Google is clearly the #1 search engine and is gaining popularity with impressive market share. According to ComScore, in June 2008 Google accounted for 61.5% of core searches in the US, followed by Yahoo! at 20.9% and Microsoft at 9.2%. Core searches are defined as those searches performed on the five major engines: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Ask.

Even more interesting is the trends happening in the US market share. Google continues to increase its market share in the US at the expense of rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft. In the last 3 years, Google has moved from a 36.5% market share (June 2005) to a 61.5% market share (June 2008). This is a 68% increase in market share. During this same period, Yahoo! fell from 30.4% to 20.9% share; Microsoft fell from 15.5% to a 9.2% share.

The total number of searches performed has risen sharply during the same time. There were 11.5 billion searches performed during June 2008 on the core search engines (US).

According to Neilsen Net Ratings (Nov 2007) there are 218,302,574 Internet users in the US. This is equal to 71.9% of the total US population. This also means that the average Internet user performed 53 searches on one of the core search engines during June 2008. This is up from 43 searches just 9 months earlier (Sep 2007).

Google is increasing both its market share and its number of total searches at a very consistent rate. The average number of searches per month made by the average Internet user is also steadily increasing. This means a sound web traffic strategy focused on Google is extremely important for every business that has a website today.

You can use your business website to increase sales at your bricks and mortar locations. 72% of the US population uses the Internet and they will use it to research a purchase even if the purchase will be made at a physical retail location. An effective business website acts to answer questions and help the pre-sales process.

Even if your business does 100% of its business at a physical retail location, sales can be increased using a business website. According to Nielsen Online 80% of consumer electronic purchasers bought at a store whose website they visited first. 44% of pet food consumers researched info such as nutritional specs online.

1. Product listings: even if you don’t sell online, list product details so interested buyers can research and compare products. This way they arrive to your store ready to buy.
2. Contact info: post store hours, store location and an interactive map with driving directions.
3. FAQ area: include common questions that are asked by customers in person at your store location. This way your website can help answer the same questions 24/7.
4. Use Blogging and Social Media: By using blog marketing and other social media, you reach a whole new audience than your website alone will. Consider a Facebook page or encourage customers to review your business on social review sites like Yelp.com.
5. Traditional Media: When advertising in newspaper, radio, TV or direct mail, always include your website URL where interested consumers can learn more about what you offer.

Online sales depend on getting targeted visitor traffic to your site, but how do you convince them to buy? Your goal is to convert window shoppers into paying customers. These are important strategies in business website design.

1. USP: State your unique selling proposition. This is what sets you apart from your competition. This could be free shipping, unique products or a lowest price guarantee.
2. Targeting: Target your visitor to bring in ready buyers. Certain keywords have a much higher conversion rate. This is especially important in pay per click (PPC).
3. Content: Use clear website copy that emphasizes the benefits of buying from you. Your visitor is in a hurry, show your product advantages in bullet points and even compare your product to your competitors. Include a clear call to action.
4. Build Trust: Everything about your website should be designed to build trust. It should be fast loading, well organized, have clear navigation, be user friendly and work in all major browsers.
5. Testimonials: Customer testimonials build instant credibility. Keep your testimonials in their original form including grammatical errors. Provide contact details for the people giving the testimonial.
6. Make it Easy: Make it easy for people to use, easy to find information and easy to find the buy now button. Think like your customer and make every step of the purchase easy.
7. Contact: If buyers have questions, can you be reached? This can be phone, email or online live support. A quick answer can keep buyers on track to purchase.
8. Returns Policy: Returns on web purchases is a major concern to most buyers. A clear and liberal returns policy calms these fears.
9. Assure and Secure: Assure your visitors that the personal information that they share is totally secure by posting a privacy policy. Use only a secure payment gateway.
10. Payment Options: Buyers like choices. Offer multiple payment methods like credit cards, Paypal and even pay by check options. Consider alternatives to the usual methods.

An effective business website brings a steady stream of sales, leads and inquiries to your business. An effective website is designed around your company objectives and will hinge on your choice of a web designer. A good designer is part business consultant, part graphics designer and part web traffic expert. Here are things to look at when you hire a web designer.

1. Do they understand your goals? Your website needs to meet your business objectives. It should reflect the correct business image when compared to your competitors. If generating leads is your number one goal, do they understand the correct way to design a lead generation website?
2. Do they understand how to design for web traffic? If organic search rankings are important, then choose a designer experienced in SEO. They should be able to demonstrate SEO results. Search engine optimization should be designed in with keywords built into navigation, page names, links and body text.
3. Can they integrate web applications?: Most websites today includes web applications. By adding online tools, searchable databases of your work, pricing wizards and complex sign-up applications you can automate your business website. These can be programmed from scratch or a pre-built one added.
4. Who will maintain the website? Once the website is complete, who will maintain the website? Website maintenance includes changing content, photos, adding pages, adding applications or adding a blog. If something “breaks”, who will fix it?
5. Who will host the website? It is nice to have one source for your web needs. Make sure you are getting high quality business website hosting that is maintained within a data center. One that has multiple Internet trunks and power backups. Stay away from designers who host on a computer in their office or apartment.

Other things to look for:  what is their lead time? Will they supply a written fixed price proposal? How long have they been in business? Will they still be in business when you need help? Are they easy to reach and communicate with?

There are definite steps you should do to get your website to convert browsers into paying customers. A visitor needs to know he has arrived at the right place to get help.

1. Target your audience: Design your home page for your target audience so you can answer their most burning question. If you have multiple small niches, make a different landing page for each group.
2. Get their attention: When they first arrive, they need to immediately see your sales pitch, your offering and even your order button. Don’t make them scroll down or switch pages.
3. Provide Quality: Your content and your products need to appear top notch. The images you select and the words you use reflect on the quality you provide. The key is to show what a great value your product or service is.
4. Engage your visitor: Your writing style needs to excite and grab your visitor’s attention. Use an active voice to keep them motivated.
5. It’s about their need: Spend less time writing about your company and answer how you will solve their problem. Remember, your primary duty is to give them what they need.
6. Trust Factor: Assure your customers that their information is safe and that your company is trustworthy. Always have a privacy policy. Join organizations such as Truste and BBBOnLine. Place their logos on your site.
7. Watch your stats: Don’t just put your website up and forget it. Watch your metrics and website statistics. Continue to make changes and measure traffic and track conversion rates.

Online marketing planning is a moving target. In the beginning you needed a business website, then there were pay-per-click ads. Now experts advise blogging and engaging your customers using social media. What is right for your business? Remember 90% of your Online Marketing Plan is to have a visible online presence.

1. Website: Your business website is normally your primary sales and marketing piece. This is where visitors go to research and buy what you sell. Customers now expect you to have some interactivity built in.
2. Traffic Strategies: Should your traffic come from organic search results (SEO), paid sponsor listings (PPC) or referral traffic? Choose your strategy before you design your website because the best search engine optimization (SEO) results are designed in.
3. Blog: Blogs are not about sales, they are for branding and interacting. A blog allows you to converse with your target audience. With blog marketing, you have a platform to share as much information as you would like to the people you wish to purchase your product or service.
4. Video: Video is a great story teller! Use video to demonstrate a product, share opinions, demonstrate how to do something and share testimonials. Post videos onto YouTube and then embed them in your website or blogs. Watermark your website URL onto the video and as others use your video, your advertising goes viral.
5. Social Networking: Social Networking sites such as LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and many others are attractive because they are an interactive community and the trust tends to be higher. Any campaign must be designed to fit the needs of that community.
6. Social Content: Some will let you create your own pages, like Squidoo’s lenses. Some have existing guides that you can submit your articles to, like About. Wikipedia is a high volume traffic source as long as you follow their strict guidelines.
7. Review Sites: Encourage customers to leave reviews on your business on social review sites such as Yelp, InsiderPages.com or RateItAll.com. These are heavily read by consumers.
8. Local Listings: There are many local directories and listings to add your business to. Google local business results allows you to add your business for free.

Last Monday, Cuil (pronounced “cool’) was announced as the new search engine. Can this start-up search engine be the next Google? Cuil claims that it “has indexed 120 billion Web pages, three times more than any other search engine.”

Cuil was founded by a group of search pioneers, including search engineer Tom. Costello former Google engineers Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier. They picked up $33 million in venture capital to launch the search engine.

So how is Cuil different than Google? They’re claiming bragging rights for search index size: 120 billion Web pages. While Patterson says that’s 3X the size of Google’s index, most people acknowledge that size doesn’t matter.

The approach to search is different. Culi instead analyzes the context of each page and the concepts behind each user search request. So Cuil apparently assesses the actual content of a page.

Was this Hype or Reality?
Rand Fishkin, CEO of seomoz.org did an interesting analysis comparing Cuil to the other major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Live and Ask). He compared the search engines on the basis of Relevancy, coverage, freshness, diversity and user experience. Cuil ranked dead last in this analysis

Cuil is supposed come from an old Irish word that means “knowledge”. Members of an online Irish language forum say the word is most often translated to mean “corner” or “nook,” but has sometimes been used for “hazel,” as in the nut.

It appears that Cuil was prematurely released to the public. Will they recover and take off? Time will tell.

Has your website suddenly lost rankings for its primary keywords? You may have been labeled a spammer by Google. There are steps you can follow to get your site restored. Google penalizes sites for using black hat SEO tricks, for exchanging links, for selling text ads or for using other deceptive.If you fix the problem and submit a Google Reconsideration Request, chances are that you can restore your website’s rankings.

1. Check for access issues: Log in to your Google Webmaster Tools Account. On the Overview Page you can see the last date that Googlebot successfully spidered your home page. You can also check whether there are any crawling errors including pages not found, unreachable URL’s, URLs timed out errors and URLs restricted by robots.txt tags.
2. Check for messages: Check the message center of your Webmaster Tools account. If Google notices that there is a problem with your website, they will sometimes send you a message detailing some issues which you need to fix.
3. Read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines: If there are no crawling errors and you don’t see any messages, check to see if your site is or has at some point been in violation of the Webmaster Guidelines.
4. Fix your site: If your site is in violation, make changes to your site so that it falls within Google’s guidelines. Note any past problems that you may have already fixed.
5. Submit a reconsideration request: Now you can log into your Webmaster Tools Account and Under Tools, click on “Request reconsideration. Explain what you think was wrong with your site and what steps you have taken to fix it. You will receive a message in the Message Center confirming that Google received your request.

Pretty just isn’t enough for a business website. You may have a great Flash design that is professional, with powerful imagery and a logical sales flow. The issue is that visitors are unable to find your site in the organic search results. This type of site must depend on referral traffic such as paid sponsored links for visitors.

Penn State researchers did a study and found that over 80% of the searches went to organic search results. They found that consumers are suspicious of sponsored links and they favor organic search results as being more trusted.

Competition for first page Google results is fierce. It’s like building a high performance racing vehicle. Street cars are no match for top race cars. Race cars are carefully engineered, built to very exacting tolerances, precision tuned and thoroughly tested in order to get a top placement in a race. It is not different for a website to compete for a top search placement.

With Google now indexing 25 billion pages it takes special effort to come up in the first page of their search results. SEO design requires careful research and planning prior to the design process. Keyword research, site architecture, navigation schemes, wire framing and cross-link schemes need to be planned in advance. Focused content should be written to be keyword rich and have maximum marketing impact.

To get great SEO results, each page within your website will be individually competing for a position with the 25 billion other pages. Each page needs to be focused and optimized around the specific content on that page.

SEO Design requires a well thought out inbound linking strategy. These should be from highly relevant sites. Highly competitive sites will require multiple linking strategies to be a top performer.

Your business website design should reflect your marketing goals. You should be making decisions about your website to improve your marketing results. This usually means improve usability and optimize for search.

1. Define Your Goals: Start with your business goals for your website redesign. What do you need to accomplish? This could be to attract new clients, generate leads or to help brand your company as the premier provider in your industry.
2. Keep the Best: What does your current website do well? This could be servicing existing customers or converting visitors into paying customers. Preserve what you are already doing right and improve from there.
3. Website Styles: Just like fashions, website design changes. For instance, Flash intro pages were popular until web designers realized that users didn’t like them and they caused search rankings to plummet.
4. Branding and Image: When people visit your site, they see it as a reflection of your company. It is important for your site to reflect the identity and ideals (brand) of your company. Your company can appear as an industry leader.
5. Website Traffic: Your goal should be to get more visitors and more leads. Design your site with organic search in mind. Select relevant keyword phrases that will be used in page names, body text and link text. Websites should be built in XHTML / CSS to be search engine friendly.
6. Customers Expectations: Look at your industry, what is expected? A website in the financial products industry is expected to be very business professional. A medical website has a clean design and uses cheerful colors.
7. Watch your competition: Look at what your competition offers and stay ahead of them. Look at the image your website gives your business. Is your information searchable? What features do your competitors offer?
8. Attract and Convert: This should be your central focus for your site. What action do you want from your visitors? Build this into your navigation. Each page should have its own call to action.