There are numerous reasons for webmasters to submit their sites to various web directories populating the Internet. The positives of having your site listed in a popular directory have been discussed in previous articles and on a multitude of search-related forums.

Step Right Up To the Yahoo Directory!
Would you consider paying a recurring fee to be in Yahoo’s Web Directory? Discuss at WebProWorld.

Being listed in a popular directory benefits your site’s popularity and may directly impact a site’s SERP position. However, is it worth $299 (minimum) to have your site listed in Yahoo’s web directory? That depends on who you ask.

According to Yahoo’s page for directory listing information, sites without adult content are required to pay $299. With your investment in hand, Yahoo then, “provides expedited review of web sites you submit for possible inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory. We will respond to your request within 7 business days.” Sites that contain adult content are charged $600 for possible inclusion. Be aware that these fees are recurring. If you’ve paid to be in Yahoo’s directory, you must continue to pay; provided you want to maintain whatever benefit being listed in their directory gives you. Also remember Yahoo’s policy concerning paid submissions:

“Use of the Yahoo! Express program does not ensure that your submission will be accepted for inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory. Final judgment on the suitability, placement, and description of all sites submitted to Yahoo! is solely the responsibility of the Yahoo! directory team.” Also, being listed in Yahoo’s directory in no way guarantees a Yahoo Search listing improvement. From the Yahoo Express Help page: “A listing in the Yahoo! Directory does not guarantee your site will be listed in search results for any particular query.” With these stipulations in mind, I return to the original point of this article: Is paying for submission to Yahoo’s directory worth the money? Some support it; some do not.

One popular question concerning Yahoo Express is “How will being listed in Yahoo’s directory benefit my Google ranking?” This question stems from a growing belief that Google may not value directory listings as much as they used to. Anthony Parsons gives a concise response to those doubting directory listings, “Whether Google has dropped weight from directories or not is irrelevant really, as the link is still counted and still from a unique IP� you ARE going to benefit regardless.”

The question was brought up on WebProWorld’s forum as well. A poster asked “I am thinking of listing of my website on the Yahoo directory for their express fee of $300. My question: is it worth it or not?” As expected, responses were mixed. Bill Hartzer answered pragmatically, saying if your competitors were there, you should be too. According to Bill, “Yes, it’s definitely worth it. Forget about the PageRank benefit, PR doesn’t mean much nowadays. Rather, it’s the on-topic link from a very reputable, powerful site that counts. �Which is an excellent point when talking about SERP positioning? Most, if not all, search engines place a high value on relevant links pointing to a site.

Of course, there are opposing views also. The majority of them have a hard time justifying the recurring price. Their counter point involves a number of directories that require no payment for submission consideration (DMOZ, BlueFind, Zeal, Jayde, and so on). David Wallace, SEW forum moderator, had these thoughts: “I don’t even submit paid listings anymore. There are so many other directories out there now that will help to build your link popularity, some for free and others for a lot cheaper than $299 a year.”

However, the consensus seems to be that there is some value from a Yahoo directory listing. In a long discussion at the ihelpyou forums, Doug Heil, administrator of ihelpyou, says, “A Yahoo directory listing helps with the Yahoo search engine visibility. That by itself makes the 300 bucks worth it.” Just be prepared to pay a recurring $300/600.

By Chris Richardson

Yahoo has announced its new pay-per-click product: Yahoo Search Marketing (SM). This product was formerly known as Overture, but you may also recognize it as Goto.com, the name it went under prior to 2001. In our experience, advertising with Google AdWords has resulted in higher conversion rates than with Yahoo Search Marketing (SM). However, both programs have advantages and disadvantages. How does Yahoo SM compare with Google’s AdWords? Let’s start by looking at how they differ (all amounts are in USD).
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Bidding
Yahoo SM

• Yahoo places your bid at 1 penny over your next lowest competitor. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per-click, and the next highest bid is $1.95 per-click, you will only pay $1.96 per-click.
• Yahoo allows you to see who you are bidding against and what they are bidding, so you know exactly where you will rank, and how much you will pay.
• Yahoo’s maximum bid is $999.99
• Yahoo’s minimum bid is $0.10

Google AdWords

• Google doesn’t tell you how much you will pay-per-click. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per-click, you will pay anywhere from $0.05 to $3.00 per-click.
• Google does not allow you to know how much your competitors are bidding per-click.
• An advantage with Google is that you will rank higher if your click-through rate (CT rate) is better (a CT rate is the ratio of clicks on your ad to the number of times your ad is shown). Thus, you may have a better rank than your competitor, even if he or she bids more than you (because of your CT rate).
• Google’s maximum bid is $100.00
• Google’s minimum bid is $0.05

Low CT Rate Dropping
Yahoo SM

• Yahoo will drop your keyphrase if the CT rate is ranked very low for a significant period of time. In actuality, this rarely happens. Your keyphrase has to perform quite dismally for it to get dropped.

Google AdWords

• Google drops keyphrases with POTENTIALLY low CT rates. If Google deems that your keyphrase has done poorly for other customers, then your keyphrase won’t even get the chance to make a single (first!) impression. This can be very frustrating when your keyphrases are very relevant, but Google won’t even let them see the light of day. The flip side, of course, is that if your keyphrase’s CT rate is good, you will get a higher ranking (even if you bid lower than your competition).

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Showing Ads by Country and Language
Google AdWords

• Google allows you to choose your country and language by selecting them in a dropdown box. Very simple, very efficient, and very effective.
• The language is based on the language setting of the visitor’s computer. For example, if you are targeting Spanish Americans, than you will want to target the Spanish AND English languages because many Spanish Americans use English computers. Just make sure that you choose Spanish-only keyphrases.

Yahoo SM

• Yahoo’s system for countries and languages is downright miserable. You have to re-register for every country (and only twenty countries are available).
• Worse, you have to re-submit all your keyphrases and reset all your bids.
• What’s more, each country has different criteria for submission. This means you have to rebuild your campaign for the USA, UK, and Australia. Canada is there, but you are not allowed to submit English keyphrases (?!?), only French (FYI: Canada’s workforce is 73% English, 22% French). In Switzerland, you can submit in Italian, German and French; there is no language differentiation.
• Notable missing countries: Mexico, China, English Canada (which is grouped with the USA), South Korea, India, Russia…

Reports
Yahoo SM

• Yahoo offers many useful reports. And while you can find just about everything you might need, it’s left up to you to figure out which report contains the information you were looking for.

Google AdWords

• Google offers customizable reports. You can ask for anything you want, and you will get it.
• They also offer to email you your customized report on a regular basis.

Keyphrase Comparison
I have bid on some keyphrases from February 1st to April 30th, and held them in similar positions during that time. These numbers are for search related impressions only. These campaigns were not involved in content advertising.
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“Okeeffe print(s)” - #3 position
Yahoo:? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Google:
1 click? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 63 clicks
8 impressions? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1,642 impressions
12.5% CT rate? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3.8% CT rate
$0.10 cost-per-click? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? $0.13 cost-per-click
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“Ansel Adams photo(s)” - #5-6 position
Yahoo:? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Google:
20 clicks? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 25 clicks
2,401 impressions? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2,529 impressions
0.8% CT rate? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1.0% CT rate
$0.05 cost-per-click? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? $0.06 cost-per-click
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Conversions
Our client February Point counted emails + contact forms as conversions. Below is a comparison from February 1st to April 30th.
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“Real estate Bahamas” - #3 position
Yahoo:? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Google:
1,037 clicks? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1,557 clicks
19,879 impressions? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 35,348 impressions
5.2% CT rate? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4.4% CT rate
$0.34 cost-per-click? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? $0.45 cost-per-click
3 conversions? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 13 conversions
0.30% conversion rate? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 0.84% conversion rate
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Clearly then, Google AdWords is a better choice if you are interested in clicks, impressions, and conversions. If you want the lower cost-per-click for the same position, it would seem that Yahoo is the better choice (though conversions are lower).
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Competition
- FindWhat is possibly the third biggest pay-per-click (PPC) search engine, although there are a few that might be its equal: Kanoodle, GoClick, 7Search, Search123.
- E-spotting is very big in the UK, and competes heavily with Google and Yahoo in the PPC marketplace.
- MSN is getting ready to launch its own PPC engine to compete with Google and Yahoo (MSN currently uses Yahoo SM on its site). No date yet, but watch out for it.
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Overall
To sum up, you will definitely have more control over your money with Yahoo’s system. It is more open and honest, and you will pay less per-click than with Google’s system. Google does not tell you why you are paying what you are paying, but it does have the added bonus of rewarding you with rank for a better converting ad.
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Of course, Google does get more traffic and it converts better than Yahoo, and in the end, isn’t that what we’re all looking for? Thus, Google should be the winning choice for anyone that is looking to convert clickers into buyers. Because after all, who doesn’t want to increase their sales?

By Shawn Campbell

It seems I now do this rant every single year when traffic statistics are discussed in web industry news. Last week I posted to my Reality SEO blog that referred traffic numbers are the only statistic that webmasters should be concerned about when looking at their search engine rank. I wrote about this last year after ComScore Media Metrics statistics were released discussing Search Engine Queries generated by each search property.Well now that MSN search has made its official debut, we can see that they put three “Sponsored Sites” links both above and below their organic search results, along with those Overture (Soon to be Yahoo Branded) PPC ads along the right side of the page. Not bad visually, but it appears to be keeping visitors on the MSN search site because they simply are NOT clicking through to highly ranked sites according to closely watched traffic statistics of several sites I monitor for clients.

I’ve been pouring over web stats for a half dozen clients looking for traffic from MSN and it is missing in action. Even though these sites rank well for targeted terms for my clients - MSN is not delivering the traffic at all.This has always been an issue for SEO’s and their clients and we are puzzling this one over, looking for results from those top rankings at both Yahoo and MSN as they seem to retain the searchers no matter how well we rank the sites!

Yahoo has dropped dramatically, with referred traffic that used to amount to over 5% of the visitors to client sites; it has dropped as low as 1.5% of total referred traffic from search engines. After a recent increase in referred traffic from Yahoo search, we were hopeful it would stay high, but it wasn’t to be. Rankings have not declined - Read That Again - Rankings have not declined, just the referred traffic!Google has gone up in referrals from foreign countries, including foreign language sites. We used to see tiny amounts of traffic trickle in from non-English language countries, but Google country sites for Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Mexico and a dozen other language specific Googles have combined to send more non-English referred traffic than the total coming from (English) Yahoo Search!

The search world is getting very odd when great rankings at Yahoo and MSN don’t equal referred traffic. This has always been the case to a degree, but is getting extreme and very disturbing. Google has always sent more traffic, with as much as 85% of referred search traffic coming from English Speaking Google variants in US, Canada, India, New Zealand, Australia, and UK sending more traffic than both the US Yahoo and MSN.What is the value of top rankings in MSN and Yahoo if those top positions don’t bring traffic?

Zippo, none are coming from MSN Search even though we are better ranked in several important search phrases for client sites at MSN than at Google! This is serious and it’s a problem that we must resolve. “Searches performed” statistics, like those exhaustively researched by Bill Platt in a recent article are absolutely meaningless if searchers don’t click-through to top ranking sites! What does this mean?Even though I write a similar article each year, discuss this topic on large discussion lists and mention it regularly in my Reality SEO blog, I have yet to get honest answers from search engine representatives at Yahoo or MSN. I did get a couple of Yahoo Search managers to admit that more visitors stay on the Yahoo site and continue to either PPC ads or to other Yahoo links because “There is more of value to the searcher at Yahoo.” What is of more value to a searcher than relevant search results?

I gave those Yahoos�s access to my traffic statistics and those of clients so they could see that nearly 70% of my traffic and that of clients was coming from Google - Even When Those Same Sites Ranked Highly in Searches at Yahoo! No comment and no explanations as to why, when they generate huge numbers of search queries, that far fewer visitors click-through from Yahoo search results than do from Google search results.One must assume that someone searching for something visits at least a few of the sites that appear in the list of search results, no? They sure do visit from Google in significant numbers - consistently. But both Yahoo and MSN Search are failing to send referred search traffic to sites ranked highly in their search results. Why?

I highly recommend that all webmasters with access to statistics for their own site look seriously at your traffic referred by Yahoo & MSN for search phrases you rank well on. Do YOU have traffic referred by Yahoo or MSN Search for your high ranking search phrases? Why not?

By Mike Banks Valentine
Mike Banks Valentine operates WebSite101.com and performs ethical search engine optimization and press release optimization & distribution online. If you’ve got news you can rank at the top for your search phrases.