Archive for the ‘Yahoo’ Category

Google Bombs

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

A few months ago if you searched Google on “miserable failure”, you’d find the bio of George W. Bush at the top of the list that was returned. Google tried to communicate that this wasn’t a political statment on their part, it was simply the result of their ranking algorithms putting it topside.

This ranking was the result of what is popularly known as a Google Bomb. People set their websites with a link to the bio page with the phrase “miserable failure” in the visible part of the link. They get their friends to do the same thing, and their friends to…you get the idea. Soon you have thousands of links to the Bush bio site, all with the same visible link or variation of it. The practice is called Google bombing. It was used to push many sites to the top of the ranks.

No more. Google has changed their ranking algorithm to detect such Google bombs and direct you to sites that discuss the practice instead. Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines l will still give you that bio site at the top of the list. Has Google gone Republican?

Posted in Google, Search engine optimization, Yahoo | 2 Comments »

Online Sales and the Holidays

Wednesday, November 15th, 2006

If you have a web site targeted for the coming holiday sales, here are a few tips for your site:

  1. It’s a little late for optimizing a new site for the organic (free) engines for the holidays. If you have an existing site, target your title, description, and page contents to one to three keyword phrases that are used frequently in searching the engines and have a minimum of competition. Second, get as many links into your site as possible. Our seo book has many tips on these strategies and others.

  2. Using paid advertising gets you positioned well in minutes (Google’s Adwords) or in a week (Yahoo). Our seo book now has a lengthy chapter on using these PPC strategies to get them working for you quickly.

Order the book today and get your site going today!

Posted in Adwords - Google, Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization, Yahoo | No Comments »

Using Directories on the Internet

Thursday, March 9th, 2006

There are several differences between the directories and the search engines of the Internet. Here are a few:

  • A directory generally organizes sites by categories and subcategories. You choose the category for your listing. Search engines have no categories or organizational structure.

  • When submitting to a directory, you suggest your site to a human operator. The operator may or may not enter your site to the directory. Search engines use an automatic submission, finding your site from links to it from other sites.

  • With a directory, you only submit your site once. You may be able to edit it later, but there is a lot of emphasis on getting it right the first time. With a search engine. your site is entered as soon as the engines see a link to it and the listing is continuously updated.

Does a Directory Listing Help You?

What good does a directory listing do you? Since when have you used a directory to find what you wanted on the Internet? People don’t. Then what use is getting listing in a directory? In most cases they give you very little direct traffic.

A directory listing is important for most people with web sites, however. The reason is that a link from a major directory to your site is considered a trusted link. A trusted link helps your position in the search engines. So a listing in a directory generally draws little traffic in itself; but by being considered as trusted it moves you up in the search engines and improves your web traffic to your site from the search engines.

For more, see:
http://www.netadventures.biz/searchenginedirectories.htm.

Posted in Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization, Yahoo | No Comments »

Purchasing Pay-Per-Click Ads: Yahoo versus Google

Thursday, February 9th, 2006

If you are planning to do Pay-Per-Click advertising, the biggies are Yahoo’s Search Marketing or Google’s Adwords.

If you purchase a Google Adword advertisement, your position in the listing is determined by the equation:

PI = CPC * CTR * text relevance of ad * history of keyword factors * other
where:
PI = position of your ad
CPC = cost per click
CTR = Click-through rate.

In other words, three of the five facters are determined by Google.

With Yahoo, I could buy a specific position. If I wanted to be #1 for a specific keyword phrase, I could purchase (or actually bid to purchase) that particular slot. Moreover, I could promise a client a position based on what they wanted to purchase.

This advantage is illusionary, however. First, I noticed that the advertisements on CNN (which are Yahoo ads) would often have a company at the top that had questionable ethics. In other words, regardless of their ethics a company could purchase the top slot. As a result, I realized I couldn’t trust any of Yahoo’s advertisements. The free or organic listing was more trust-worthy. With Google, I could drive a top position for my advertisment with little money if I had the click-through rate. In other words, with Google David could slay a Goliath.

Moreover, when I use to buy my ad Yahoo gave me 190 lines for the ad versus the 70 lines Google gave me. Yahoo only gives you 70 lines now.

The conclusion here (and Penny Marshall, a top Pay-per-Click expert agrees) - go with Google’s Adwords.

Posted in Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization, Web Design, Yahoo | No Comments »

More on High Web Traffic: Links

Tuesday, February 7th, 2006

Links to your site are important for that web traffic, but are important in two different ways: building search engine traffic and simple referrals.

Search Engine Traffic
A link into your site from a popular site is useful for positioning you well in the search engines if it is a text link and contains important keyword phrases. Redirected and dynamic links, JavaScript links, and links with the nofollow tag won’t help you much if any, for positioning in results. Links from spamming sites won’t help you, and I don’t trust any Flash links to help me. If the linking text coming in (anchor text) is your company name or your name, it won’t help much unless you are General Motors or some other branded text. Links from images won’t help, either. No anchor text with images.

Most directories can’t help much as they either link from your company name or it’s a redirected or dynamic link, with the actual page results determined when the entry is pulled from a database.

What you really want for good search engine positioning is links from trusted popular sites. Links from .gov or .edu sites are good as they are almost always trusted. If you can figure out a trick to get news on CNN or AP, you are going to get lots of traffic.

Referral Links

Links from most directories and blog postings won’t help your position in the search engine results much, but are important because they may have high traffic and can often refer traffic directly to your web site from their link. Anchor text isn’t that important. A few exceptions are directories like DMOZ (free) and Yahoo ($299/year), which give you a trusted link.

Conclusion

So the question really comes down to how you want people to come into your site. If they will be using the search engines, work to get good links from popular and trusted sites with anchor text that has your keyword phrases. If they are coming in directly from other sites or blogs, put a strategy together for getting your traffic in from those. For example, created a blog swarm by interacting with hundreds of blogs and commenting on the related topic, pointing to a related page on your web site.

Posted in Blogging, Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization, Yahoo | No Comments »

Major US Tech Companies helping China Block Internet Information Flow

Wednesday, February 1st, 2006

From FORTUNE magazine:
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and Cisco came under sharp attack from leaders of Congress and human rights advocates for aiding China’s efforts to censor the Internet and punish dissidents. Seems like profit is more important to them than Freedom of Information. For more information, see Tech Under Attack

Or see the difference yourself. Search for tiananmen in http://www.google.com and then again in http://images.google.cn.

Posted in Google, Microsoft, Search engine optimization, Yahoo | No Comments »