You need to know who your competition is and what websites they own and operate. Many of your competitors will have multiple websites, this is the new thing out there. They focus each website on a division of their business. Make sure you review each and every website that they have in detail.

Not only review their products and services, but also the USP (Unique Selling Proposition), and find out how you can effectively compete on the web. Don’t expect your web design company to do this for you unless you are willing to pay them to do it. In almost every case, the business owner, is the ideal person to be reviewing their competitors websites. Take notes when you are reviewing the site, this way you can refer to the notes when you begin making changes to your site(s).

Do not be afraid to act upon your notes and have your web design company make changes to your site to effectively compete. Be sure to have a clear discussion with the company to make certain that they understand the intention of the change and can also review the competitor site to see how they are handleing the back code portion for you to compete naturally in the search engines.

According to WebProNews…

Yahoo and Google became a little closer this week, with the news that Yahoo will carry AdSense for Search in a two-week, limited test of the service.

This is really odd to me considering the Microsoft Yahoo News and how they may merge (even if Microsoft does a hostile takeover of Yahoo). Not sure why we have all 3 major search engines getting into bed right now together. Something smells fishy here and althought I smell it I cannot quite put my finger on what it is.

I will however, continue to endure these odd announcements and keep my finger on the pulse of the search engine market to advise our blog readers of what is happening.

I have been telling clients for sometime to get the domains that they think about, even if it is just the .net version. This goes to show how a somewhat meaningless investment can turn in to.

Chris Clark, the man who had the inspiration to register Pizza.com domain more than twenty years ago, accepted to sell it for $2.6 million.

According to Baltimore Sun, Chris Clark bought the name back in 1994, hoping that the domain would help him score a contract with a pizza company. But six years later he sold his Internet consulting company, but he kept paying the $20 monthly fee for the domain.

But when he heard that in 2006 a Russian company paid $3 million for Vodka.com, he decided to put its domain on auction. Clark turned to Sedo.com to help him sell the domain. The auction has started with $100, but in just two days the bidding hit 2 million.

“Really generic description domains are hot commodities these days, especially the ones that encapsulate an entire industry,” said Jeremiah Johnston, Sedo’s chief operating officer, quoted by Baltimore Sun. Sedo.com refused to disclose the identity of the new owner of Pizza.com.

Chris Clark, who now owns Minestream Software Corp., a company that sells Internet protection products, said he has not idea what he will do with the money.

Of course, he has only one regret. “In ‘94, you could have just registered everything and anything,” Clark said. “I think about that now, yeah”.

Read the Article Online Here

Many studies have been done regarding submission forms. It’s been proven that 3 data collection fields are ok, however when you go to the 4th field, the ratio of completed forms drops by over 50%. This is a key determining factor in how many fields your form should be.

In almost every case, you are going to be calling your prospect anyway, so why should you make it more difficult for them to get information or get you to call. Just get their name, phone number and email. That is sufficient. Then follow up with them as you normally would. I would rather call many people and find out more information, with the prospect that I will get the business, than call less than half of those people because I lost the opportunity to contact others due to a lengthy estimate request form.

Remember that people are busy and they really don’t want to fill out lengthly forms on websites. They also have some anxiety over having to fill out the form a second time if it doesn’t work right the first time.