~~~Search Engine Optimization~~~
Things sure do happen fast in the world of search engines and
directories. Here are some updates for you on a few things we
recently touched upon, which I'm sure you'll find interesting!
Google and the Freshness Label
Remember just a few weeks ago when I told you about Google marking
recently spidered sites with a little "fresh" label? Well it's gone!
This isn't to say that Google's index is no longer fresh. They're
still respidering sites as often as ever, they just aren't using the
word "fresh" next to these listings. What's important is that they
are still showing the date of the last respidering. It appears as if
there was so much confusion over the freshness label, with many people
believing that if a site was fresh, then the contents must have just
been updated. In reality, fresh simply meant that it had been
recently spidered.
I've had many people ask me how they can get their site spidered by
Google on a regular basis, and I really don't have the answer.
Google's goal is to spider as many sites as they can, as quickly as
possible, so my advice is to just be patient. Any time you try to
artificially make something happen, be it with Google or any other
search engine, you're putting your site at risk. You can't fake a
good site. It's either good or it's not and Google *can* tell the
difference!
Yahoo! Express Recurring Annual Fee Update
So how come Yahoo will answer Danny Sullivan's questions to Yahoo and
not mine? I am hurt and insulted! In fact, I'm sticking my tongue
out at them as I type! :-p A few issues ago I told you everything
I could find out about Yahoo's new fee structure. At the time, I had
even called Yahoo's press line and told them I was writing a story
about it and would like to ask them some questions for clarification.
Since they never called me back, I was forced to write about it using
the information I could find on their site (which wasn't very
complete). A few days later, Danny came out with the whole story in
an issue of his Search Engine Report. He had the inside scoop from Andrew Braccia, Yahoo's Director of Business Development.
Turns out that only commercial listings (i.e., those in any business
and economy categories) have to actually pay the recurring annual fee.
Sites that are not commercial and are in non-commercial categories can
still use Yahoo! Express to quickly get listed (although they don't
have to), but they only have to pay a one-time fee. This was not at
all clear when I originally read their new Terms of Service.
Danny also had Yahoo clarify some other points of confusion. For
instance, when I wrote my article, I had no way of knowing what the
procedure would be when it was time to renew your listing. All I
could do was speculate that Yahoo would simply charge your credit card
and renew your listing as is (or dump it if it no longer met their
requirements). Thankfully, there's a bit more to it than that.
According to Danny and Braccia, Yahoo plans to email you before your
renewal date. You'll be able to cancel your listing, change your
credit card info, and even request that your listing information be
updated if it's changed since it was listed. This is great to hear,
and certainly makes the annual fee a bit more bearable.
Yahoo Change Request Form Actually Works!
Speaking about being able to make changes to your Yahoo listing, I've
got some good news for you. I actually had a change request go through
using their change request form! I've often told clients that it
seems like change requests to Yahoo go straight to someone's delete
folder. Because I don't like wasting my time, I hadn't bothered to
submit any changes to them in a long time. So the other night when I
was bored (New Year's Eve actually!), I decided to see what would
happen if I requested some changes to my HighRankings.com Yahoo
listing.
I had submitted through their Yahoo! Express service way back at the
end of March 2000. They put me in a local Ashland, MA category and
gave me the Title: "Whalen's Web Whiz," as opposed to
HighRankings.com, because I was still using both names on my site at
the time. I didn't bother to appeal the category or anything else back
then, as I was just happy to get in and didn't want to make any waves.
It did kind of irk me though, since I've never actually done any local
business.
While I was submitting the title and category changes, I figured I'd
be really brash and also request a description change. The one I had
was: "Offers site copywriting and optimization for high rankings in
the search engines." Not bad, but not great as far as keyphrases go.
(Did you know that no one searches for "high rankings"?) On my change
request form I requested a title change to "HighRankings.com," a move
to a new category, and a description change to this: "Offers search engine
optimization, copywriting, and directory submissions." I put the
following comments in their comment field: "Not Whalen's Web Whiz, but
HighRankings.com. Does national business not local to Ashland, MA, and
expanded scope of services." Also, in the comments I mentioned my biz
express order number from the original order. You're only allowed a
very short comment, which is why I was so concise!
Lo and behold, last night while I was just checking up on Rank Write's
ranking in Yahoo (it was 14 for search engine optimization), I saw
HighRankings.com in the number 20th spot! Sure enough, all the
changes I had requested had been made. Maybe I just got lucky, or
maybe things are starting to change for the better over at Yahoo (or
maybe they were making up for ignoring my phone call about the
recurring fee!). Hard to say for sure. Let's just hope that this is
good news for others who have inaccurate listings. It might be worth
giving the change request form another shot.
Good luck!
Jill
~~~Send Us Your Questions~~~
If you have questions about online copywriting or search engine optimization (or both!), just zip us an email to questions@rankwrite.com. We've had some folks ask if their question
was "too basic" to be printed - and you don't have to worry about
that! There are no "stupid" search engine optimization or copywriting
questions, so ask away!
