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February 2002 Search Engine Tips
How To Get Listed Prominently on the New
Yahoo! by Don Crowther
Want more traffic to your web site?
Yahoo may be the perfect source! Yahoo.com is vitally important
to those who want web traffic, with the latest figures showing that
38.9% of web traffic originates from a search on Yahoo.
And with several recent changes in the way they report search
results Yahoo has made traffic gathering from their engine easier than
ever before.
Yahoo Changes Create Opportunities!
By now you probably know that Yahoo
has changed the way that it delivers search results. Yahoo’s old
method, of showing a page of categories (Business and Economy >
Business to Business > Construction > Metals) and a list of 500
different web sites in response to a search has been replaced.
Visitors now see a list of few category links and some sponsored links,
followed by a list of sites that rank well against that search term.
Here’s a sample of what Yahoo used
to show when you performed a search: (note, make sure the whole url
shows up when you click this link or it won’t work correctly)
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/
Manufacturing/Metal_Working/Steel/
Scroll down to where you see the long
list of sites, and notice that they are listed alphabetically.
Here’s a sample of what the new
Yahoo shows in response to a search.
Note that this list looks very similar to those generated by many
of the other search engines: (again, make sure the whole url
shows up when you click this link or it won’t work correctly EDITOR'S
NOTE: I found it easier to copy each line of this url by itself into my
browser address box. Copy them end to end and make sure no spaces are in
this massively long url before you click on "go" or hit enter)
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=steel&y=y&e=28577&f=0%3A27
66678%3A2718086%3A8101%3A27755752%3A28577&r=Business
+and+Economy%02Business+to+Business%02Construction
What does this mean for anyone who wants to build their web site
traffic? First, it probably means that your site has changed in
ranking on Yahoo. You might be lucky and your site is in much
better position now than it used to be. But you also may not even
show up in the listing, especially if your past success was based on
having an alphabetically-prominent company name.
Second, it means that the search engine battleground has changed yet
again. My prediction
(and I’m sure Yahoo’s hope) is that since this change makes
information easier to find on Yahoo, it is going to make their directory
significantly more popular, resulting in greater market share, and hence
more searches, going through Yahoo in the future. (I’ve already called
my broker…)
Keys To Ranking High on the New Yahoo!:
The formula for getting ranked high on Yahoo used to be one of the
easiest to understand in the search directory/engine world. Now
that formula’s not so obvious, and more importantly, it will probably
be a moving target, just like most of the other search engines.
What works well this week, possibly won’t next. But that’s
life!
In spite of that, it’s fairly clear that Yahoo will be utilizing
several factors in their equation to determine what comes up first in
their ranking. Keep these in mind as you register new sites:
1. Presence in their database.
Yahoo won’t list you if you’re not in their database! So if
you haven’t done it yet, get off your duff, dust off your credit card,
and fork over the $299 to get your site listed (now an annual fee) You can’t afford
not to, period!
2. Presence of the keyword in your URL, Yahoo title and Yahoo
description.
Yahoo still isn’t ranking their search results based on the page
content of your site itself, but rather by the information in the title,
description and URL that is listed in their database. Your site
must provide valuable information to be accepted into the Yahoo
directory, but when it comes to determining who gets ranked first on any
given search, it’s the words in your Yahoo title, description and URL
that determine the ranking order, not the actual copy on your site.
Ideally, to get great rankings on Yahoo, the keyword that you’re
targeting will be listed in your URL, your company name (which Yahoo
will use for the title of your site in their listing) and right at the
beginning of your site’s description on their database. For example:
http:compostmakers.com Compost Makers Inc.
Compost makers, tools, and equipment for making your garden healthy
will score considerably better for a search on “compost makers” than
would
http:gardenstuff.com Bob’s Hardware Store
Compost makers, tools, and equipment for making your garden healthy
3. Primacy of the keyword in your URL, Yahoo title and Yahoo
description.
Yahoo places more weight on words at
the beginning of terms than that same word later on in your description.
So:
"Compost makers, tools, and equipment for making your garden healthy"
will score better than: "Garden tools, including compost makers, rakes, shovels and more"
for the term “compost makers.”
Keep in mind though, that this second example will score better on
searches for the term “garden tools” which is searched on 70 times
more frequently than “compost makers.” You need to know what terms
people are actually using to search for sites like yours. How to
do that is the subject of another
article, but the easiest method is
still Overture’s (formerly Goto’s) tool, (currently located at https://secure.overture.com/s/dtc/center/
Click on "Search Term Tool")
Make sure that if you’re going to go to all the work to rank high
against a specific search term, that it’s one that people are actually
using to search for your site!
It’s vital for you to not only know what you are truly selling, but
also what is being searched on in your category.
4. Other factors.
Every search engine applies different weights to certain listing
criteria and change those weightings frequently. At the moment,
Yahoo is doing that in several areas, which may change:
A. Placement in Yahoo’s categories. Yahoo
has not abandoned their old category structure, just changed the way
they list search results. Yahoo currently seems to be giving
higher rankings to those sites that are listed under the categories they
consider to be most important for a given search term rather than the
lower priority categories. (To
see which categories are more important to Yahoo in your subject area,
do a search on your keyword, then look at the top of the page under
"Category Matches." The
categories listed there are ranked in the order of importance that Yahoo
places on that category. Ideally,
your site will be included in the first one listed there.)
B. Giving more weight to hyphenated URL’s than
non-hyphenated URL’s with the same keywords. Thus (everything
else being equal) http://compost-makers.com
would score better than http://compostmakers.com.
This is especially true if the keyword is not the first element in the
URL: http://best-compost-makers.com
would score better than http://bestcompostmakers.com.
C. Penalizing sites that have numbers or
early-in-the-alphabet letters before the keyword (probably in reaction
to those who tried to beat their old alphanumeric ranking system): http://1compostmakers.com
probably won’t even show up in the first several pages of their
listing.
D. Not differentiating between .com’s, .net’s, .org’s,
etc.
This opens up opportunities to achieve top rankings through purchasing
alternative domains to the .com standby. (Caution we have no
idea how the new .info, .biz etc. domains will fare in Yahoo’s new
structure, so approach these with caution).
Don’t
Want the Hassle – There Is Another Way!
5. The
quick and easy method - buy your way to the top.
Another
recent change by Yahoo has suddenly made it very simple (though
potentially costly) to get to the top of the most popular search tool in
the world – now you can buy a #1 ranking!
Yahoo has
recently formed a joint venture with Overture, where Yahoo pulls the top
ranked sites on Overture and shows them at the top of Yahoo listings. To see how this works, open two web browsing sessions on your
computer. In one, navigate
to http://yahoo.com . In the other, navigate to http://overture.com
. Now key the same search term into both engines.
See how
Yahoo lists Overture’s first three listings as part of their Sponsor
Matches at the top of their screen?
Now scroll to the bottom of the Yahoo page, and notice that the
other two sites listed as More Sponsored Matches are the sites ranked
4-5 on Overture.
So how do
you get to the top of Overture? You
buy your way there!
To see
how this works click back to the Overture page.
Here’s an example of the top 3 listings for a search in
Overture on the term “steel”
1.
ThomasRegional
- Industrial Marketplace
Source, quote and buy from more than 550,000 industrial suppliers
searchable by product, service, location, company and brand name.
thomasregional.click-url.com (Cost to advertiser: $0.44)
-
Find
Steel Suppliers Online
The Thomas Global Register is a directory of 500,000 manufacturers
and distributors from 22 countries, classified by 10,500 products
and services categories. Visit us today.
www.tgrnet.com (Cost to advertiser: $0.43)
-
Detail
/ Cross Reference Steel Standards
Internet and Window software that details/cross-references over
100,000+ standards from around the world. Includes ASTM, JIS, DIN,
EN,GOST, ISO, and 70 other international organizations
www.metalinfo.com (Cost to advertiser: $0.18)
Notice
the $0.44 listed at the end of ThomasRegional’s listing as the cost to
the advertiser? That means
that every time someone clicks on the ThomasRegional link on any of
Overture’s partners, $0.44 gets deducted from ThomasRegional’s
account.
So how
did ThomasRegional get listed first?
They were willing to bid $0.44, while tgrnet bid $0.43 and
Metalinfo.com was willing to bid $0.18 at the time of this writing.
(Interesting sidenote – here’s a good example of two
divisions of the same company [ThomasRegional and tgrnet] bidding
against each other to achieve a top ranking.
If the two of them would get together, they could both save over
half of their budget by reducing their bid cost to $0.20 and $0.19 and
still be in the #1 and #2 positions for this search term.
Be careful of this if you own multiple sites all competing for
the same visitor!)
So if
metalinfo.com wanted to be listed first on Yahoo and all of Overture’s
dozens of other partners including MSN and AOL, they simply have to bid
$0.45, beating out ThomasRegional for that top spot.
That will work until ThomasRegional finds out, and outbids them.
But at some point the value of that keyword will be reached and
bidding will stabilize.
So what
does this all mean to you? Simply
that you can instantly (once your Overture account is set up and your
search listings are active) achieve #1 ranking on Yahoo, if you’re
willing to pay for it.
Now there
are lots of strategies and techniques that can be used to achieve
maximum results with minimal dollar expenditures - those are the subject
of a future article. But
some experimentation with this method can yield some incredible results
– we’ve seen a number of examples of site traffic doubling simply by
being listed in Yahoo, and increasing by another 25% by buying the top
spot on Yahoo through Overture. So the payoffs can be dramatic.
What We Don’t Know
Several
key issues are not yet clear at Yahoo:
1. There is no indication of site popularity or link popularity
affecting rankings. Yahoo is tracking the number of people who
click on each link so it won’t be surprising to see popularity
affecting rankings in the near future. Link popularity may be
farther out, as Yahoo isn’t currently spidering sites, but we
wouldn’t be surprised to see an acquisition or licensing deal in the
future.
2. There are thousands of sites that are paying extra to be listed
at the top of the category pages as sponsored sites. Yahoo has now
significantly decreased the value given to those paying partners by
shunting as much as 75% of their search traffic off of the category
pages and into their search pages. If you are a sponsored site
owner on the category page, you may want to consider whether you are
still getting your money’s worth from that listing.
All of these changes are vital for internet marketers to understand.
Not only will these changes most likely result in additional traffic for
Yahoo, but for those who understand and act upon these opportunities, it
can yield major benefits of extra traffic, sales and profits!
________________________________
Don Crowther is the founder of http://netmarketingmasters.com/antion.html
a company dedicated to helping companies build their sales and profits
through the techniques used by the masters of Internet marketing.
For more information on NetMarketingMasters or to subscribe to their
free online marketing newsletter, visit http://netmarketingmasters.com/antion.html
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