Overture Archives - Webconsuls

Search Engine Marketing Newsletter December 2003

Monday December 15, 2003

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Happy Holidays!

In this issue read about

No change in our rates
Google Changes
What you can do to help

No Change in our rates

We have decided not to raise our rates at this time. We thank all of you for your confidence in us and are pleased that we can hold the line on our fees.

One step we took to reduce our workload was to reduce the number of search engines on which we report. This does not affect your positioning on the other engines. We just reduced the reports to the most important engines, which saves us time.

We are also redistributing some of our workload so some of you who were working with Dennis on your positioning may now work with Dick, and vice versa. You can be sure that the change will not impact the effort put into positioning your site.

Google Changes

As you may be aware, Google is constantly revising its methodology for ranking sites. Google made a major change in mid-November to reduce the rankings on certain search terms on sites that it determined to be “over optimized” for search engines. Some of our clients were affected. Google seems now to be modifying just what it did. We are regularly reviewing the literature, talking with other SEO professionals, and using our own experience to determine the proper next steps. If you must quickly obtain high rankings then a paid program on Overture and Google Adwords may be your best alternative. Please call Dennis or Dick for more information.

What you can do to help

The chances that your web site will be indexed by the search engines for a particular term are greatly enhanced if that term appears in the actual text on your web site. Frequently you get position reports from us that list the terms we are trying to position for you. You should look at this list and determine if there are other relevant terms that should be added, and any that can be dropped. For all terms that you want us to work on, please check your site and make sure that the term actually appears on the site. If is does not, try to find the best place for us to add the term or have your designer add the term to the site.

Wishing you a prosperous 2004

Dennis Helfand and Dick Fay

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Position Reporting Changes

We are forced to reduce the number of search engines in our position report. The report programs consume search engine resources. The search engines have therefore made it more difficult for the report programs. We are responding by reducing our reports to the most important search engines.

Accordingly, we will report positions for the following four (4) engines:

Google – The most important engine. Some of our clients are only concerned about Google.
Yahoo – (These results are also returned by Google; however, given the dominance of Yahoo and the fact that it recently bought Inktomi and Overture, we have determined to include it in our report).
MSN – (More of a stand alone-engine (tied to Inktomi), but dominant enough for inclusion).
AOL – Powered by Google.

With regard to clients who participate in Pay-Per-Click programs like Overture, Looksmart, Google Adwords, etc., these engines have report menus that are far more detailed than the generic Position reports.

The other engines have much smaller market shares and we think that reporting on their positions is not worth the demand on our resources and on the engines.

Contacting Us

The best way to contact us is via Email. You can reach Dennis at dhelfand@webconsuls.com and Dick at dickfay@webconsuls.com. We check our email several times each day.

Sometimes it is necessary to talk directly with one of us. Remember we are on the West Coast. We are ready to take your calls at 8 am. Pacific Time.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

In this issue we discuss

The slowdown of Internet traffic caused by the latest virus attacks
Why Webconsuls is dropping FindWhat
Changes at Overture

EMAIL/INTERNET SLOWDOWN

If you are experiencing a marked decrease in web site traffic and e-mails, it is more than likely due to the Blaster Virus — also known as MSBlast or LoveSAN. You do not have to have the virus to be impacted. It has caused so much congestion on the Internet and networks that companies have to shut down computers to clean out the Worm. Earthlink and Adelphia report enormous strain on their systems, with many connectivity issues and e-mail problems. Be sure that you regularly update your virus Programs, ( i.e. Norton, Macafee, Firewalls like Zone Alarm, etc.) and run virus scans routinely.

FINDWHAT (Important Change – Please read)

Some of our clients have been subscribing to Findwhat.com for the past year or so. Webconsuls has been tracking results relative to other Pay-Per-Click engines, such as Overture and Google Adwords. While there was a great deal of hype associated with the introduction of Findwhat, we have not seen enough of an impact on web traffic and conversions to justify the costs and time involved.

Accordingly, Webconsuls will no longer participate and manage Findwhat programs. This means that when the current banks are depleted, we will cease adding funds and discontinuing our related third party bidding management software support. If you want to continue participation in Findwhat on your own, passwords are (and have been) available to you. However, our feeling at this point is that your money would be better spent in other Internet opportunity areas.

OVERTURE

During August, Overture Services introduced broader matching options for advertisers, to bring keyword ads to search queries without a specific match.

The two new matching options, Phrase Match and Broad Match, will serve up advertisers’ keyword listings, even when their search term is not entered exactly. In this way, Overture hopes to extend its paid listings to ever more searches. Overture will use Phrase and Broad Match listings to fill in when its database does not have regular Standard Match listings for terms. In addition, advertisers can rule out certain queries through listing excluded words. Advertisers can change their bids for each matching level.

The changes are rather involved and not always easy to follow. Over the past week, Webconsuls has updated it third-party bidding software to accommodate these changes. To become more familiar with the changes, there is a tutorial available at the following URL: http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/adcenter/index.jhtml, then click on “Match Type Tutorial”

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It has been a while since we have written our clients.

We are going to discuss promoting your site “off of the Internet,” basic search engine positioning and what you can do to help your site, some features you may want to add to your site, and review the pay per click situation. We also discuss changes to your site, a “spam fighter” program and another web site business that we run.

Off the Internet Promotion

We know that many of our clients do a great job of this, but have seen others that do not. You should review your business cards, brochures, point of sale advertising and other media that you use to promote your business. Do you include your URL (for example, www.webconsuls.com) in your promotion? Your potential customers may not even be aware of your web site.

Your Email is another source of potential advertising. Most email programs have a signature option that will be included in new Emails. You should have a signature file and it should include your URL.

Search Engine Positioning

Currently search engines rank web pages by they two R’s – Relevance and Reputation. Relevance is measured by the content on the page and the content on the pages linking to the page. Reputation is measured by the number of links to the page and quality of the links.

Notice how important it is to get links to your site. Most important is to get links from sites related to your site.

You should pursue all opportunities to get people to link your site. If you see sites that link to your competitors, then you should try to get them to link to you. If you are in an organization that lists its members on a web site, then your listing should link to your site.

We work on improving your relevance and reputation. We can only do so much and you can certainly help.

INKTOMI

Before a search engine can rank your site, it must know that it exists. Inktomi is an Internet database that indexes for many of the major search engines, i.e. MSN, Looksmart, HotBot, Looksmart and about 50 other Partners; it continues to be listed among the Internet’s most important Internet marketing resources. If you are not registered with Inktomi, you are probably already several steps behind your immediate competition. Annual registration is only $30.00 for a page and in many cases, it is only necessary to register your Home Page! Contact Dennis or Dick for information and get registered.

Features

We have developed some dynamic features that some of our clients have found very useful. We think you might want to consider them for your site.

Contact Form and Email List

We will either add a contact form to your site or enhance the one on the site to capture the contact information in a database. We will then give you the capability to send an email to everyone in the database. This will allow you to keep a record of those who filled out the contact form and can notify them of new products, pricing, or other changes in your business.

Dynamic Links Page

Many people will want you to reciprocate a link to you with a link to them. We don’t have the time to add links like this for our clients without charging a fee each time. We can add a Links Page to your site and give you the capability of adding the link.

Events Calendar of News Page

We will give you the ability to add and delete information about an event or news item related to your site. The cost to add these features depends somewhat on how your site is constructed. The minimum is $100 per feature. We can only add these features to sites hosted at Millennium. You should expect a $10 per month increase in your hosting fees from Millennium. For many clients these are small costs for what could be a great benefit. If you would like to see a demo on how these enhancements will add to your marketing reach, please contact Dennis or Dick and they can take you through a Demo.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click programs have several positive elements. They allow you to get listed quickly – and you only pay when someone clicks to your site. Overture is the best known and most successful Per Per Click Program (PPC), and also the most expensive. We think that our clients have received value from FindWhat, a less well known and less expensive program. Other popular opportunities, with PPC variations, exist with Google Adwords and Looksmart.com.

OVERTURE

Overture recently instituted a price increase, raising the required minimum bid from $0.05 to $0.10.

All existing listings with bids between $0.05 and $0.09 will be “grand fathered” at their current max bid for the foreseeable future. Going forward, if you or we make any bid changes to these grand fathered listings, the new bid must be at least $0.10. However, anyone can continue to update titles, descriptions and URL’s for grand fathered listings without affecting the bids. All new listings must meet the $0.10 minimum bid.

Overture announced plans to acquire Alta Vista, a major Search Engine. The integration into Overture is expected to take several months and we will keep you posted on how this change will impact those of you that participate in either or both of Webconsuls’ Overture/Alta vista’s Internet marketing programs.

FINDWHAT

FindWhat.com will raise its minimum bid to $.05/click effective July 1, 2003.

Web Site Changes

We often get requests to make changes to our clients’ web site. Obviously we can not maintain sites without compensation. We charge $75 per hour. The minimum charge is $25.

Spam

We all get way too many junk emails. There are several spam fighting programs. We like one that can be found at http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/ There is a free 30 trial period. We have been on trial for months and have not been asked to pay anything. This product can only used with Microsoft Outlook.

Helfand-enterprises.com – Do you have a resort, Inn Motel, Cottage for sale? Did you know that Webconsuls operates a subsidiary company that markets hospitality properties for sale across North America, the Caribbean and most recently, our first property in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, South America? Check out . If you know of some one who is interested in selling a hospitality property or if you know of someone looking for an interesting and rewarding lifestyle career change, have them get in touch with us.

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To all Webconsuls’ clients:

During the past year, you have received occasional messages from us about individual Paid Engines, Pay-Per Click opportunities and the like. Almost every free search engine now has a Paid component, even if it is offered as an incentive to speed up indexing. The number of free Major Search Engines can now be counted on one hand. The overriding message is that the old search engines techniques that most of you are familiar with simply will not work in the ways they used to work and if one expects to be aggressive on the Internet (or simply to keep abreast of the competition), use of Paid Engines is now absolutely essential. If you are not involved to some degree in this new pay for performance arena, you are most likely slipping in overall positioning.

Accordingly, we are devoting this entire newsletter to the subject of Paid Engines, so that you will be in a better position to make informed decisions and be better able to budget expenses. The thing to keep in mind is that because many Paid engine registrations and administration are so time-consuming, there are really two components; namely the Paid Engine fees themselves and the associated administrative costs.

The Paid Engine programs can provide significant value. They are updated much more frequently than the free programs so you get much more rapid response. In addition the Search Engines have formed several partnerships, so one paid program can get your exposure on several engines.

The Paid Engines are not a panacea. You still need a presence on the free engines and your site much be developed for optimal placement as many of the Paid Engine programs enable your site to be reviewed but the ranking determined by traditional means.

There are currently four main types of Paid Engine programs. The first three are pretty straightforward.

You to pay in order to have a person look at your site and determine if it should be listed on that engine.
You to pay a fee in order to have your site submitted to the computer program or robot that adds sites to the engine. Your site is re-reviewed periodically so changes can improve your ranking.
A paid listing for your site in a special section of the search engine results.
The more complicated is called Pay Per Click or PPC. Here you pay so much every time someone clicks on the link to your site. There may be a minimum bid per search term or a minimum amount per month. Generally the higher you bid the higher you rank, but even that is modified in some of the more complicated programs.

Many of the search engines partner among themselves. A Paid Program for one engine can therefore help you with several others.

Here is a brief recap: *

Yahoo: www.yahoo.com
Commercial, non-adult sites- $325.00 annually, including administration. This is an example of the first type of Paid Engine program. The reviewer can decide not to list the site and you are out the $325. Yahoo is now considered to be the second most popular search engine.

Sponsor Listings Program: – The Sponsor Listings program allows commercial web sites already listed in the Yahoo! Directory to enhance their placement. Participating sites are featured in a “Sponsor Listings” module within the appropriate Yahoo! category, and are also highlighted in the regular alphabetic list of sites. Pricing and availability vary by category. Categories priced in the $25-$300 per month range are handled through an online subscription form. This is an example of the third type of Paid Engine program.

Google: www.google.com
Basic Submit: free

Adwords Program: Variation on a Pay-per Click system. The differentiating factor with the Adwords program is that we can set a daily maximum expenditure; so in essence, we can control the actual cost. However, if this maximum is set too low relative to the recommended bid level, in effect, the source of inquiries dries up way too quickly. Our initial sense is that the terms are fairly competitive. Partners include AOL, Lycos and Earthlink. The Adwords System is complicated to administer. Webconsuls will give you a quote if you are interested. Google is considered the most widely used search engine.

TEOMA– www.askjeeves.com, www.teoma.com

This engine indexes for Askjeeves.com and Direct Hit. Cost is $30.00 for 15 months and this includes administration fees. This is the second type of program and allows your site to get indexed by the TEOMA robot. We believe this program is cost effective for most of our customers.

Inktomi

A search engine that indexes for many Partner engines and accordingly, it is viewed by us as being extremely important. The cost is 30.00 per each web page registered, which includes administration. This is the second type of program and we recommend this program highly.

AltaVista www.altavista.com
8-12 week index wait-time: free
Rapid inclusion – $39.00 for 6 months
This is to get into the Alta Vista database.

In addition, Altavista also has a paid Program which (assuming availability of keywords desired) will guarantee a top position on their pages. Cost is about $22-$30 for each 1000 impressions. (An impression is defined as the page that appears when a key word is typed into the search box and the search made.) This program also is difficult to administer and Webconsuls will give you a quote if you desire.

Looksmart www.looksmart.com
Recently, they adopted a pay per click system which enables one to set a monthly dollar limit, at a set $.15/click. They allow 10 keywords as part of the basic program; additional words can be purchased.

Overture www.overture.com

The most aggressive pay per click Engine on the Internet, with partner sites that include Yahoo, Altavista, MSN, Lycos, IWON, Infospace C/Net and more. This pay per click bidding system implies that the more you bid, the higher you are positioned. There is also a minimum bid of 5 cents per click and a minimum charge of $20 per month. It is very important to be in the top 3 on Overture, because that will position the site respectively with their partner sites in a top 3 Position. For hotly contested keywords, bids ranging from $2.00-$8.00/click are not uncommon, although most terms are usually much more affordable. There is a small administration charge for Webconsuls to handle your Overture account. (We currently charge $100.00)

Other Pay Per Click Engines

A long list of Engines, including Ah-Ha.com, Spinks, 7 Search, Kanoodle, Bay 9, Findwhat.com. Relative to Overture.com, the bid costs required for top positioning are relatively low. So is the traffic to these engines! The nice feature of pay-per-click is that there is no cost unless and until someone clicks on the web site link as these do not have monthly minimums at this time. There is a small administration fee for Webconsuls to handle these accounts.

The rates and statements above are only intended to apply to sites being registered today (5/22/02). Sites registered previously may be grandfathered under other rules, fees and guidelines. Programs can and do change quickly, so the reviews are provided as a general overview. Contact us for specifics if you want to register with one or more Engines.

Recommendation

Participation in any Paid Engine program needs to make good economic sense and therefore should be analyzed carefully. Webconsuls has a great deal of experience with many of these Programs and we should be viewed as an important resource before making any decisions.

We recommend the Inktomi Program, Alta Vista rapid inclusion, and Teoma as relatively low cost program that can get your site indexed rapidly. We also recommend Overture if the search terms are available for a cost effective bid. The other programs mentioned in this article should be considered by clients who wish to be more aggressive.

Handled correctly, Paid Engines offer opportunities to generate significant revenue dollars, derived from the ability to determine one’s own positioning. Learning to optimize this new opportunity arena can convert Paid Engines into vital new marketing tools for you, as opposed to their being an expensive marketing experiment or advertising failure. If you are not yet a participant, contact us so that we can recommend a Program to fit your budget and Internet objectives.

Reading Time: 10 minutes

In this issue

Changes at Yahoo
Changes at Overture
Annual Renewals at Inktomi
404 Pages
Keyword based linking
Unsolicited E-mail
Our Approach

Changes at Yahoo

There is no such thing as free lunch, and on the Internet, expensive lunches are getting more expensive. Yahoo which at one time provided free listings for commercial sites, then charged a $199 one time fee, then raised that to $299 is now charging $299 annually for new listings. If you are already on Yahoo, GREAT, as you appear to be “grand fathered.”

Changes at Overture

Overture, the most successful pay per click system on the Internet, has announced same major changes to its listing practices. Overture is also the most difficult system for us to administer and these changes are going to make things even more difficult. The changes will be effective February 1st. Webconsuls will be advising its Overture clients as to any cost for us to make the changes now required by Overture. Some of you administer your own site on Overture and have probably received an E-mail about the changes.

The first change is that there the listing must link directly to the relevant page in your site. For example if your site sells six products and you have a home page and six product pages then a listing in Overture for one of the products must link directly to the product not to home page. This change will probably mean that we will have to revise many of the Overture listings.

The second change is on description quality. You will not be able to use words like “greatest” or “best” in the description. While some of our clients descriptions may need to be changed, this should not be a major problem.

The third change is that location specific sites may only bid on location specific terms. So a motel in Redondo Beach, California could bid on “Redondo Beach motel” but not “motel.” How this is going to work is a little unclear. If in fact you can deliver your product to wide geographic region than we would suggest you get wording to that effect on your site.

These changes go into effect February 1st. No one knows exactly how Overture will implement them. As we gain experience with the changes, we will pass along any advice that we can.

Annual Renewals at Inktomi

Many of our clients have signed up for the Inktomi submission service that has an annual fee and is now about one year old. Renewals are $25 per page. We recommend this service. If you have a large site you may want to have us register the more important pages to reduce the cost.

404 Pages

We have all tried to visit a specific page on a site and gotten the message – 404 Error, page not found. There are several causes – one is typing the page name incorrectly, another is that the page name was changed, or perhaps the page is no longer up at the site. One way to handle this problem is with custom 404 pages that redirect to the home page of the site. Unfortunately the set up of these custom 404 pages requires the cooperation of the hosting company. Fortunately Webconsuls is pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement with Millennium and Millennium will add custom 404 pages for our clients without charge. Webconsuls is developing custom pages for each client hosted at Millennium, also without charge.

We can not add these pages at sites not hosted at Millennium. If you would like to have your site moved to Millennium then give us a call.

Keyword Based Linking

Search engines are giving more importance to so-called “off-site factors” and incorporating new ways to measure those factors. One of the these is “link popularity.” Webconsuls has regularly recommended that its clients develop as many links to their site as possible. Now you can improve your link popularity by making sure that the link uses an important keyword phrase in its text. For example in the following – Web Site Development by Webconsuls – it is far better that the link be from the term “Web Site Development” rather than from the word Webconsuls.

Unsolicited e-mail’s

Many of our clients have forwarded unsolicited E-mail pitches to us. Usually they say something like “List your site on 3000 search engines.” We suggest that you ignore them. First of all there are not 3000 search engines worth submitting to. More importantly most of these operations are really trying to get a valid and working E-mail address which they will now sell 3000 or maybe 30,000 times.

Last year one of our clients received an unsolicited offer for a “free lunch” and lecture by an outfit called Galaxy Mall. We went along to observe. Their claims seemed impossible and their service expensive. Last week Dateline NBC ran a story exposing Galaxy Mall.

Many of our Overture clients have gotten E-Mails from firms that monitor Overture listings to find pricing gaps. We have looked into those services and found them to be expensive.

Our Approach

We believe that successful web sites are well designed and appeal to both viewers and search engines. The sites use HTML meta tags appropriately. The key pages of the site are submitted to major search engines on a periodic basis. Positioning is monitored. The most valuable paid search engine programs are utilized. Search engine literature is regularly reviewed. Adjustments are made as necessary.

Our clients help themselves by developing relevant keyword based links to their site, by publicizing their web site address whenever possible, and by registering with specific directories.

Richard Fay
Dennis Helfand

OUR BLOG

Category: Overture

Search Engine Marketing Newsletter December 2003