Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine is catching up but Google is still the king of search responsible for 2 out of every 3 searches done anywhere on the web.


The latest search market report from Comscore shows a staggering increase in total number of searches conducted in 2009 on search engines compare to the total number of searches conducted during 2008. One interesting factor to keep in mind is that while the 87.8 billion searches account for 66.8% of the global search market, 33.2% of the market total a 43.2 billion searches that are not being executed on Google and too often are being ignored by web marketers.

Yahoo, Bing and even the Chinese search engine Baidu, as well as other smaller search system, mobile devices and mapping quarries, all need to play an active roll when relevant in your SEO efforts. The rise of total searches done in these often SEO neglected search engines, present an opportunity in gaining visibility by optimizing and advertising of businesses on these frontiers.

We completed planning and creating these 23 animation for the Aviisha Medical Wellness Institute. Check out the cool show syndication embedding option:

Today’s marketing managers are starting to wake up to the realities thrust upon them by the Internet, but they are, generally speaking, still pretty slow on the uptake. There is a general awareness of the need to leverage social media platforms within the marketing mix. But the average marketing manager has not yet fully grasped how to choose the correct social media or how to integrate each platform to their overall strategy. Here, I want to talk about video.

We’ve been pushing the need for good video to our clients for years already. Just 3 years ago, I recall a large Israel based client saying something like, “Video? Do you really think our clients will want to watch videos on our website?” The answer was – “Yes!!!” The qualifying statement was, “If they are good.”

There is an abundance of really bad video content being uploaded to YouTube by companies. It’s not surprising – look at all the awful written content those same marketing managers are pushing out (many because of some SEO expert telling them to do so or doing it for them). But it’s not just a problem of bad video content. In the many instances where the content is quite good and interesting, it still has no strategy behind it and so does not do as much as it could do to contribute to the marketing goals.

Read more »

There are many reasons why websites homepages change. Homepages are the virtual glass window of your business and reflect the nature and the goals of the business. In other words, if a business is focused and has a clear vision, that is usually conveyed on the homepage. While if a business is not so sure what it wants to be doing today or tomorrow, it can be apparent from one glance at the homepage – it’s just hard to tell precisely what the company does. So many sites make the mistake of trying to be everything to everyone – but then end up seeing most visitors bounce.
Homepage changes can be triggered by many business needs. It can reflect an attempt to tackle shifts in business positioning. In many cases today, it is even triggered by the sales department’s desire for a more product oriented and “transactional” site. In addition, many changes are optimization (SEO) driven to address needs to rank for certain terms and market sectors. And more and more, we find Pay-Per-Click (PPC) experts pushing A/B testing and constant changes to the site to tweak for better conversions. And then there is the case of the manager who wants to emphasize one angle of the business in conflict with the business unit manager that might feel his product or service is left out.

Read more »

Interspace CEO, Itzik Nozatski, called to say thanks. Interspace is the foremost provider of hosting here in Israel, for those not “in the know”. His online visitors are loving the video we put together for him a while back. The Search Engines love it as well with the significant impact that video has on SEO results. Actually, we did not produce the video for him. It was an idea Dror had when he got tired of explaining over and over why where you host your site geographically DOES matter. Many Israeli companies rely on their website design firm to suggest where to host and 9/10 are not qualified to make such a recommendation (actually, probably 10/10 are not qualified but I am trying to be nice today). So Dror put together this hysterical animation – took him a couple hours and I added my incredible animation skills (that’s a joke) and Itzik at Interspace liked it so much he blasted it out as a promo for his web hosting services. Oh — and if you are wondering where YOU should host your site, watch, enjoy and learn.

And if you are still not sure, send Dror a compliment on his creative genius and he will be charmed into providing you some free advice on the subject: dror@webwhile.com The reason he knows the subject so well — he was VP at Interspace for 7 years before joining WebWhile to leverage his more creative, funny side in Internet Marketing. Let’s face it, hosting is boring. Sorry Itzik.

I once fancied myself an SEO expert and marketed my skills to a variety of companies in Israel. Of course Israeli companies do not want to invest too much and at the same time they want guaranteed results. It was not too hard to sell projects and achieve very good results but it was not satisfying enough to me to send my clients lists of keywords as their ranking moved their way up into the search engine results. If everything else in their online business did not support my efforts, the ranking could be meaningless. And most clients had a hard time grasping that.

Yet still, many companies think ranking in the search engines is enough. Some are even naive enough to thinking ranking for a handful of keywords could make their business a success. That’s why you will notice when you do your own searches, many times you choose one of the top results only to land on a page that does not hold your attention for longer than the time it takes you to click your way off the site. What is even more puzzling is when this happens with PPC – someone was willing to pay for my click, but not willing to invest to ensure i have a positive user experience on their site. Remember that – user experience — we’ll talk about it later, but you better be thinking about it now! But I digress . . .

Despite having moved beyond SEO consulting in the last few years, the WebWhile site still ranks #12 for “SEO Israel” (actually, as of 12/28/09, we are #6 – I did 15 minutes of tweaking a few weeks ago). I find it funny. And even when until a few months ago we were #7 for “SEO Israel”, I’ll let you in on a secret – I am not sure if we got any clients from that fact. That probably has something to do with me telling the callers that we are not an SEO company and trying to explain to them why they may not need an SEO company just yet – but go try to tell an Israeli Marcom that she has to tell her CEO that he is wrong.

Anyway, if we wanted to rank in the top 5, I am sure we would with some additional efforts — but the point is, that is not going to be bring me relevant traffic at this point in time, so why not spend time on what will?

Read more »

Google Earth and it’s mapping off-springs have already proven that everything is mapable. And I love maps! But the latest exploration and mapping provided by the engineers at Google — called Trike, makes me feel a bit uneasy.

Trike is used when it’s not possible to drive a car through the area Google wants to map to deliver their wonderful “Street View.” Having myself been doing some remote US real estate searches, I find Street View indispensable and was very disappointed when I could not access a street view of a property I was interested in.

Read more »

If you still think that social media is a fab, you must see this video

After 3 exhausting days of shooting 4 video clips in LA, the team forced me to be on the last scene. The idea was to show how with the help of a CPAP machine the obese sleep apnea patient and her bed partner are pleasantly sleeping.

Take a look at the clip and try to guess why am I cracking up. Hint- I started to laugh my head off as soon as I pulled up the blanket and entered the bed.

What are the most popular apps on Facebook? Not sure yet? Here is a small hint:

• Am I slow?

1. always
2. sometimes
3. never

• Do I know my marketing stuff?

1. I rock
2. sometimes
3. I stink

No need to do the math. You just need to add a Quiz to your website and start seeing everyone and his grandmother starting taking the Quiz and even more important, perhaps, see them all link back to your site from their articles, web pages, emails, Tweets, blog posts . . . The next thing to do is upgrade the quiz and add it to a social media app.

Read more »