Affiliate Marketing Forum

gameboy72 · Joined: 05 Dec 2003 Posts: 3 Location: Portland, Oregon

Hi all,

I'm getting close to getting an e-commerce/direct sale site hosted on the web and am currently researching different avenues of promotion. I couldn't find any related postings to my questions below, so I'll post mine here.

I definitely want to configure the site to get googled by adding content rich articles and outside links.

But I'm also pondering the option of spending some bucks on the yahoo business submission (the $300 recurring annual fee).

The only problem is that I'm building this site on behalf of someone else who has a very strict advertising/marketing budget, and I want to make sure I'm getting the most bang out of the buck.

I'd love to hear other's people's opinions and experiences with submitting their own sites to yahoo as a business listing.

I've got some questions related to this:

1) Is it worth it? Do a lot of other major search engines still pull from Yahoo?

2) Is it rare that Yahoo REJECTS a site? And if they do, is it for blatant violations of their submission policies? It kind of makes me nervous that there's absolutely no guarantee that you will get listed.

3) Can anyone share either general or specific traffic metrics of success (or lack of) after having been accepted into yahoo's business listings?

4) Does anyone know how Yahoo determines search result positioning (if any)?

thanks in advance for your help!
gameboy72

2create · Joined: 29 Jul 2003 Posts: 45 Location: Dallas

gameboy,

Here have been my personal experiences...

Last year before Yahoo started displaying Google search results, I received some very good, targeted traffic from the directory since they used that as their default for search results.

Ever since the switch to Google, I have gotten less than mediocre results from the directory. Not many people browse it, as they tend to use the regular search engine, which defaults to Google. I haven't received much traffic, even though my site is listed at the very top of the category.

Now, many believe that a Yahoo link does score you some points with Google since it's considered a "high quality" inbound link, so it may help your Google ranking some. However, several of my competitors do not even have a Yahoo directory listing and still fair very well with Google on several search terms.

Some people are hoping that when Yahoo switches to Inktomi next year they'll go back to using their directory for search results, but no one can be certain they are going to do that.

My suggestion is to wait until next year when Yahoo switches to Inktomi and see if they go back to using their own directory results.

Yahoo Directory Positioning - Their directory relies heavily on title of site (at least right now). They don't look at page content. So you'll want your major keywords in your title and also try to get keywords in your description as well. You can do a search inside their directory now and vouch for this.

As far as rejection....I've submitted 4 sites and have never gotten rejected. As long as your site has good, quality information, no broken links, and is organized you should be okay. And even if you do get rejected, you get something like 30 days to appeal and submit again.

Just my 2 cents....

Good luck!

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