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Is Yahoo Directory still worth it?

Now Bing is powering Yahoo’s search results, anyone tracking their search engine positions across both engines will have see their Yahoo rankings move into line with their Bing ranking

In a particular case of a client with a paid Yahoo Directory listing, the Yahoo rankings have dropped from a probably unrealistic first place all the way down to 21. Theoretically the directory listing didn’t affect the organic placement but that’s pretty hard to believe on the basis of this evidence.

This leads me to question the value of a Yahoo directory listing. The listing in the directory itself has brought just 3 visits so far this year, indicating that no humans are using the directory. As for that top ranking, there wasn’t much organic traffic coming from Yahoo anyway (less than 10% of the traffic that came from Google).

A Yahoo Directory listing costs $299 a year, so now it’s just down to gut feeling on whether a known paid link from it still carries any value in the other search engines’ algorithms. Google no longer suggest getting listed there on their webmaster advice pages. Is this an indication that it’s time to cut that expense and spend the money on something more trackable and productive?

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What’s on your radar?

You’re busily going about your work, doing what’s necessary to keep things moving, reacting as things come in.

What can you do to be more take a wider view and be more proactive?

A good start is to get an idea of what’s going to be taking place in your city over the next three to six months – we’re talking conferences, festivals, exhibitions, even concerts.

You will be amazed at the variety and number of events taking place right under your nose.

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Now you see it – check your HTML code for vanishing acts

In the interest of experimentation I’ve been using the AdBlock extension for Safari lately. It’s amazing how peaceful the web is with most of the advertising removed, but as a marketer it’s useful to know what and how is being advertised online. That and the quasi-moral reasons people argue about mean I’ll be disabling the extension.

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Negative Keywords for your PPC ads

Negative keywords can be used to prevent your ads displaying when those keywords are contained in the user’s search query (or contained in the content, if your ads are showing on the content network).

Why would you want to do this?

1. Avoid useless traffic
2. Avoid embarrassment
3. Improve your click-thru ratio and conversion rate

You can apply negative keyword at campaign or account level. Most of the keywords you’d enter will probably be best at account level.

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Group-buying local deals site fever

Ever since Groupon started making a big noise in the US, and Livingsocial moved into the one-day sale market, similar sites have cropped up around the globe.

How it works

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