Microsoft and Yahoo! Join to Combine Market Share

Yesterday Microsoft announced that it had bought Yahoo!, the 2nd most widely used search platform next to Google.

The three top search engines are Google with 65% of market share, Yahoo, and MSN (now called “Bing”). With Bing and Yahoo joining forces, increased competition will be in effect with Yahoo and Bing handling 28% of the search.

Now there will be only two top leaders of internet search. What does this mean for websites already indexed in Yahoo and Bing? No one is really sure….but now websites must battle in 2 zones instead of 3; which increases the competition and fierceness of the search world.

“Microsoft didn't have to give Yahoo an upfront payment to make it happen, as many Yahoo investors had been counting on ever since Microsoft dangled $1 billion last summer in an attempt to forge a search partnership then.

Google tried to stop Yahoo from falling into Microsoft's camp. Last year it formed its own proposed search advertising deal with Yahoo, only to be forced to retreat from that alliance after U.S. antitrust officials threatened to sue.

Now the extended reach Microsoft is gaining will let it introduce its recently upgraded search engine, called Bing, to more people. The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker believes Bing is just as good, if not better, than Google's search engine. Taking over search responsibilities on Yahoo's popular site gives Microsoft a better chance to convert Web surfers who had been using Google by force of habit.

"Microsoft and Yahoo know there's so much more that search could be," said Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. "This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search.”

US Interactive Marketing Spending

According to Forrester Research, US interactive marketing spending is projected to have a 17% compound annual growth rate for the next 5 years.

Search engine marketing is currently at $15,393,000, which is 12% of total ad spending. In 2014 search engine marketing is projected to be at $31,588,000, or 21% of total ad spending. Search engine marketing makes up more than one-half of all interactive marketing spending and will remain the largest sector in interactive marketing.

This trend isn’t only apparent in the US. In the UK, search engine marketing makes up a majority of the UK’s online advertising spending.

Email Marketing has also become very popular. Although email marketing sometimes has a bad name due to all the spammers out there, total spending is also projected to grow within the next 5 years.

Email Marketing Do's and Don'ts

For many of you that engage in email marketing, whether it’s for informational or promotional purposes, know that a lot of times your effort spent creating nice/professional looking emails is useless because they just get thrown into the recipients’ junk folder.

Here are some do’s and don’ts to email marketing from FirstMark that might come in handy in trying to increase the chances that your emails are successfully delivered to the recipients’ inbox.

Rule of thumb: don’t repeat words, and be succinct!

Try to replace the words on the left with the words on the right...

TRY TO AVOID...	ALTERNATIVES
Do not use all caps	Keep everything in lowercase if possible.
Do not use !, $, or 100%	Keep punctuation to a minimum.
affordable	Reasonably priced, reasonable, within your means, inexpensive
Bargain or best prices	Good deal, good buy
click here	learn how, visit here
congratulations	Well done
debt	Owe, arrears, bills, deficit, due, liability
financing	Banking, expenditure, expenses, funding
free! for free?, for free!	No-cost or no-fee
guaranteed	Proven, certain, attested, affirmed, confirmed, insured
insurance	Coverage, assurance, warranty, safeguard
investment	Expenditure, expense, asset, grant
just released	New-improved
loan	Loan-plan, lending
low interest	Low risk
new car	New automobile
opportunity	Prospect opening, break, chance, occasion
paying too much	Over expenditure
permanent low interest	Definite low interest, preset
pre-approved	Pre-accepted, authorized, confirmed, credited
refinancing	Funding, outlay
special invitation	Proposal
unbelievable	Astounding, amazing, wonderful, awesome

Website Grader

Website Grader is a useful tool in grading your website’s SEO.

All you have to do is enter in the domain name you’d like graded and it will calculate your SEO score based on 100%. It also analyzes your meta tags, readability level, domain age, Google PageRank, indexed pages in Google, last Google crawl date, Alexa traffic ranking, directory listings, among others.

You shouldn’t rely solely on this tool, but use it as a guideline in enhancing your online presence. It makes recommendations and explanations for why you should better your SEO efforts.

"The Internet Business Hour" - LocalAdLink Interview with Robert J. McNulty

This week Kerry Brewer and George Dubec interviewed Robert J. McNulty on "The Internet Business Hour”. Robert founded LocalAdLink, a cost-effective advertising network for local businesses.

Click here to listen to the latest show with Robert.

Robert J. McNulty is an accomplished entrepreneur with over 25 years of significant experience in specialty retail, e-commerce, branded consumer products, retail start-ups and developing new concepts and technology platforms for utilization in the retail industry. Mr. McNulty founded Shopping.com and served as its President and CEO. Shopping.com was the first on-line retailer selling a broad range of consumer brand name products on the Internet, which was purchased for $220 million in an all cash transaction by Compaq Computers. Mr. McNulty also founded Home Club and served as its Chairman and CEO. Home Club was a chain of home improvement warehouse stores for contractor trade and do-it-yourself customers, servicing U.S. western states with 38 stores and 7,000 employees. He was the first to institute and implement the “everyday low price strategy” in the U.S. Home Improvement industry. Mr. McNulty was a founding board member of the Home Center Industry Council for the City of Hope Cancer Research Center. Currently, he serves as Chairman of Global Leadership Connection, a charitable organization that provides leadership programs for high schools students and supports the education of today’s youth leaders across America.