Should you Buy Facebook Shares?

Websites are investments. With a good web strategy and proper execution, you will have a decent return on investment. The stock market is another way to invest your savings.

When Google (Goog) entered the stock market in 2004 at $85/share, I thought the earnings growth predicted was ridiculous and stayed on the sideline. I was wrong. Google had a solid business model and was creating value for its customers. Now the price for Google shares is around $600 and the price / earnings (P/E) ratio is around 19.  I think the outlook is great and I recently bought a few shares.

Now that Facebook stock (FB) is available, what should I do? The stock was issued at $38 and is now trading at $31, after a few days, with a P/E around 70.

Google AdWords Certified Partner

In 2011, I came to realize that ads on the Google search and display networks were quite cost effective in bringing qualified leads to a website. So I started to study Google AdWords and to read books about it.  I was encouraged by my friend Jonathan Villiard, an SEO and AdWords specialist,  to obtain my certification. I followed his advice and early this year, I passed both the Google AdWords Fundamentals Exam and the Search Advertising Advanced Exam. Passing the two Google exams made me an AdWords Qualified Individual but that was not enough for partner status. I had to manage over $10,000 of advertising in 60 days. I did and received this morning an email confirming my status as a Google AdWords Certified Partner.

Google Adwords Advertising – A Primer

In the last quarter of 2011, Google generated more than 10 billion dollars of income. Think of it as $20,000.00 every minute. Most of it is for web advertising from companies small and large.

This post is a primer on the Google AdWords advertising platform. The goal is not to convince you to buy Google shares, something I am considering, but rather to explain how Google advertising works. This way, you will be in a better position to determine if it is an appropriate tactic to bring good leads to your website.

Web skills required to develop a great website

In the golden days of programming, life was relatively easy. The development of applications was for mainframes or mini-computers and required a limited set of skills. Those days are over. Today's web environment, although very rich in terms of capabilities, is extremely complex and required a very long list of skills.

This means that you cannot expect to have a great website if it is built by a couple of guys who do everything.

Website maturity model

Some websites are hopeless, some are OK and some are great. How’s yours?

If you google "Maturity Models", you will see that there are many such models. At the top of my result page is the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) by Carnegie Mellon University. Further down is Gartner's IT infrastructure and operations maturity model. Not to be outdone by such small organizations, I have come up with my own maturity model for websites.

The CMS trap and how to avoid it

Practically every website built in the last few years includes a CMS (Content Management System). This functionality allows website owners to update themselves the content on their website. It is fantastic because it removes the dependency on the webmaster, the IT guy or the agency.