yahoo Archives - Webconsuls

Exploring Side Streets with Chris Brogan

Thursday February 25, 2010

Reading Time: 5 minutes

News Flash: I follow Chris Brogan on Twitter. A few months ago I attended Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. I wrote about it. I promised that I would try to apply what I learned. One of the first things I did was to begin following Chris Brogan. Don’t get excited. I am one of 124,385 followers. (To put this in perspective I have 41 followers.) You are probably shaking your head and asking “is Judy nuts?” But to that, I say: “Does me being one of 3,400,000 TIME Magazine weekly subscribers or one of 6,685,684 National Geographic monthly subscribers shock you or make you question why I would even think of “following” these honored publications?” I hope not. I subscribe to these publications, local newspapers, SEO/SMO on-line newsletters for the same reason that I follow Chris Brogan – each opens avenues to useful and timely information that can impact my business, Webconsuls’ clients, and my personal life.

This past week Chris mentored: Don’t Forget the Little Side Streets. Exploring side streets with Chris Brogan is quite a ride. I hope you will take the time to read his post, he offers really good insights and, unlike a few, Chris is optimistic and looks for ways to extend the expiration date for some of these “streets”. For example, when was the last time you:

examined your “YELP” reviews
verified your Google Local Business Center Map
updated your Bing Local Listing Center
checked out Yahoo Answers
refreshed your Facebook Fan page
responded to a Trip Advisor review (negatively or positively)
tweeted something of positive value, as opposed to a rant

Navigating and maintaining these “streets” takes time. But the beauty of the Internet in general and social media in particular is the fluidity and vitality that you can manage to. Every time you think you don’t have time I want you to find a business person who can recall the angst of designing and ordering a brochure. Trust me. Before the ink was dry the area code had been split in two, your AAA rating had changed for the better or the beautiful maple tree that graced your front lawn had fallen. Yes, maintaining your “streets” and exploring side streets takes time, but you can do it on your time and make your journey as interesting as you want. There really is nothing like a road trip.

Here is my favorite photo of a real “side” street.

No Name Street 2000

This post is dedicated to Chris Brogan, thanking him for inspiration.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

It seems it is almost impossible to keep abreast of all the SMO and SEO news. You can scan the headlines on Google, Yahoo, your favorite newspaper or tech magazine and the amount of information is astounding. Just today I again realized I have an account with Google Reader which automatically sends me more information. I signed in and saw my Google Reader inbox had 851 items! I guess you now know I have been too busy for Google Reader. But this post is not about the Google Reader, it is about how to keep our Webconsuls’ clients abreast of internet marketing news. Turns out Webconsuls set up SMO and SEO news feeds for you and our clients over two years ago. So again I ask the proverbial question: Is anybody “listening” or in this case reading?

The experts keep talking about Twitter. I have a Twitter account, I follow and am followed; however, there are a few things about Twitter that annoy me. Today I will just mention two: (a) some people provide TMI (too much information) or should I say information that is redundant (since they have more than one account) and useless information; (b) it often takes two to three clicks to get to the meat of the message. Let me give you a real life example. Today I signed into my Twitter account around 6:30AM (MST). I read a Tweet that said: “6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today Web 2.0 Journal”. So I clicked on the link, but instead of being taken directly to the article I was taken to a TweetMeMe page that listed 65 Twitterers who had RT (retweeted) this article. I then click on the original link and I am taken to a blog post by Web 2.0 Journal. I read the article, it was interesting, but didn’t really provide too much new information, it was more one writer’s opinion. Just like my blog post today, is basically my opinion.

Here is my advice for today. If you want to go to one place and read the headlines for SMO, then I invite you to visit Webconsuls News Page. There you will find the current SMO headlines and you only have to click once!

P.S. If you want to find me on Twitter, click here.

P.P.S. As always, let me know what you think.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

LeapFish.com is a search engine portal that allows you to search through Google, Yahoo, and MSN (Now known as Bing). Some say that LeapFish might even be competing with Google but I don’t believe it can since its main search results are based off of Google’s engine.

LeapFish does have some nice features though; it displays the Market Summary, top News, and Latest Videos from Youtube. The interesting thing about the videos is you don’t have to hit play, simply place your mouse over the thumbnail and it will begin playing.

The search is nice because you have the ability to compare results from the top three engines and see where your site ranks based on the keywords you enter.

As for advertising on LeapFish you pay for the keywords as would with any other PPC Campaign except you keep the spot until you are willing to sell it. For Example, if you purchase “California Drug Rehab” you hold that spot for every time someone searches that until you want to sell it. It’s interesting but not sure if it will last.

LeapFish has also been known for taking their client’s money and it’s possible those rumors began because of their advertisement slots.

Have you used it? What are your thoughts on this website?

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Is Bing a decision engine, a surname, a candy bar, a slag heap? Over the past couple of months I have been reading a lot about Microsoft’s new search engine BING.com. We are all familiar with Microsoft, right? We know about Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search. And now we have Microsoft’s latest reincarnation, BING, and more importantly BING is being referred to as a decision engine as opposed to a search engine. I suppose MS is for all intents and purposes now a matchmaker! Not only is MS finding you mates to choose from they are determined to help you make the decision.

A few of observations about BING:

On the serious side: I want our clients to know that the Webconsuls’ Team will be following and studying the impact of BING from an SEO standpoint. That is what we are tasked to do. There are a number of questions to be asked and answered, but we must do this responsibly. And on that front, Webconsuls will keep our clients informed.

BING is quite lovely to look at. Everyday the home page photo changes and these photos are dramatic. Google’s basic home page is pretty blank, but works. Yahoo, which by the way is still my default home page has a lot of information and I have grown accustom to reading the news’ headlines, clicking on finance, travel, etc, I have never had a Yahoo account or email account.

There are a number of sites that you can visit that will allow you to compare search results for BING to GOOGLE. And there is another site that lets you compare search results from GOOGLE, BING, and YAHOO. This site’s search results are returned in a “blind” state and the fun feature about this site is that you can vote for which search results best suits your search query. You might be surprised which search engine’s results you really like.

My final thought today has to do with the choice of the name “BING”. I will say that writing this blog always gives me an opportunity to learn new things and today is no exception. Why “BING”? I understand that originally Microsoft was going to call their new search (decision) engine KUMO. They actually registered both trademarks with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. KUMO is a Japanese word that means spider or cloud. Hmmmm, well I guess we can all get the “spider” connection to the world wide web and in the IT world “cloud” is a metaphor for the internet, so I guess it could have cleverly worked. So I come back to question: why “BING”? I am going to assume, although I know that can be a mistake, that someone at Microsoft looked up the meaning(s) of the word “BING”.

BING Toy Company founded in 1863, famous for the manufacturing of toy trains
Bing is apparently a fairly common surname, and let’s not forget Chandler Bing of Friends
BING Candy Bar, made in Iowa
BING cherries, all with pits
Bing is another name for a slag heap which is a collection of the tailings or by-products of mining (DATA Mining comes to mind?)
Bing is the name of a soft drink produced in England
Bing is the name of Chinese flat bread
Bing is also a phrase used by prison inmates to describe solitary confinement

Ok, maybe they didn’t do a lot of name research, maybe they just liked the sound of “BING”. Maybe they like saying “Bing and Decide“. Whatever….I invite you to go to their Discover Bing informational site and learn all about it.

Webconsuls will continue to study BING and keep you informed. Let me know what you think.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Have you ever gotten an email notification from Yahoo Search Marketing stating that your ‘Minimum bid requirements have increased for some of your keywords’ in a Pay Per Click account you have with them?

Well let me attempt to set the record straight. This auto notification email specifically pertains to a keyword or set of keywords in your account that Yahoo is adjusting is invisible ‘floor’ of bidding. This is to say that for Yahoo’s PPC program, they choose and set a minimum bid required to be displayed at all, even on lower pages. Therefore, the ‘old school’ model of being at the minimum bid of $.10 may not get you any impressions.

This auto notify email is then attempting to tell you that you may need to increase your bids as a result of this invisible floor raising up on your keyword(s).

These emails shouldn’t though, give you too much of a problem in having to log into your account and track down the affected keywords, because if you were at the minimum bid previously and now wouldn’t be displayed, you weren’t pushing this keyword aggressively in the 1st place.

It is annoying to me how Yahoo goes about its business in attempting to alarm you with auto emails, so you can take time out of your day and in their hopes, spend more money with them. Again, if this was an important keyword for your campaign, you would be attempting 1st page positioning and therefore wouldn’t be affected.

Yahoo is sure to let you know when your account has run out of money or in this case, when it wants you/is making you bid higher on the per click level. Now I just hope I can get some service on why they reject an Ad URL change and NOT tell me about it.

Do you have a marketing account with Yahoo and have no idea what I’m talking about? Let me educate you and help build your business. Yahoo historically around 33% cheaper than Google AdWords, both of which are necessary.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Yahoo Search Marketing, the Pay Per Click (PPC) division of Yahoo! Inc has been historically behind the 8-ball, or more specifically behind Google AdWords for the last 3 to 5 years of PPC advertising.

Yahoo’s argument was, we were the 1st on the scene and Google has since leap-frogged us by taking our model and improving upon it- an argument with some validity. But now 5 years down the road, Yahoo is still playing catch-up. This is even after the famous ‘Panama’ launch that was to solve everything. Not to be confused with your favorite South American canal, or a Van Halen song.

Well Yahoo has taken a small step in the right direction by now including a full ad scheduling feature. Previous to this upgrade, Yahoo’s scheduling was all of, start date- end date. Now, like Google, the PPC advertising can be scheduled to the hour, every hour of every day of the week.

For example, I want to push my Ad’s in the morning only, Monday, Wednesday and Friday but have evenings only on the weekend. You can customize and specify exactly to the 1/4 hour when your ads will run and when the won’t. The trick now is deciphering when and when not to run your ads.

Do you feel like you want to utilize this type of tool, targeting only parts of the week where you see your best results? Let us help- Webconsuls.com.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Both Yahoo and Google have their own forms of ‘ad scheduling’. This means that we can choose when we want our ads to be shown and just as importantly, when we don’t want our ads to be shown– well kind of.

Google fully provides this functionality- hour by hour, day by day, even down to every 1/4 hour, when to display your ads. The campaign ‘edit status’ button has what looks like a hyperlink, which is where you can find the ad scheduling function.

Yahoo Search Marketing on the other hand, allows you to schedule a start date and an end date, which is their full and complete definition of ad scheduling. Therefore, taking your campaigns on and offline at certain hours is a manual process– log in to the account and literally turn the account offline or back online to perform the same function. This is ridiculous- Yahoo needs to step up to the plate. We are not asking for voice command here.

Both search engines have the faults and points of utility, but for this function it’s a runaway: collegiate versus kindergarten.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

One of the joys of having a child in the house is how they can be so easily impressed by simple adult skills and knowledge. I know this phase will pass, in our house this period of time is passing very quickly. The other day I realized that I had an analogy for why blogs are so helpful when placing in the search engine results as I was asked to locate a small misplaced toy.

When I returned with the small bobble I was met with wide admiring eyes and a WOW, how do you always know where EVERYTHING is? (Trust me when I tell you that I am being sure to enjoy these moments of alleged omniscience as it will surely pass.)

Knowing my time is limited and that I had her undivided attention I decided to explain to the little one just why I usually have the answer to where everything is.

“I scan.”

“Huh?”

“I am always scanning the house.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, as I walk through the house I am always scanning. I just automatically make sure things are in their place and I take note of what I see.”

Replace scanning with spidering and house with World Wide Web and I am just like a search engine spidering links, exploring and noting where everything is so as to find it later!

Well, imagine you have just arrived home and the grocery shopping had just been done, or someone came home from a trip, or for some reason new items have been added to your home. What will you most likely need to do?

You will need to put your stuff away and you will want to know where it is so you can find it when you need it. Search engine spiders will not put your digital files or your groceries away. Deciding where items go and putting them there is still your job.

So why will the search engine be draw to your blog? How does a blog help me?

Blogs feed the purpose of search engines.

That search engine is going to investigate to see just what you added and where. It is the search engines’ job to know what material is available on the World Wide Web. Whether it be Google, MSN, Yahoo, Dogpile, you name it, the search engines must familiarize themselves with fresh timely material in order to return the most relevant search. Search engines must keep up on new additions in order to perform the job they were designed to do.

Using a blog to consistently add useful relevant content is a powerful method to draw the search engines to spider (or scan) your site and index the timely information you post.

For help on how to add a blog to your web site or blog training to make the most of your blog please contact us at Webconsuls, LLC.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Google AdWords does provide a way internally to get suggestions for keywords in your marketplace, its called the Keyword Tool. This tool is found when drilling into the account at the ‘keyword’ level. This means you have clicked past both the Campaign and Ad Group levels to display your keywords and ads.

This tool is free to AdWords users, so great right. Well in the past not as much because depending on what you gave the tool as a starting term for more suggestions, the tool spit out those suggestions from most general (least useful) to specific. Furthermore, the only information associated with these suggestions was 2 simple horizontal bar graphs detailing, ‘advertiser competition’ and ‘search volume’. So hopefully your are following me in that no numeric data was given whatsoever.

Now Google has expanded the tool to return suggestions with ‘approximate search volume’ for the last month and ‘approximate average search volume’ with an actual value. Practically speaking, your campaign has only to spend a predetermined amount any way, so its not as if one regularly finds him or herself adding up search volumes, but it is nice to quantify what Google used to shove into a half inch blue bar.

When it comes down to it, we need to have all the necessary keywords in the PPC account regardless of search volume because we need to target what it is we have deemed necessary in achieving our projected goals. That is, we do the best we can with what we can in the given market with a given budget for a certain business model. But I can say it is significant that Google’s Keyword tool is a bit more useful, and frankly it is nice to see Google sharing any real data with us at all. I’m sure tired of getting email replies that might as well have been some fraction of a bar graph. But Google must be listening to the people to some extent in changes as little as this one.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Microsoft and Yahoo have yet to work out a deal for Microsoft to takeover Yahoo via a stock bid in the $30 range. We at Webconsuls are not noting this in the slight chance that you hold Yahoo stock or in my case stock options. It is significant to note the impact of re-merger of the 2 giants in the search results category.

That is, Yahoo and MSN used to have a search marketing partnership which ended about 2 years ago. With Google the clear market share majority player, it would be nice to see Yahoo beef up its partners, especially for MSN who since the split from Yahoo has yet to be a formidable opponent.

In a perfect world, Yahoo Sponsored Search would give us the option of eliminating the partner network with the exception of MSN, should a merger ever be completed.

We’ll keep you updated.

Reading Time: 14 minutes

In this newsletter we discuss…

New designs or redesigns by Webconsuls
Mobile Phones and hand held devices Blogs
508 Compliance
Getting listed on Google Maps and Yahoo Local Search

New Web Designs by Webconsuls

Over the past few months, Webconsuls has been working on new web designs or redesigns for a number of our clients. We invite you to view these sites. Morningside Recovery An addiction and recovery treatment center in Newport Beach, CA. Pacific Coast Recovery Center A 30 day hospital based program which includes medical detox and hospital inpatient chemical dependency and pain track, located South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach, CA Delytes Catering and Event Planning located in Temecula Valley, CA, serving Riverside and San Diego Counties. Your Best Look Michael Nelson, M.D. providing Lipotherapy and Mesotherapy, serving the greater Kansas City, MO area.Temecula Divorce Gina Famularo is a family law attorney practicing in Temecula, California.

Mobile Phones and Hand-Held Devices

Your web site may display beautifully on a PC, but how does it look on a mobile phone? You may be very surprised and a bit dismayed by the result! If you are curious, there is an easy test at: http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php

Simply access the URL shown above, select the type of device in the drop down and type in your URL without including the “www;” just the domain name.com/.net/.org, etc.

Fortunately, a solution is available. You can have Webconsuls design your site for mobile devices and use a specific “.Mobi,” top-level domain for the mobile site. “.Mobi” is dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices via the Mobile Web. Google Mobile and Yahoo Mobile’s OneSearch will undoubtedly grow in popularity, given the projected sales of hand-held and mobile devices. Current estimates are that 1.3 billion people will connect to the Internet via mobile phones by 2008.

Several of our Clients are already moving ahead at this time to position themselves early in mobile advertising and / or marketing. These include Morningside Recovery, Visions Adolescent Treatment Center and Captain Lord Mansion. Several other clients have already requested quotes and are close to placing orders with us.

To view how well .Mobi works. via a Browser:
A. Open a Web Browser and access: http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php
B. Select Nokia or Sony Skin
C. Type in: “captainlord.mobi” or “morningsiderecovery.mobi.” or “visionsteen.mobi.” After the http://, it is best to omit the “www.”
D. Click on Submit and wait for the phone screen shown to load.
E. There is a thin gray scroll bar inside the phone display. To navigate, place the cursor on any of the dial numbers and click.

(The best approach of course is to actually use a mobile device for viewing).

Special features included in our .mobi design packages are auto-dialing your business’ phone number. Even better, the mobile device will automatically recognize the .mobi extension availability as well. Images can be displayed and links work quite well. Sites that attain a rating of 5 out of a possible 5 in design quality get into the .mobi Directory and all of our designs meet that rating. Call today for details!

Important Note: In case you didn’t know, Domain age is a huge factor to Google’s rankings. How long you’ve been around, how long you’ve had people link to your site, how old are the sites that link to you, what has your back link growth and history been, etc, etc…..it’s all about Time and Age Factors. In a small way, the age of a domain gives the appearance of longevity and therefore a higher relevancy score in Google. Our recommendation to all clients is that no matter your current .mobi intentions, you should have us register “yourdomainname.mobi” for 5 years, to immediately start “the aging clock.” Cost for five years, with free-parking is only $125.00.

Call or write us if you wish to have a .mobi site developed or if you want to purchase the .mobi domain extension.

Blogs

As mentioned in our press release sent to you earlier this month, Webconsuls is anxious to help our Clients benefit in a variety of Social Marketing Optimization (SMO) opportunity areas. One of its components is “Blogs” or Blogging. For the uninitiated (or for those in Dennis’ generation who know what a slide rule is), a Blog is an online, regularly updated journal or newsletter that is readily accessible to the general public by virtue of being posted on a website. Why all the interest? A recent discussion by Site-Reference about benefits from Blogs (cut and pasted below) should “hone” your interest and attention:

Blogs are a great medium for your customers and prospects to get to know you and your services better.
When you post information to a blog the blog software automates the process of updating your website with the new information and archiving old content; simplifying the chore of keeping your website fresh and relevant.
Blogs can automatically announce (ping) to the world whenever new content is added. Again, this automated process simplifies the all-important (and normally time consuming) promotion process.
Through the use of syndication methods your blog postings (writings) can be monitored easily by fans of your services/writing.
Blogs provide a wonderful platform for readers to interact with you by leaving comments.
Due to the highly social and interactive nature of blogs it is possible that links will begin to appear to your posts from other websites. This can increase your website’s link popularity and will only happen if you write engaging and source-worthy content.

Call or write us to have a Blog added to your web site.

508 Compliance

Congratulations and kudos to Attorney Edna Deeb http://www.ednadeeblaw.com. Edna holds the distinction of being Webconsuls’ first Client to request, order and achieve overall accessibility compliance with regard to section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act.

Compliance is designing or modifying a web site to be usable by persons with visual or physical disabilities, often with the help of a screen reader device, captioning, etc. While not yet a requirement in most fields, (except government sites), this topic closely mirrors the more familiar ADA considerations and regulations. It is almost certain to become a consideration in new web site designs. Google already is testing “Accessible Web Search for the Visually Impaired.” A parallel benefit in achieving compliance is that many required enhancements also meet standard browser conformance (W3C) recommendations and therefore should help with traditional SEO and positioning rules.

Call or write us if you wish to have your site modified to be section 508 compliant.

How to List Your Business in Google Maps and Yahoo Local Search

Have you ever tried to search for your business in Google Maps or Yahoo Search? The easiest way to do this is to type in your business service or product and the name of the city and state where your business is located. What will be displayed on Google is “Local Business Results for…” and on Yahoo it will say “Local Results…” Did you find your business listing? You may find that if you type in the specific name of your business with the city and state, your listing will appear, but it may need to be updated with more details about your business. According to the Site Reference Newsletter, “Even if your business is done completely online, you may benefit from getting listed in Google Local or Yahoo’s local listings. People often feel more comfortable doing business with someone who is local; and potential customers may stumble across your business while searching for other things.”

We know that many of our clients are already listed in Google Maps and Yahoo Search, but for those of you who are not, we have found that this is one area of internet marketing where you need to register your own business. The reason for this is that both Google and Yahoo go through a security process to determine that you are a real business at that location. They either verify the information submitted by phoning your business or sending a postcard addressed to the business, which requires that you sign back into Google Maps or Yahoo Search and enter a PIN number.

As always, if you have additional questions, please feel free to call us and we will make every attempt to assist you with this value added feature.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

In this issue read about

Changes at Yahoo
Webconsuls Plans for its clients regarding Yahoo’s changes
Maintaining your website

Changes at Yahoo

Before addressing the changes, lets review how Yahoo was delivering search results. At the top under a “Sponsored Listing” heading, were results from Overture. Sites were listed according to their bid in Overture’s pay per click system. Then Yahoo listed, in a section labeled “Search Results”, results which it got from Google. Yahoo also maintained a directory that costs $299 per year for inclusion.

Late last year Yahoo purchased Overture (which had previously purchased Alta Vista and FAST) and Inktomi. We expect that these will become an inter-related family of search portals. Yahoo has replaced Google for their Search Results section with Yahoo’s version of an Inktomi search. This then will be the new Yahoo search engine, which will provide results for Yahoo, MSN, Overture (unpaid listings), Hot Bot, About and others.

Initially there will be a free submit option to get sites considered, which should work for small, stable, relatively simply constructed web sites. The free submit should replace Inktomi’s previous pay submit option.

For larger sites, with frequently changing content, Yahoo has announced Overture Site Match. This will be a paid submit service with a pay per click feature as well. It will not be a bid system, as the traditional Overture system, but a fixed pay per click based on site’s category. Yahoo says that sites in the Site Match will get no special consideration in ranking, however the content will be reviewed every 48 hours and all pages will be considered.

So in the future we expect Yahoo to continue to show Overture’s traditional pay per click results at the top as Sponsored listings and Yahoo new search engine results under Search Results. The listings in the Search Results will come from sites submitted under the free submit program and the Overture Site Match, ranked according to Yahoo’s methodology.

Webconsuls’ Plans

We will be monitoring all of our clients’ search results and regularly reviewing the literature. We will recommend and implement opportunities to improve rankings. We will recommend participation to those clients who would benefit from the Overture Site Match program.

Since the Site Match program will involve considerable effort on our part, there will be an administrative fee imposed.

Maintaining Your Web Site

In its important that you keep your web site up to date. Many of our clients like to vary their content and images to keep the site fresh. For us to make changes to your site, even small ones, requires time on our part. In some cases we outsource the work and have to pay for the changes.

We can not maintain sites without compensation for the time involved. Our basic rate in $75 per hour, with a $25 minimum. So if you send us a change for your site, expect to be billed. We will contact you if the work is expected to take over an hour.

Some of our larger clients pay us a monthly fee that includes web site design maintenance. Obviously this charge does not apply to them.

Dennis Helfand and Dick Fay

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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: 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: yahoo

Exploring Side Streets with Chris Brogan