So, Who is WebMama?

Entrepreneur Barbara Coll has been involved with product and program marketing in Silicon Valley for 19 years, including marketing positions with Sun Microsystems, Qualix Group (purchased by Veritas), and Ipsilon Networks (purchased by Nokia).

Barbara "WebMama" Coll is an internationally recognized expert in search engine marketing (SEM) with a firm grasp on the industry offerings and their direction. Her knowledge extends to how search engines use and display fresh content; blogs, RSS, and video and she has strong beliefs on why her clients need to get involved in these marketing tactics.

Barbara is a regular speaker for Search Engine Strategies (since 2001) and advisor to many Valley start-ups and venture capitalists. She is pioneering an effort to convince North American-based companies to reach out to the Spanish-speaking marketplace through SEM, and was instrumental in promoting the value of search engine advertising to enterprise businesses.

Barbara is the founding President and Chairperson of the Board of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). SEMPO is a non-profit organization formed to increase the awareness and promote the value of search engine marketing worldwide.

A little more for those interested...

"I was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1960, where I lived and learned for 27 years, then moved to California in 1987.

Most of my family attended Carelton University. My dad, David Coll, received Carelton's first PhD in Engineering in 1966, and in 1998 became a professor emeritus. My brother Eric and I both have a Bachelor of Engineering from Carelton; he got his in 1983, I received mine in 1986. This is one of the reasons why I can both "walk the walk" and "talk the talk" in the forever changing land of high technology, Silicon Valley.

My mom, Marg, was a meeting planner and early entrepreneur. She started later in life; she was about 40 years old when she coined the term 'meeting planner' and founded the Meeting Planners Association.

I moved to Silicon Valley because I thought it would be impossible to keep up with the pace of the Internet in Canada, and was lucky enough to work for some great companies including Sun Microsystems, Qualix Group, (which was later purchased by Veritas), and Ipsilon Networks—later purchased by Nokia.

In September 1996, I founded WebMama because I didn't think people understood the value of search generated visitor traffic, and as a result weren't setting up their Websites in a way that was easy for the search engines to find them. I wanted to offer a low cost solution to what I saw as a growing issue.

When I first started thinking about the name for the company I realized Websites and Internet were still relatively new, and most Webmasters were men. I wanted a name that made it clear I was a woman. 'Webmistress' just didn't sound right, so I chose WebMama.

I began working out of my home near Stanford University in Palo Alto, and when we got to the $4M mark, I moved to premises in Lytton Avenue, Palo Alto.

Now, I am able to be a little more selective in the jobs I take, and feel fortunate that I don't have to work any more than 40 hours a week. I like that I can just hang out with my family, and find I am spending more time doing pro bono and not-for profit work. At the moment, my aim is to spend more time working with volunteering at my son's school and applying my expertise to women's choice organizations."