In This Issue:
1. Yahoo vs. Google: Case Study
2. In the News
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Yahoo vs. Google: Case Study
I probably shouldn't say this out loud, but if you know what
you're doing, it's not that difficult to get a web site to rank
highly in Yahoo's new search engine. The caveat, of course, is "if
you know what you're doing." Yahoo's new search engine launched
about two months ago, and some early research reveals a few things
about how it ranks sites, which is what site owners need to know
in order to do well in Yahoo's SERPs.
I recently did a new web site for my wife, who started a career
as a real estate agent at the start of this year. (In the interest
of objectivity and keeping personal stuff separate from work
stuff, I'll not link to her site or provide the URL.) Real estate,
you
may know, is one of the most competitive industries on the web;
every agency has a web site, and every individual agent has a
web site. Heck, a lot of agents have two or three web sites. And
a
lot of them are developed by companies that use very aggressive,
and sometimes questionable, methods to get those sites to the
top of the SERPs.
I used my wife's site as a test to determine what works and what
doesn't in the name of "search engine-friendly web design." Here's
what you need to know about it:
- there are only three graphics being used in the site design:
a "header" graphic at the top and two small MLS/Equal
Housing logos in the footer
- it's very heavy on text -- both in terms of offering a lot
of keyword-rich content on every page, as well as using text
links
for all navigation (no graphical buttons)
The site launched about 10 weeks ago. I got a
link to it from the Open Directory
Project and from the
Skaffe.com directory. I
submitted it via Yahoo's "Free URL
Submit", which I wrote
about back in Newsletter #2.
Yahoo found the site via one of those three sources, and less
than three months later, the site is already appearing in the
Top 30
of Yahoo's SERPs for several important search phrases. All of
which tells us this about Yahoo's search engine:
1. Yahoo's algorithm is much more heavily weighted than Google
to emphasize on-page factors than Google. On-page factors include
the text content of your pages, the content of your META tags,
etc. (Make no mistake, though: Google also factors the text
on each page with the utmost importance, they just do it differently
than Yahoo.)
2. Yahoo is more forgiving about the amount of times your exact
key words/phrases appear on the page. Those key words/phrases
can appear repeatedly and Yahoo will reward you. Overdo it
and Google
will not. Google actually relies on "semantic" indexing
and likes to see related words on a page, as opposed to seeing
the same word repeated over and over ... but that's a story
for another newsletter. (If you want to get real geeky, read
this GoRank.com
keyword
density analysis comparing Google and Yahoo.)
3. Yahoo is much less concerned than Google, at least at this
stage, with the number of sites that link to yours and the
anchor text
of those links. I suspect this will change over time as Yahoo's
search algorithm matures.
On the other hand, this site has hardly cracked Google. Google
knows the site exists, but you can't find it by doing any
real estate-related searches. It's not in the Top 100 yet. That's
because Google places as much emphasis on off-page factors
as its does
on on-page factors. Off-page factors include the number of
sites that link to your site, the quality of those sites,
the
actual
text used when those sites link to you, etc. Because of this,
it's more difficult for a new site (with few links to it)
to rank well
in Google. But, as this case study proves, that's not the
case with Yahoo. _________________
In The News
Google continues to get ripped to shreds by the media, privacy
groups, and even lawmakers over their plans for the Gmail service.
I talked about this in last week's newsletter, and there's not
much more going on aside from a new quote today from Google President
and co-founder Sergey Brin that they're considering changes to
the service based on all the feedback they've received. The link
to Reuters' article is below in the "More News Headlines" section.
I'm more interested in something I read about a month ago from
the Internet Retailer web site, discussing new research that
shows only 1 in 9 small businesses are aware of pay-per-click advertising
opportunities on the web. Google's AdWords program is pay-per-click
advertising -- those are the small ads you often see on the right
side of Google's SERPs. Overture also offers pay-per-click advertising
on Yahoo and other sites.
So I guess that begs the question to our readers who own businesses:
Are you aware that you can advertise on Google and Yahoo like
that? You may not know how it works, what it costs, etc., but
are you
at least aware that the opportunity is there for you? I'd love
to hear some responses on this. Email to newsletter@owtweb.com and don't be afraid to tell the truth! If this is news to you,
you're clearly not alone.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a recent addition to the
services we offer at OWT. We currently manage PPC campaigns
for a couple
clients who are using Google's AdWords programs. One of these
days, we'll update owtweb.com to explain the services we
offer for those
interested. (I believe we also have a couple clients who
manage their own AdWords campaigns, too. It can be a do-it-yourself
service if you have the time and inclination to learn how
it
works.)
Internet Retailer article
Small businesses not on the pay-per-click
bandwagon yet, says new research
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Google reportedly may change email service
April 14, 2004 - Reuters
Power to the people: Relative font sizes
April 09, 2004 - A List Apart
Use CSS and Javascript to offer site users the ability to set
their preferred font size for your site.
Google plays down Microsoft search plans
April 08, 2004 - News.com
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Dear Matt,
[Note: We didn't get any newsletter-specific questions this week
- what happened? Seven newsletters and everyone's an expert already? <grin> Instead,
this is a question several clients have asked via phone or email
in the past week. I'll change the name from one of the emails to
protect the sender's privacy since it wasn't sent in with the idea
of getting published.]
Hi Matt,
We're getting letters from a company called Domain Registry of
America telling us that our domain needs to be renewed and they
can renew it for us. Is that the company you use to register
our domains? Do we need to pay these people to renew our domain?
I
thought you guys did that for us.
"Jill"
Hi "Jill" -- Domain Registry of America is not the company
we use for domain registration. Your domain doesn't need to be
renewed until November, so you're in good shape. And when it comes
time for renewal, I'll email you to confirm that you want to add
another year.
You can ignore the letter from Domain Registry of America. They're
one of several companies that send out letters like this trying
to get you to send them money for domain renewal. They make it
sound like you have to do this, but in the small print you'll
see something about how you're actually paying them to transfer
your
domain away from the current registrar to Domain Registry of
America.
You may get more letters from them and from other companies with
similar "offers". Just call or email us whenever you
have questions about your domain. (Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
I'm gonna send you to a couple links here that are all very Web
2.0 -- in other words, a bit "out there" in terms of
how they think about the future of the web. But in reality, these
things are probably not as "out there" as they seem.
Rich Skrenta of Topix.net writes about the Google "operating
system" in a post called "The Secret Source of Google's
Power." Great stuff, but I hope not too geeky for your tastes.
Jason Kottke references Skrenta's post and expands on it thusly:
"Google knows what people write about, what they search
for, what they shop for, they know who wants to advertise and
how effective
those advertisements are, and they're about to know how we
communicate with friends and loved ones. What can they do with
all that?
Just about anything that collection of Ph.Ds can dream up."
Hope you find it interesting. Here are the links.
The Secret Source of Google's Power
http://blog.topix.net/archives/000016.html
GooOS, the Google Operating System
http://www.kottke.org/04/04/google-operating-system See you next week! Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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