March 16,
2005
In
This Issue:
1. More on "The Long Tail"
2. In the News - Google Local, MSN advertising, Spam Checking
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - What about meta tags?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
More on "The Long Tail"
Really, I promise I won't keep going on and on about this. Three
newsletters ago I wrote that "a lot of 'littles' add up",
with the point being that you don't just target the "big" stuff
-- keywords, customers, whatever. If you find 10 keywords that
bring you 100 visitors each every day, that's better than one keyword
bringing you 900 visitors. This refers to what is being called "The
Long Tail" now - that right there is the hippest phrase in
marketing today, or at least in search marketing.
Now, do you remember that old search engine, Excite? It used
to be my default search engine, 'round about 1999 or thereabouts.
Loved it. Anyway, Joe Kraus, the original president of Excite,
recently blogged about "Excite and the Long Tail" where
he addresses these same ideas. As it turns out, the Top 10 searches
on Excite represented only 3% of their total search volume. Three
percent! The other 97% of their traffic came from? Yes, "the
long tail." He goes on to talk about this as the reason Excite
went out of business -- they never figured out how to make money
off that 97% of traffic. And he sings the praises of Google, iTunes,
eBay, and others who have mastered the long tail concept. The article
goes on to plug Mr. Kraus' latest project briefly near the end,
but advertising or not, it's a much better read than what I had
to say a couple weeks back.
Excite and the Long Tail
_________________
In The News
Google Upgrades Local Search
Yep, that's the same exact headline used in the same exact place
as last week's Net Gains. This week Google has again expanded its
Google Local services with the addition of the Google Local Business
Center. The Center is, for now, just a hub where business owners
can add or update their own business listing within Google Local
search. It's new for Google, but it's something Yahoo has been
offering for a couple months now.
The main difference between how G and Y are handling these business
requests is that once you register as a business owner with Google,
they will send an activation code via snail mail which you have
to use before your business listing will appear in the local
search results. It's an extra layer of protection aimed at making
sure
only the actual business owner has access to managing the business'
listing. Listings in Google Local are, by the way, free. It's
something all business owners should take advantage of.
Google Local Business Center
MSN to launch paid advertising
This is just coming out as I'm ready to send out this newsletter,
but MSN is announcing today that it will launch its own
paid advertising service on the new MSN Search. It'll be their
version of Google's
Adwords and Yahoo's Overture programs. Very few details
are known, and Search Engine Watch reports the program will be
tested in
France and Singapore before a full rollout.
Search Engine Watch: MSN To Launch Its Own Paid Listings
Program
GravityMail Spam Checker
If you send out HTML newsletters to a mailing list, no
doubt you're concerned about the likelihood that
your newsletter may be considered
spam and not reach all of your subscribers. A company
called GravityMail has an online spam checker that
will take the
exact HTML code of
your newsletter, measure it against common spam filtering
factors, and let you know if it thinks your email
is spam. You do have
to provide a name and email address so GravityMail
can send
you the
results of their test. And you will have to put up
with a sales pitch -- once you've used the spam check tool,
both
the resulting
web page and the email results you get have sales
pitches promoting the company's services. But, it might still
be worthwhile if
you send out HTML newsletters.
GravityMail SpamScore Analysis
_________________
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.
Email frequency and list control
March 14, 2005 - ClickZ.com
Google Toolbar inserts links in others' sites, and that's a bad
idea
March 10, 2005 - Wall Street Journal
A new feature of the company's popular Google Toolbar for the
Internet Explorer browser actually adds links right into the
body of any
Web page. The links lead to Google's own map site or to other
sites Google selects.
Search and retain: The search/e-mail combo
March 10, 2005 - ClickZ.com
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
What is the current theory on using various meta tags, like the "keywords" tag,
for example? Are there any search engines that still pay attention
to that, or are we all wasting time by writing out keywords there?
Which ones should we be using in 2005?
Stephanie
Hi Stephanie --
At one point last year, a Yahoo search manager mentioned in an
interview that they still look at the Keywords meta tag,
but mainly just for matching purposes, not for ranking purposes.
The <title> element and the META "description" tag are the two
most important ones to focus on. Both should be relevant to the individual page
and not overloaded with excess words/phrases. The only thing we typically use
the "keywords" tag for these days is to include potential misspellings,
or if the page is geographic in nature, to list the names of towns and cities
that the page applies to that are not already mentioned on the page itself.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Here's a little "did you know?" item I discovered on
a message board: The first domain name registered was symbolics.com,
which was registered by Symbolics Technology Inc. on March 15,
1985. And the WHOIS record backs it up: http://www.whois.sc/symbolics.com
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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