Internet Marketing &
Business Promotion
Is A Yahoo Listing Still
Worth The Cost?
By Dan Thies
In
October 2002, the Yahoo! portal changed the way it delivers
search results. In the past, the most prominent results
were exclusively culled from websites listed in the
Yahoo directory itself. Since October, sites listed
in the Yahoo directory no longer enjoy this privileged
status.
The Google search engine now drives the primary search
results on Yahoo. While this is certainly an improvement
for users of Yahoo search, it's a disaster for many
businesses that counted on their Yahoo listing to deliver
substantial traffic.
This change has also led many site owners to question
the value of a listing in the Yahoo directory. In this
article, I will outline the pros and cons of maintaining,
or paying for, a Yahoo listing. In the process, I will
delve into more details of the recent changes.
Argument #1: Yahoo Listings Mean Link Popularity
Pro:
Even if the Yahoo listing itself delivers little or
no traffic, other search engines will rank your website
higher if it's listed in Yahoo. Because Yahoo is so
important, a link from Yahoo counts more than a regular
link. Thanks to its higher "PageRank," Yahoo
means even more to Google.
Con:
Yahoo listings do not deliver nearly as significant
a contribution in this area as you might think. You
can verify this by doing a "backward links"
search on Google for any Yahoo-listed website. The most
important links are listed first, and the Yahoo listing
is rarely even on the first page of links for top ranked
sites on Google.
Argument #2: Listed Sites Look Better In The
Search Results
Pro:
Websites with a Yahoo listing show up in the combined
Yahoo/Google results with their title, description,
and category from the Yahoo directory. This may boost
the response when the site appears in the search results.
This applies when the URL listed in the results is the
same as the URL in the Yahoo listing.
Con:
Results listed with Yahoo information include a link
to the site's category, which may prompt surfers to
pass over your listing and go to the category. Sites
without Yahoo listings have the more inviting "search
within this site" link, which leads to more results
exclusively from your site.
So, Is A Yahoo Listing Worth It?
If you have a non-commercial site and can get listed
for free, of course! If you're not one of the lucky
few, though, you have to evaluate whether it's worth
$299 a year for what amounts to a better than average
incoming link. Everyone must make their own decision.
If $299 is small compared to your total marketing budget,
it may be easier to just continue paying. My own listing
expires in March, and I don't intend to renew it.
How Can You Profit From The Changes At Yahoo?
The obvious answer is that you must
take steps to improve your own position in Google's
search results. Google's rankings are made up of many
factors, but the dominant factor is "PageRank,"
which is based on the number and quality of incoming
links from other websites.
Therefore, the first step in improving
your position on the Google search engine (and now Yahoo)
is to improve your site's link popularity. This takes
time, and trying to take shortcuts can get you into
real trouble - Google doesn't like "link farms,"
or any program designed to artificially boost your link
popularity.
Finding Quality Link Partners Through Google
Since only links from quality sites will count for
much with Google, let's take a quick look at how you
can find these sites. Start by targeting the sites that
link to existing top-ranked sites. You can do a backward
links search for any site by typing "link:http://www.domain.com"
in the Google search engine.
An even faster method is to use the Google toolbar
(http://toolbar.google.com/), which requires Internet
Explorer 5 or greater, running on Windows. With the
toolbar's advanced features enabled, you can conduct
a "backward links" search from the "Page
Info" menu for any site you visit.
Since Google lists these results in descending order
by "PageRank," you can quickly determine the
best places to get links by doing backward links searches
on the top 10-20 sites for your desired search terms,
and seeking links from the top 10-20 places that link
to them.
Links Are Not Enough: Optimizing For Google
While "PageRank" is the dominant factor in
Google's algorithm, it's not the only factor, and you
still need to optimize your web pages. This can be a
complicated topic, but the most important factors are:
- Keywords in the title of the page
- Keywords in headings on the page (H1 or H2 tags),
especially the first heading.
- Keywords in the body text of the page, particularly
the first paragraph.
Don't Complain, Act!
By some estimates, Google now controls 2/3rds of the
searches conducted on the Internet in a given day. Not
only is Google.com extremely popular in its own right,
but Google also controls the search results on popular
portals like AOL and Iwon.com - not to mention Yahoo.
A lot of website owners are complaining bitterly about
this change. All the more reason for you to take action
now, while so many of your competitors are busy licking
their wounds. With a little planning and effort, you
could be in a dominant position on Google before they
even get started.
I wish you success...
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About the Author
Dan Thies is the author of "Search Engine Optimization
Fast Start," the ultimate beginner's guide to higher
search engine rankings - available today at http://www.cannedbooks.com
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