Small Businesses don’t use the web channel

According to a new report from hosting firm Fasthosts, 49% of small firms web sites may as well not be there.  Fasthosts found in a survey of UK businesses that this percentage of firms don’ts submit their sites to search engines.

The report notes that two thirds of net users don’t look beyond the second page of search results.  What this means is that sites that don’t show up in the first 20 links are less likely to share in the £19 billion UK ecommerce market.  This market is expected to grow by 36 per cent in 2006.

The report also suggests that Google remains the top dog when it comes to searches with 89% of search users using Google as their preferred search engine.

A competent search marketing programme can really make a difference to top line profits for companies of any size.

technorati tags:Google, Marketing, SEM, Search

7 Rules for software start-ups

Ajit Nazare at Kleiner Perkins has 7 rules for software start-ups they consider funding.

KP’s 7 rules for start-ups

* Instant Value to customers – solve a problem or create value with the first use

* Viral adoption – Pull, not push. No direct sales force required

* Minimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.

* Simple, intuitive user experience – no training required.

* Personalized user experience – customizable

* Easy configuration based on application or usage templates

* Context aware – adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices, etc.

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: start-ups

These are all great value points for any organisation who has product to sell, and Dan Dodge’s blog is definately worth a visit if you have never been there.

Generating More Blog Traffic

We’ve had a number of enquiries over the last 12 months from companies we work with on how to generate more blog traffic.  Firstly we would point  you to a post by Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, who wrote a good post entitled “21 Tactics to increase Blog Traffic” and this outlined key ways to boost blog visibility – www.seomoz.org/blogdetails.php?ID=1347.

Directory submission is also a good well worthwhile to help build exposure and links.  Robin Good has a useful list of the best blog directory and RSS submission sites  – www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55.

Sponsored Blogging

A selection of services can put you in touch with companies ready to pay you to write about their products, helping smaller companies or individuals to earn money from blogging. Try www.payerpost.com or www.creamaid.com.

Google Press Archive Service

Google’s News Archive Search – Yet another service that Google have sneaked out – this one lets you search back through news articles several years, decades, even nearly a century back.  This is quite a handy research tool, and yet again is(currently) free.

Google Competitor promises intelligent AI Searches

The “first European search engine” is taking on Google with its propreitary AI technology. Accoona.eu has been designed to automatically understand what language is being used for a query. Accoona also outlines how the technology understands the meaning of a search query rather than just looking at individual keywords or boolean strings.

Accoona can be found at www.Accoona.com

Google Marketing

Google sneaked out a nice little tool recently called Related Links. Web designers can place Related Links units on their site to provide visitors with links to useful information that’s relevenat to their site’s content, including news, searches and pages.