Highlights of the Week: March 17

Google and Yahoo :: What works well and what won't

Last week we wrote about how we plan out our search engine placement campaigns.

• Google's Newest Needs
• Yahoo's New Needs

Major Player Updates:
    • Google looks local
    • MSN inks new LookSmart deal

Weekly Quick Tip:
    • The Google Basket

• Google IPO


Google's Newest Needs

Google remains the only major search engine that does not mix paid-submission/inclusion results with its traditional (or organic) listings. Submission to Google is easily accomplished by either simply providing a link to the website from another site already in Google's database, or by directing Google to the INDEX page of the site by entering the URL here. Before submitting the site to Google, there are several elements you will want to pay attention to.

Make certain the titles and description tags match the content. The best titles include an incident of the targeted keyword phrase for search engine spiders to consume and also include the specific topic of the page in question. The description should contain several phrases culled from the body text of the page. The keyword meta tag should include popular misspellings of specific keywords.

Google-Bot follows text links. Be certain the website is open to full spidering by including text links to every major page in the site either through a sitemap appended to the end of the website, or through a text-based navigation map generally found at the bottom of each page in the site. For larger sites, it is a best practice to include both mapping techniques.

Obtain as many relevant incoming links as possible. This part is critically important as the "new" Google places very high weight on the number and quality of incoming links. Recently, several sites with high page-ranks have taken to selling links, thus making links a commodity. While Google officially frowns on the purchasing of links, sometimes spending money on a large set of links is what it takes to get the strong placements at Google. Costs can range from $250/month to over $5000/month. These costs must be weighed against the benefits of a Top10 listing at Google but, if sufficient ROI is there, spending the money may be the best option.

Update important pages in the website frequently. Google continues to reward sites with fresh content that is updated on a fairly regular basis. At JNB Web Promotion, we use our news and blog sections to accomplish this.

Much like any other search engine, Yahoo pays close attention to the title and description meta tags, looking for topical relevancy in both elements. As with Google, the best titles include at least one target keyword phrase and a mention of the specific topic addressed by the page the title is applied to. Similarly, a well written description tag is important to Yahoo. Lastly, while we would not spend too much energy on the keyword meta tag as it does not carry much power, we believe Yahoo gives the keyword meta tag a bit of relevance.

According to Overture (owned by Yahoo) spokesperson Jennifer Stephens, Yahoo's spider, SLURP, will act much like Google-bot in that it will follow each text-link it sees on a site and record the information on the pages it finds. It is therefore extremely important that webmasters and SEOs leave clear paths through the website for Yahoo's spider to follow.

Keyword densities had a fairly significant effect at Inktomi and that seems to have carried through to Yahoo. Keyword densities refers to the ratio between the number of keywords as measured against non-keywords used in the body text, title, link-anchor text, and meta tags. This ratio can vary from sector to sector but is often a key in getting better placements than your competitors.

Submissions to Yahoo are radically different today than they were in years past. Last week's article discussed paid submissions to Yahoo via Overture's Site Match and Site Match XChange programs. Yahoo also allows for unpaid submissions but does not respider sites that have not paid submission fees nearly as often as it respiders sites that do pay the fees. Since it costs so much to submit to Site Match, have your site reviewed, and you still have to pay a per-click fee for each click-through, webmasters of sites that will not change frequently might want to take advantage of the free-submit option. Here's the big tip on Free-Submit at Yahoo, submit each page in the site, one by one. You should probably space this process out over a few days just to keep the folks at Yahoo from thinking you are taking advantage of them. ;)
These are just a few of the rules as we read them this week. Please remember that this is a time of flux and these rules may change in the coming weeks as both Google and Yahoo tighten their algorithms. There is always the chance that Yahoo will make changes to its submission and click-through fee structure as well.

Major Player Updates: Google looks local :: MSN inks new LookSmart deal

Google Looks Local

Google is beta testing an extraordinary new tool, Google Local Search. The test is limited to sites from the United States but, if and when Google introduces this feature internationally, it could pose a serious challenge to the publishers of local Yellow Pages directories.

Results from Google Local Search are divided into three column. The first shows the name and phone number of listings. The second column shows the street address. The third column is the most interesting as it displays the website the listing was culled from along with a link to related sites. As a Canadian and a child of the 1980's, one of the only US zip codes I know by heart is "90210". As a 14 hour a day IT worker, one of the most important uses of the Yellow Pages is finding a good pizza delivery. Combining the two produced this list.

MSN Inks New LookSmart Deal

MSN has inked a deal with LookSmart to display LookSmart results in place of Inktomi results from time to time. The deal, which was finalized early this week, allows MSN to transfer from results drawn from the Inktomi database to results fed by LookSmart whenever MSN feels it is necessary, for whatever reason.

One of the easiest ways of telling if the results you see on MSN are from LookSmart is to look in the top right hand corner of the results page and see the number of sites associated with the keyword phrase. If the number is smaller, the results are most likely drawn from LookSmart. At this time, it is not known why MSN would want to draw results from LookSmart, however the deal does add much needed revenue to LookSmart's beleaguered bottom line.

by Jim Hedger, SEO Manager

Pay-Per-Click Tip: Is Google AdWords Right for a New Online Business?
So you have just opened the doors to your new online business. You website is still too new to generate any traffic from the search engines. So while you are waiting for your site to be spidered and indexed, what can you do to start driving customers through the doors?

The first thing I would suggest is start with an aggressive link building campaign. Whenever you have any spare time, try to seek out some extra incoming links. This will ensure that not only are you spidered sooner and more frequently, but also once you are indexed that you will rank higher in the se’s.

But this article isn’t about link building, so I will stop there. The real question is, should you, or should you not dive into AdWords, or any PPC Campaign for that matter? Weather or not to advertise with a PPC Engine really depends on a lot of things, your advertising budget, market competitiveness, and even overall site design.

Before starting any paid advertising campaign, double check to ensure that your site is ready for traffic. Check for the obvious things like dead links, but more importantly how is the navigation on your site? Assume that when a user comes to your site they know nothing about you or your products. How easy is it to find answers to any questions they may have? If they have to hunt around chances are they will go elsewhere and you will be out your 25 cents for the click. Make sure your site is user friendly before investing too much into PPC.

How competitive are your main keywords? If your website is small, chances are you wont be willing to pay two dollars a click. I would suggest coming up with a list of as many relevant keywords as possible. Check on Overture to see how much these keywords are going for, and keep all the inexpensive ones. These cheaper keywords will probably draw much less traffic, however this traffic is likely to be more qualified and less expensive! And for a new business starting out, less expensive is definitely a good thing.

If your new company targets a specific market niche that few online retailers cater to, I say go with PPC until your natural listings appear. These keywords are likely to be very inexpensive, and the traffic will be highly qualified.

What it truly all comes down to though, is your advertising budget. PPC advertising for a new business is sort of a chicken and egg thing. You don’t have the revenue to pay for advertising, but with out advertising you wont make any sales. If you are able to target some low cost 5-10 cent words, even a budget of five dollars a day may bring in some sales and help to get the ball rolling.

Weekly Quick Tip: The Google Basket

At some point or another we have all heard the old adage, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Until very recently site owners, webmasters, SEO’s, and pretty much anyone who had anything to do with the Internet was concerned with marketing on one property: Google.

This made a lot of sense. Google sold it’s results to many engines including Yahoo which meant that it provided the results for about 80% of all worldwide searches. While putting all one’s eggs in one basket may not be exceptionally wise, this basket was so large, and so rich, that there didn’t seem to be much choice. Constantly we at JNB Web Promotion would get calls from people wanting to know how to get their rankings higher on Google, with little or no concern for the “other engines”.

But today things are different. Yahoo now shows it’s own results as opposed to Google’s. MSN now gets its results from Inktomi (ironically, Inktomi is owned by Yahoo). Google’s popularity, as far as % of searches performed on its database, has significantly declined.

The latest Nielson NetRatings (January 2004) show that while Google is still in the lead, it is no longer the dominating power that it once was. Google is currently the search engine destination for 39.4% of all searchers with Yahoo coming in second with 30.4% and MSN at 29.6%. In fact, if we consider that Yahoo owns Inktomi and that MSN draws its results from Inktomi, Yahoo is now the strongest force in the search world.

What is important to conclude from this is that, while Google is still a highly relevant and important factor in optimizing your website, it is no longer the end-all-be-all. There are now 3 major players. Of these three the trends seem to show that Google will further decline, Yahoo will continue to grow it’s properties and influence, and MSN will be launching its own search engine in the next year-or-so, which will further shake things up as Microsoft makes a major play on the search engine market.

For those of you who have until recently, been concerned only with Google, it’s time to move some of your eggs before the basket shrinks too much and your eggs hit the floor.

Google IPO

The Net Reality: Greedy investors fall for fraud around Google IPO Google has not yet issued its anticipated IPO but that didn't stop Dutch confidence-man Shamoon Rafiq from scamming over $500,000 from at least four prominent New York business professionals. On March 5, the FBI arrested Rafiq at his home after he passed himself off as a limited partner in a Venture Capital firm with ties to Google. Rafiq convinced his victims that he possessed several thousand shares of "Series B Preferred Stock", issued at the bargain price of $12/share.

"Shamoon Rafiq preyed upon the public's enthusiasm for the growth of dynamic companies and in the process swindled some of the most sophisticated investors in the United States and abroad," Roslynn Mauskopf, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

While the FBI has not publicly identified Rafiq's victims, it has released information on their professions. If any reader holds stocks or banks on Wall St. they should worry as Rafiq managed to scam including the chairman of a global telecommunications company, a New York investment banker, a corporate attorney and a senior executive at a brokerage firm. These people should have known better but, at the same time, many professionals fall for the Nigerian Money Scam as well. Greed may be good in the eyes of a certain movie character but it tends to pull the blinders over the eyes of unscrupulous people from time to time. Ask yourself this, are any of those who fell for this fraud minding your money?

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