2008

• ceo skills development program – #1
• skill development – #5
• leadership skills development – #9
• ceo lack of leadership – #11

July 8, 2008

• ceo skills development program – #2
• skill development – #7
• leadership skills development – #7
• leadership skill development – #1
• ceo lack of leadership – #23
• NEW! – small business coaching gym – #7

Are these the most competitive phrases? Not necessarily, but the traffic they are driving is more direct and average time on site is much higher than other sources of traffic. Conversion rate is ok, but definitely not where we want it to be – yet. Stay tuned for more updates in the future.

Enough websites, business periodicals, and newspapers have written about the benefits of business blogging that business owners and marketing managers with little to no experience with internet marketing have latched onto it as the holy grail of search engine optimization. Those in the business of web development and SEO have not helped matters at all. They continue to push the easy sale of business blogging on every client that walks through their door even though some businesses just have no reason to blog. Other businesses simply have no time to blog. Believe me blogging is time consuming as is often the first thing in our office to get neglected when we get outrageously busy. If you don’t have the time to manage your regular website do you think you will have time to blog as well?

Beyond the question of whether or not your business should have a blog lies the fact that blogging is not the holy grail of search engine optimization. There is no holy grail of SEO. There is no one thing you can invest minimal time in to achieve top rankings. It takes a considerable investment of time, either your own or that of an internet marketing consultant, in all of the items mentioned at the beginning of this article – link building, article marketing, social media marketing, website usability improvements, on-page content optimization and more in order to get top rankings for your chosen keywords.

Many web designers tout blogs as automagically having search engine optimized structure and code. This is a flat out fallacy. On-page optimization is dependent upon the SEO knowledge of the developer and/or designer. I have seen plenty of blogs with horrible on-page optimization. Even prepackaged free templates can suffer from under-optimized structure and leaving the blog engine’s default settings in place is virtually always an SEO killjoy. (Even our blog is not as optimized as it could be. Feel free to comment on it.)

Are we completely against business blogging? Of course not!! If we were, would we have a blog? We know that blogging can be a very powerful tool in any business’s online marketing arsenal. It is a great way to communicate directly and openly with your customers and potential customers. Blogs can give clarity as to what you or your product does and they can help greatly with online reputation management and customer service. They can even help garner good rankings for long tail terms and phrases related to your main keyword list, but it is not the only thing you, as a site owner, should be doing to create a powerful online identity. Most importantly, business blogging is not the holy grail of search engine optimization.

You can shift your marketing dollars away from traditional print and direct marketing to internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and PPC advertising. As we say on our solutions page, your website is the core to all your marketing initiatives. It is the only marketing tool that gives you direct, almost real-time, feedback of marketing campaigns. No more guesstimates as to how that direct mail campaign went or how many people even saw your ad in the yellow pages, let alone called you because of it.

With the tracking and analytics capabilities of the internet you know almost instantaneously how well your marketing collateral, ad buys, or email campaign was received. You get real numbers allowing you to understand where you should invest more or curtail other initiatives. If you are not receiving statistical data from your web development company, internet marketing firm, or email marketing agency you should probably seek additional vendor help in those areas.

Now more than ever it is critical to be strategic with your marketing dollars. It’s time you know exactly where your marketing dollars are going and exactly what you are getting for them. Return on your investment (ROI) can be determined almost immediately and there is no guessing. Can you say the same about your last print ad campaign?

Not only can you be more strategic with internet marketing, but you can also claim you’re going green! By not running print ads your business is not using the paper to print the direct mail pieces or using the toxic and environmentally unfriendly inks used in printing those items like postcard mailers or newspaper ads. Some people in the print industry or more traditional graphic design agencies may want to argue the validity of that statement, but stop and think about every aspect of creating and delivering a single direct mail piece. If you compare the total process from creating the ink, making the paper, printing the item and then delivering the item,with the alternative of using electrical energy to keep the ad servers up and running you can see the environmental impact for online marketing is dramatically lower than many other advertising options.

With online marketing, not only can you feel warm and fuzzy inside about doing your part to save the planet, but your wallet will also feel good. Because online marketing does not use those physical, natural resources it does not carry the same high cost as print advertising. When you hire an internet marketing firm you are paying for their time, energy, and effort to create your digital ad. You do not have to pay for the ink company to create the ink or the paper company to create the paper or the printer to print the creative piece – all those items that get built into the cost of doing direct mail. Instead your budget can be put towards what is most important – creating powerful ads that drive real customers to your door! Isn’t that the point of marketing in the first place?!?

When things look to be getting tougher many businesses immediately start to slash and burn their marketing budgets – one of the worst things to do in these times. You don’t want to bury your head in the sand and wait out the storm while your competitors expand their branding and advertising online. Instead you should contact an internet marketing consultant to help you put your marketing dollars to better use.

You may have read Kristy’s post a couple weeks ago about launching a new website for Creating Effective Organizations, Inc..

That project started as a redesign of the client’s website but was shifted to developing a brand new web presence based on a brand new company name and identity. Of course with this large shift in focus also came a brand spanking new web address – creatingeffectiveorganizations.com.

During development the url sat there with one image on it – the logo, and a little of text about what was going to be uncovered very shortly. We kept it bland because we had yet to target the content and pick our keywords. Behind the scenes it was anything but calm. We were deep into design and development, all the while working closely with the copywriter to launch a search engine optimized website one day one. An incredible amount of time had gone into keyword research and discovery before developing section and then page specific content around these chosen phrases.

On the development side it was business as usual – a table-less layout with structured markup utilizing appropriate headings, paragraphs, lists, etcetera. Presentation is handled by 4 (yes FOUR!) separate stylesheets to deliver attention-grabbing web design based on where the user is within the website. Interactive goodies include a slick UI for the free assessments as well as a custom content management system (CMS) on the back end.

For all of our search engine optimization preparedness, we launched the site with a global meta description and title. Figuring the client would have full control of these items down to the page level from within the CMS and they could update post launch in an effort to reduce development cost – the global data is still in place. We also had burned through our budget for link building and other online marketing initiatives, so it was going to be up to the client (with some consulting from us) to manage these items.

So, we launched the site with the hopes to train the client on the CMS within the first week. It didn’t happen. Due to conflicting schedules we completed training last Thursday – virtually two full weeks after launch.

So what does all of this have to do with the title of this post?

I checked the positioning of the website on Friday. Two weeks after the launch of a brand new website and with just one link from our blog, they have top ten rankings in Google for two phrases they were targeting with their old website that never cracked the top 100. They also have a top 20 ranking for another phrase and a sweet number 1 spot for a fourth term. The rankings break down as follows:

• ceo skills development program – #1
• skill development – #5
• leadership skills development – #9
• ceo lack of leadership – #11

Of course everyone is ecstatic, but we also realize we have a long, llloooonnnggg way to go! I will be monitoring traffic and rankings in the near future to make sure this was not a fluke thing and that we maintain these while building additional results.

Congratulations to IWC and thanks to unmatched style!

35 Professional Looking Corporate Websites

Yep, I’ve been called all of those names and more. Honestly, I’m ok with it because I recognize I have a problem. It’s called addiction. It’s an evil, vile thing that controls me like nothing else ever has. It causes cold sweats, blurry eyes and many late nights in front of my laptop. I call it “a love”, but I know better. It’s like a physical dependency on oxygen. I gotta have my xhtml and css!

Of course I am talking about being addicted to web design. If your heart is beating faster and your palms are sweating just from reading this you may be addicted too! Follow the link below to read the symptoms of this horrible addiction. If you find out you are addicted to web design, we may be able to help you feed your craving!

You Know You’re Addicted To Web Design If…

• How 3 Lines of Code Can Improve Your Rankings
       Our Post from February 20, 2008 – Vanity in Your Address Bar – WWW or no-WWW
• What Does a Title Tag, Title Tag and Title Tag Have In Common?
       Our Post from June 15, 2007 – Search Engine Optimization Tip 2
• Time to Wake Up to Email HTML Standards
       Our Post from November 28, 2007 – Email Standards Project