I received this e-mail notice about the upcoming changes concerning Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance.
=================
Dear Advertiser,
Yahoo! and Microsoft have now received regulatory clearance to form a search alliance. This is a significant milestone and an exciting first step in our combined effort to help you reach even more customers with greater ease and efficiency.
What’s Ahead
There will be no immediate changes to your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Both companies are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial to you as possible. Our aim is a high quality transition of advertisers and partners in at least the U.S. prior to the 2010 holiday season. However, we may wait until 2011 if we determine this will be more effective. Approximately three months in advance, we’ll begin providing you with detailed information about what to expect and how we will assist you.
How the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Will Benefit You
Once implemented, the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance will enable you to:
Reach more customers.
| • |
Reach up to 150 million searchers1 and get approximately 62% more search volume2 than on Yahoo! alone through a new, unified search marketplace combining the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks. |
| • |
To help drive future growth in search volume, Yahoo! will continue to significantly enhance the search experience on our leading web properties. |
Save valuable time and effort.
| • |
You’ll log into one place–Microsoft’s adCenter–to manage campaigns, for greater efficiency and a better ROI. |
| • |
With just one buy, you’ll reach users on Yahoo! and Microsoft sites, as well as other premium partner sites. |
Benefit from rapid innovation.
| • |
Yahoo! will deliver new features and innovations to the world’s favorite online destinations, content, and web products used by hundreds of millions of consumers to connect to the people and things that matter to them most. |
| • |
Microsoft will innovate the underlying technologies that drive high quality algorithmic and paid search results. |
We appreciate your business and look forward to bringing the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance to you. In the meantime, please refer to the resources below:
» Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance website | » Yahoo! Transition Center
Sincerely,
Your Partners at Yahoo!
1. comScore custom data, December 2009
2. comScore qSearch December, 2009
Link building is a process that never ends. You may want to spend as much time as you can looking for opportunities to place a link on other websites to yours.
There are many ways to conduct link building, But be warned – there are the right ways and wrongs ways to build incoming links.
- The best way to build links is to hand submit to the main search engines, directories and other websites willing to exchange links. This is the easiest way and it can take time, but the links can be well worth it.
- Create an XML files for the major Search Engines to get all your web pages submitted at one time – this works very well. The XML file is a common formatted file that can be submitted via a ping or you can set up an account for each Search Engine to submit to.
- Start your own Blog and supply your own content – if your blog is configured correctly it will drive more traffic to your website. Search Engines do enjoy fresh content and other websites may link to your articles – creating the type of links you want.
- Commenting on Blogs and Forums with a link in your signature file is another nice way to garner incoming links – if the blog or forum does not block with a rel=”no follow” for their links
- Writing articles and posting on many of the free article distribution websites is an excellent way to build incoming links, be sure you include your website link in the article.
- Of course th Social Networks are very good to use, but caution needs to be made not posting a lot of spammy posts, twitter, Facebook and Myspace are the larger audience sites
- Press Releases are very effective. The major issue is being careful on how it is written and which service you use to post it. I would look at other press releases for similar subjects to get an idea of the layout before writing one.
- I guess the latest in incoming link marketing is Video. YouTube is the big video content provider, but there are many new ones popping up. Create your video and be sure to ad a link back to your website when posting.
Places to avoid:
- Avoid Link farms – they seem easy to use and post, but this has a double edge cut, first the search engines dislike link farms – so it could just lower your ranking being on those sites. The other cut – is that you just signed yourself up to a ton of spam. Your e-mail address will be on every marketing list from here to China.
- Guest books use to be a big attraction – like 10 years ago, but became a bullseye for every automated bot to post drugs to porn. Avoid them – they will not do much for you.
- Google does not like paid listings with other websites – although I find that quite hypocritical, because Google offers Adwords which is a paid listing on theirs. Although some paid listings work fine on other sites – so just use caution and good judgment.
- If you have a Social Network Account – avoid spamming you friends and people that are following you – your followers will leave – no one likes getting spammed.
- Avoid automated linking building software that will post your site everywhere. It will hurt your rankings. Search engines like seeing a slow progressive building approach, not suddenly having 2000 incoming links – big red flag.
Check each site before posting or consider before placing your good name on a website. This part of web marketing is getting abit more complicated each month with the changes to the Main Search Engines.
Market Your Web Site Wisely…
Other websites for more information:
131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies – http://searchenginewatch.com/2160301
101 Ways to Build Link Popularity – http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml
Are you the type of business person that likes getting phone calls from your website?
Do you get worried when the calls stop? You should.
I have clients call me all the time when their business slows down. I normally check the Web Analytics to see if the traffic decreased and if there were any economic changes that could affect their visitor traffic. I talk with my clients to see when this started then try to piece together a picture of what is going on and create a plan to get that traffic back.
I notice that several things need to be in place:
- Have your phone number visible on the website – normally in the header.
- Be sure to have a contact form on your website to send e-mailed requests.
- Do not place your e-mail address on the web apge unless you want to have your e-mail address harvested by the giant spam machines out there.
- Are you adding new content on a regular basis? – You need to keep your website up to date.
- Is your web hosting working properly? Does your website ever go down and how often? Did you have web site monitoring in place?
- Do you have call to actions in place? Like asking people to call or contact you for that special you posted?
These are but a few ideas – but you need to look over your website on a regular basis and keep checking your web analytics.
