Yahoo has compromised the integrity of their organic (natural) search results. Recently Yahoo has added a search submit feature that allows any company to purchase their way into the organic results. You can know longer expect that the results you see are the most relative based on the contents in the pages.

Although this is not brand new, it is not common knowledge to most Yahoo users who expect the natural results to be based on the pages content and relevance to what they are searching for. Providing a natural section of search results is what makes a search engine a viable portal to the internet and not just a “Spam” site. You expect to get unbiased information in your natural search results and have the advertising clearly marked and when you remove the distinction between the two, users can no longer trust what they are going to be clicking.

Essentially, Yahoo is not only discrediting their brand as a serious search engine, they are in danger of losing loyalty from the millions of people that currently use Yahoo and have for years in an attempt to increase their advertising revenue.

Yahoo claims that the pages submitted for their “Search Submit Express” are displayed based on the relevance to search terms. But how can the pages be displayed by relevance when the relevant pages that aren’t paying are pushed out of the way to make room for the paid pages? And to further discredit the idea of relevance, this statement is on the programs “How it Works” area. “You must maintain a positive balance in your account for your pages to remain active in the program.” If the pages are relevant, they should be displayed regardless of whether you are paying or not. This completely contradicts the whole idea of relevance and introduces an oxymoronic statement I call “Paid Relevance” in organic results.

More and more SEO professionals are seeing that pages in their websites are not being cached or indexed by Yahoo (regardless of meeting the content quality guidelines) thus forcing more and more companies to consider this option. As more companies engage in this Yahoo program, the more compromised the organic results in Yahoo will be. As you can see, this is a real issue that affects millions of people and how they search.

Why is Yahoo engaging in an activity that so clearly violates what makes a great search engine great? Perhaps it’s because of the market share they continuously lose to their major competitor Google. Perhaps this is an attempt to squeeze the turnip dry. Perhaps this is just a misguided decision that some executives thought wouldn’t be that big of a deal that could increase their ad revenue? I don’t know the reason why Yahoo has put such a program in place but one thing is for sure, Google understands the importance of keeping it’s organic search results and has vowed from day 1 to keep it’s natural results organic.

So you can see in more detail what I am talking about, here is the link directly to the Yahoo program. Enjoy!  http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/sse.php
Thanks,
Brad Henry

If you are reading this, it’s probably because you are the “Web Marketer” for your company and are in charge of Internet Marketing Promotion. This article is to help guide you in your choices and give you an overview of your options. Below are the most common forms of Internet Marketing Promotion and lists of some of their pros and cons.

Social Media Optimization: This is when you use a website that is typically for socializing such as myspace.com. You can create several usernames and try to gather as many “friends” as possible and you expand your network of people to market directly to.

• Pros: This can be beneficial as a cheap way to gain visibility because it’s free. If done properly, you can greatly increase your overall traffic and conversions.
  

• Cons: People don’t trust marketing messages in social networks. They feel like the marketer is cheating and using a system that wasn’t provided for them so it has the potential to diminish the value of your brand.
  

Pay per Click or PPC: This is when you pay per click in advertising. The name is a self describing. There are multiple outlets to spend money in PPC which include Google, Yahoo, MSN and many others. Google also has a content network which is the Google advertising you may see on someone’s website. Google’s PPC program is called Adwords. You can sign up for both content and search network. If you are the one who displays the advertising on your website, it’s called Adsense.

• Pros: You get what you pay for. You determine the number of leads by you budget. You won’t ever spend more than 20% more than what your budget is so it’s easy to keep track of. Another Pro is it is fast. As soon as you sign up, you can start receiving leads.
  

• Cons: It’s not free. In order to develop a good campaign, you have to constantly review data and make adjustments. It can be time consuming, almost like a never ending task. Another Con is that as soon as you cut your budget, you loose your leads. It does not have any “shelf life”.
  

Search Engine Optimization: This is when your website shows up naturally in the search engine results pages for keywords your target market may use to find you.

• Pros: If you know what you are doing, it doesn’t cost anything. If you don’t, a good SEO expert can be quite expensive. SEO typically has a very high return on investment because of the amount of targeted traffic it can generate. You also have the ability to focus your website to reach your exact target market. You have a lot of control over what your website gets found for. Another pro is that search engine optimization (also known as SEO), has a very long shelf life. If done properly, SEO can last years or until you’re your site is outdated.
  

• Cons: The shelf life has diminishing returns. The less time you spend, the less return you will get. SEO also takes a long time to take effect. Sometimes it can take months to your site to begin to rank and can take even longer depending on the competitive nature of your industry. Can be costly to redesign your site if it does not have SEO capabilities or needs major work in order to get it ready to be optimized.
  

Email Marketing: This is when you deliver your marketing message via email. You can either buy or rent an email list and send communications as much as you want.

• Pros: You can target your marketing message through many demographic specifications meaning pretty close to your target market. You have full control over your marketing message and when it is delivered. The campains can be fairly effective with a 1-2% conversion rate, depending on what you consider a conversion… This could vary greatly. Another pro is that you can keep your brand in front of your target market consistently over any length of time. There are also analytics available so you can constantly refine your message and strategy and improve your effectiveness over time.
  

• Cons: People hate spam mail. Renting a list can be expensive and buying one can be even more expensive. Most of the time your marketing message ends up being deleted.
  

Blogging: this is when you attempt to control online communication about your company by creating the environment it takes place at.

• Pros: You can deliver a non-invasive message to people that want to read. It adds a bit of personality to your company and gives you the opportunity to remove the typical “faceless” corporate attitude. It also allows you to be in control of an additional referral source for your real website.
  

• Cons: They can take A LOT of time to do right. You had better get used to writing a lot because you will be spending a chunk of your day working on it. You have to consistently update your blog, and moderate it. You could spend your entire day dealing with it.
  

Spamming: This has many variations and I will go over a couple of them. This is when you put links to your website anywhere and everywhere in order to get as many people as possible to your website, regardless of relevance. This can also be very similar to the email marketing by blasting thousands of emails to people filling up their in-boxes with stuff they could careless about. It can also take on malicious forms such as hijacking and injection attacks which is when your site is hacked and filled with bad links.

• Pros: Generates traffic.

• Cons: Can get you banned from Search engines, Can discredit your brand, Can piss everyone off!
  

Viral Marketing: This is when you create something that will catch people’s attention and put it in a place that it can generate traction. If people like what you got, they will tell others and it spreads like a virus generating boat loads of traffic to your site.

• Pros: It can deliver very high volumes of traffic to your website. It can also increase people’s perception of your brand which can have a big impact on the success of your business.
  

• Cons: Very difficult to accomplish. You can spend so much time trying to create the right “hook” and fail over and over due to the number of cool things on the internet.

That is my short list of Internet Marketing Promotion avenues. This is a very rough list and I plan on writing detailed sections of each of the mediums above but wanted to create a starting point. Eventually each section above will be linked to the more detailed area. If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to send me an email at bhenry at beacontec.com.

Text has really limited what designers can do and recently one of the design guys where I work was asking about using AJAX to create collapsible content that existed on the page and was displayed without refreshing the page once a user expanded a section. The question is… “Is this considered Black Hat, will the content be indexed, and will Google penalize you?”

The Idea behind the strategy is to use the copy you want as a text based include. The included file is not hidden using CSS or placed behind anything or the same color as a background. Using AJAX and Javascript, you choose to display the copy only when a user hovers a selected text or image.

What I know to be true is Search Engines have a Very difficult time understanding Javascript and even more when it is tied in with AJAX. From a search engines viewpoint, the copy in the include file will show as being visible in the code and on the page.

I wouldn’t not consider this black hat because you are showing the copy on the page without having to go to another page or even refreshing the page. The copy in the include file is being displayed on the page it is intended for when a user chooses for the full copy to be displayed.

This would allow for designers to be a little more free with their design if they could collapse copy into expandable sections on hover. I know CSS has a similar div:hover function but search engines have the ability to see that the div is being hidden until it is hovered.

Does anyone have experience or more knowledge in this area. I admit that I really don’t know too much about AJAX and want to hear some advice and get this information out to people that could use it.

Thanks,
Brad Henry

www.seoslap.com 

Small Business Marketing Options

So you are a small business with a tight marketing Budget, what do you do now?  Well there a several sources you can spend your marketing dollars.  First there is Print Media but before you spend a whopping source of your marketing budget on print, you have to ask yourself a couple critical questions.

1. Who is your target market and will this effectively reach your target market?
2. What is the Call to Action?  Is there any Call to action?
3. What is the purpose of the marketing campaign?

Is this for branding just to get someone familiar with your name or is this to generate revenue.  If you want to actually generate revenue, you need to have a call to action.  If print, you may want to consider putting your website address on the ad.   Print is relatively expensive and has a very short life.  Typically, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are a real estate agent!   There are better sources to allocate your money including online marketing.

Another small business marketing option is to go with radio airtime. This has an even shorter life and can really only be effective if you are trying to gain brand recognition versus immediately generate revenue.  A good use of radio advertising is for fast food, soft drinks, and other stuff that a consumer can have quick access to while driving a car or truck.

Another and in my opinion, the best source to allocate your small business marketing budget towards is online marketing.   When a consumer needs most any product or service, one of the first places they will go to find the product or service is the internet and most likely some form of a search engine.    This is why this marketing medium is so important, because chances are, it impacts your business and if you aren’t taking advantage of it, your competitors probably are.

Online marketing is also one of the most efficient marketing mediums as well.  Once you have optimized your site, you can continue to gain the benefits of the cost well after the cost is forgotten and out of your marketing budget.  But, I wouldn’t toss the SEO firm aside just yet either.  Having someone continuously monitor and increase your visibility can be very impactful in the long run.

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