Yahoo Directory - Should you pay to list your site here?

One way to improve your site’s search engine optimization is to submit it to online directories. Some directories are more respected than others. One of the most widely respected online directories is Yahoo. Should you pay $300 – $450 a year to list your website in the Yahoo Directory? Probably not.

Just as there is debate about the value of being listed in another well-established, old-school directory called dmoz.org, there is debate among veteran search engine optimization pros about the value of a listing in the Yahoo directory. Michael Gray says Yahoo is one of four essential directory listings for any business.

Dr. Pete at SEOmoz says listing in the Yahoo Directory is not worth the cost for most businesses with established websites. For a site that is just beginning to build inbound links,

One solid-authority link [like the Yahoo Directory link] can make a big difference. If you have an established site with a few dozen (or even a few hundred) solid back-links, that $299 probably isn’t going to give you much SEO impact.

As Dr. Pete says, there are also many other directories worth considering, many of which are free.

Niche directories are especially useful for SEO as well as visibility to human readers. Take a look at ones like AllTop. McBuzz.com is listed in AllTop’s Social Media Directory. It has been a very valuable (free) listing/link.

Consider what else you might do with the $300 to $450 annual Yahoo Directory listing fee. There is some healthy debate about Yahoo Directory listing vs. content creation among SEO pros. You could put that money towards content creation: hire a writer or an SEO writer who could help with some excellent new blog posts that would be a source of new links to your site. Or hire an SEO consultant to review your site and give you many different suggestions about free directories, paid directories and other links to your competitor’s websites, for example.

Should medium and large businesses who spend thousands of dollars a month on advertising be listed in the Yahoo Directory? It certainly can’t hurt their search optimization efforts. But I’m with Dr. Pete. If they are looking for quality links, why not spend the money on content creation and promotion – combined with some aggressive AdWords advertising – instead? Those businesses should at least take the time to review inbound links to competitors’ websites first to see if there are niche sites and directories that are free and probably just as valuable, like a link from a .gov or .edu or .org site. Whereas a site like dmoz.org will probably never respond to your directory submission, niche directories are often the most responsive sites to give you a link. They are curated by people with an active interest in growing their sites, and they are committed to promoting quality content.

It’s hard to know the impact of a Yahoo Directory listing on search rankings. In an ideal case, you would list your site in Yahoo and do little else for SEO for 3-4 weeks to see if you got a boost in search rankings. But the reality is that if you have done any SEO work, the effects of those efforts are going to surface gradually over time, so there’s no real way to isolate the effects of a directory listing. For that reason, I’m skeptical about sites that claim to get great lift from any one directory. Now, if you are getting traffic to your website directly from a link in a directory (which is easy to track), that’s a different story!

The bottom line: I don’t recommend paying for a Yahoo Directory link when there are so many other SEO options available. Instead, spend the money on inbound link research, strategy, content creation, paid search advertising or some combination of these.

If you want to do a little inbound link research on your competitors’ sites yourself, you can use the handy Site Explorer tool from (none other than) Yahoo! Just put a URL / domain name in the box at the top of the page and click “Explore URL”. Then click the “Inlinks” button under Results. Use the “Show inlinks” dropdown menu to select “Except from this domain”.

And, normally this goes without saying, but some business have websites without any kind of analytics solution set up. So before you think about spending money on a Yahoo Directory listing, be sure to check to see if you have Google Analytics or some other analytics tracking software installed on your website. Definitely spend that $300 – $450 to get analytics and Google Webmaster Tools set up properly on your site! Those improvements will pay for themselves in no time.

(Note that the Yahoo Directory is not the same as the Yahoo Local Directory.)

Example of Footer Links on McBuzz.com: an easy way to boost Search Engine Opimization

Can you use links in the footer of your website to improve search engine rankings? If those footer links go to internal pages on your own website, the answer is absolutely yes.

I have read on some SEO sites that footer links are not as helpful to SEO as they once were. This is probably true, given that Google has become more adept at determining when links are being used as navigation on every page as opposed to an “editorial” link that appears in the body of a page and is being used by the author as a way to specifically recommend another web page or a piece of quality content.

However, I have direct confirmation of the power of a footer link to improve search ranking – and also to improve the click-through rate of the listing that appears in a Google search engine results page (SERP).

Another Example of Footer Links Being Used for SEO

Rand Fishkin has written one of the most popular posts about footer links: Footer Link Optimization for Search Engines and User Experience. He thinks footer links are no longer a great asset to SEO, but they do count for user experience. Still Rand concedes that links in a footer can be used to advantage if they are not abused.

One very good way to improve SEO for your blog posts is to add a Latest Blog Posts or Latest Comments widget to the footer of your site. You can see examples of these footer links at the bottom of the mcbuzz.com home page. These are effective primarily because the link text contains keywords that are highly relevant to the topic of the post.

Footer links still carry weight with Google as indicated in a post by one of the top authorities on Link Marketing, Debra Mastaler, where she says emphatically, “Avoid buying or selling footer links.” Linking from the footer of your website to another site, or soliciting or paying for a link from someone else’s footer to a page on your site, is not what I’m talking about here. But if you read Debra’s post, you’ll see there’s good evidence that, even though it may be true that footer links don’t have as much significance in the Page Rank algorithm as they once did, Google does continue to pay attention to the content of footer links and to the way those links are being used.

There is one case in which a footer link is almost essential to good SEO: if you are forced to use images or Flash for navigation links/buttons. In situations like these, you would be foolish not to put text links to the main pages of your site in your footer.

Does Google like footer links in some cases? Here’s proof that Google loves footer links when they provide a really useful clue as to what the page being linked to is about:

In SERPs for one of my client’s sites where Flash is used for the main site navigation, Google actually picks up the text of the footer link to create the title of the search result listing!

The actual text has been changed to protect my client. For my example, I’m using a keyword that’s kinda sorta like the keyword my client ranks on page one of Google for, but here’s what that looks like:

FOOTER LINK: luxury hotel seattle

TITLE IN GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS PAGE LISTING:
luxury hotel seatlle – Seattle Hotel Accommodations

The words luxury hotel seattle are not in the page’s title tag or in the visible header on the page. There’s no doubt that Google is pulling the text from the footer link because it’s lower case, and there’s nowhere else on the site that the keyword appears in lower case but the footer link. The page the link points to is strongly related to all things “luxury hotel seattle” and – I know from Google Analytics – when visitors come to that page with a search on keywords related to “luxury hotel seattle” there is a low bounce rate. Visitors find what they are looking for, in other words.

Google sees the frequency of clicks on the result in the SERPs and the low bounce rate and is happy to continue to serve up the listing high on its search results pages. In fact, Google goes so far as to create a customized listing using text from the footer link. Obviously, this is good for users. They are more apt to click the listing, and when they do, they get what they want from Google and from my client’s website.

The bottom line: Don’t be afraid to use links in the footer of your website with keywords in the anchor text, especially if you have site navigation that uses images or Flash, as long as those links point to internal pages or posts on your site. Ideally, you should not use images or Flash for navigation, but you may not be able to change that. So, put those text links in your footer!

Even if you have text links in your main site navigation – as is the norm today, thank goodness! – you can boost search engine optimization for internal pages and posts on your site by including keyword-rich text links to those pages in your footer. Adding a Recent Posts widget is one easy way to do so.

UPDATE: July 8, 2011 – The slides for this SEO presentation are embedded below.

Here are the slides from the SEO presentation & workshop.

If you are a WordPress user – or even if not – you’ll learn how to set up your website to collect the essential information you need to find out whether your search engine optimization efforts are paying off.

For more information – including map and directions to TechStars – and to RSVP, visit the SEO Success with WordPress Presentation page on the Seattle WordPress Meetup site.

Here’s a summary of the presentation and workshop, which also appears on our Meetup.com website (link above). You do not need to be a Meetup.com user to attend, but do sign up if you would like to learn more about our very active and growing WordPress group for developers, designers, and users of every stripe, including great support for newbies. [...]

The presentation will be about 40 minutes with 5 minutes for questions at the end. We will also do a follow-up Q&A and SEO workshop after the break. I’ll show how to install the required search optimization plugins and tools during the workshop instead of during the main presentation.

Some background
Justin Briggs gave a great presentation on SEO at the recent WordCamp Seattle. He noted that WordPress does a good job of optimizing your posts and pages automatically. All you need to do to get these benefits is install WordPress. Combine this with the list of SEO techniques Justin offered in his talk and you are on your way towards practical SEO for WordPress.

Once you apply SEO techniques, you need to use some basic analytics and SEO tools to find out if the work you did actually paid off. My presentation will show you how to set up and use those basic tools so you can clearly see the connection between optimizing your website and getting the results you need to achieve success for your business.

Specifically, you’ll be able to use the All In One SEO Pack plugin and the information you get from Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools and the Gravity Forms SEO Add-on to follow a process of continuous optimization that will actually make you money, not just put you at the top of search rankings.

In the main SEO presentation we’ll cover the following:

1. How to choose good keywords and improve the content you already have
2. Where to put keywords (and how to come up with great ideas for new content)
3. How to check Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools and  Gravity Forms for feedback about keywords and traffic on your website
4. How to refine content on your website using keywords that produce the best results

Following the break, I will offer an informal search engine optimization workshop/SEO class to show how to install the following plugins and tools you’ll need.

1. Install All In One SEO Pack plugin
2. Install Google Analytics plugin by Yoast
3. Setup a Webmaster Tools account
4. Install Gravity Forms
5. Install SEO Add-on for Gravity Forms
6. Install Rank Checker add-on for Firefox

For more information – including map and directions to TechStars – and to RSVP, visit the SEO Success with WordPress Presentation page on the Seattle WordPress Meetup site on Meetup.com.

One reason for the confusion is that people knowledgeable about SEO are often reluctant to share their secrets. If SEOs, as search engine optimization experts are called, were more transparent with what they do, it would be much easier for non-SEO experts to decide whether optimization techniques are a set of standardized, rational practices or something that a few people are just naturally good at because they have a “feel” for it – or, much worse, just a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

Today Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land took a great step towards transparency by publishing a Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors. The table is an awesome piece of work. And there’s much more to it than the  infographic alone. There is a complete discussion of each SEO ranking factor.

If we can generalize about something like SEO and codify it in a meaningful and useful way, like Sullivan has done with the ranking factor table, then we have clear evidence for it being a science versus just an art or smoke and mirrors.

One great Search Engine Optimization resource for beginners is the Google guide. I can’t find a link in the form of a URL, but you can get it here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Search+Engine+Optimization+Starter+Guide
( The file name is search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf )

Another good Search Engine Optimization resource for beginners is from SEOmoz.
http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization

The SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors survey is a very good overview of things that really matter in SEO. I also like the way they handle the degree of disagreement that exists on the topic of search optimization – even among professional SEOs.

Choosing good keywords is hard – no matter what size your business is. Sometimes it’s a challenge to get my clients to see the importance of using language in their marketing materials – including their website – that they themselves wouldn’t necessarily use to talk about their products or services.

Sometimes C-level executives don’t like using words they feel have the wrong connotation. Sometimes this boils down to the fact that they see their product or service as unique, so unique that it can’t be described in standard terms. Sometimes the Marketing Department is concerned about the brand, about setting their company apart from the competition in a good way. These things are fine. You want to show that you are different from your competitors in significant ways. But there are a couple of serious problems with insisting on being unique when it comes to choosing the language you use for marketing.

First, if you brand your product or service using language that none of your competitors uses, you stand a good chance of not being found in search results for the keywords that really matter, the keywords that will bring success. Second, you risk being so unique, so innovative, in the way you talk about what you do, that customers and potential customers won’t see you as being able to solve the problems that matter to them, the problems they know your competitors can solve – because you are not using language that they recognize and associate with the needs of their business.

Some companies understand this, and they do the right thing. Here’s a concrete example. Look at the box for Bayer Low Dose Aspirin above. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Why does this low dose aspirin have a bottle with an Easy Grip Cap? Because the product is for elderly people. If it’s for elderly people, why does it say “Baby” Aspirin on the box? This aspirin is most certainly not for babies. The fact that “Baby” is in quotes is a clue. It means that this product is identical to baby aspirin. It’s what’s called “Baby” Aspirin. It’s the same dosage. This is the aspirin we have all heard so much about in the news and in medical studies. One tablet a day prevents heart attacks. Not in babies. Babies don’t have heart attacks. Bayer wants you to know that this product is for elderly people AND it is the “Baby” Aspirin dosage, just in case there’s any doubt.

This is exactly how we need to choose keywords – the language we use in web pages and in links to our web pages. Just as people will search for “Baby” Aspirin on a grocery store shelf, people will search for and recognize keywords they associate with what they need when they use Google or any other search engine. If your web pages don’t include those keywords, you’re missing a huge opportunity and you are not going to win at SEO.

If Bayer didn’t put “Baby” Aspirin on the box, shoppers might see the easy grip cap and think that’s not what they’re looking for. All the studies and all the news reports have said “Baby” Aspirin is the form of the drug that is most effective against heart attacks. Is it aspirin for babies? No. Should Bayer call it that? Absolutely.

WordPress SEO – WordCamp Portland 2010 – Full-Length Video

Mark McLaren on 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with WordPress – These Tips Apply to All Websites

Here is a video of my presentation at WordCamp Portland in September 2010 covering Search Engine Optimization using WordPress. Much of the presentation focuses on a basic working example of what constitutes good SEO, using titles from the WordPress.org support forum to show why some web content works and other content fails miserably.

The presentation also stresses the importance of link building for search engine optimization. The number and quality of links to your website from other websites is the number one factor used by Google and other search engines to rank your site. Finding ways to grow the number of these “inbound” links is essential to SEO success!

Choosing a good set of keywords – the words you use on your site to tell people about your business and what you do – is also critical to SEO success, so I spend a good bit of time on that.

SEO Presentation Outline:

1. Choose Good Keywords
2. Build Inbound Links
3. Use Detailed, Keyword-rich HTML Page Titles
4. Turn on Permalinks in WordPress Settings
5. Create Engaging, Well-structured On-page Content with Video, Slides and Keywords in Headings, Bullets, Links

Included at the end of the presentation slides are links to Search Engine Optimization Resources – for link building, tracking inbound links, tracking search ranking of pages on your site for various keywords, best tools for keyword research, using Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools for search engine optimization and so forth.

Here is a link to the slides:Search Engine Optimization for WordPress – WordCamp Portland 2010 (3 MB PDF)

Huge thanks to Joe Christensen and Peter Schmidt at Portland Video Broadcasting and Recording Company Blaze Streaming Media for the awesome live stream, video recording and production work they did for WordCamp Portland.

You can find the original video on WordPress.tv: Mark McLaren: Get Found Easier and Grow Your Business — 5 Tips for Better SEO

I’m buying. Along with work by Eric Ward it’s one of the best posts I have read on link building in some time. The article is well-documented (at least I take the author at her word) and well-written.

The author recommends a strategy of developing quality links from legitimate sites rather than a large volume of links from sites that are much less obviously related to the focus of the site you are trying to optimize.

It’s particularly interesting that Stott says “Anchor text [in inbound links] isn’t the signal it once was.” I still think we should always try for good anchor text, but the point of the article is that engineered links are more obvious today than they once were, and that probably includes anchor text in inbound links.

Today Google has much more information at its disposal when it determines what a web page is about, so it doesn’t need to rely on anchor text as much, just as directories like Yahoo! and DMOZ used to have much more significance for search engine optimization. Still, all other things being equal, better anchor text is better SEO.

Here’s Google’s Maile Ohye saying very recently that anchor text in internal links will influence sitelinks.

So clearly Google still looks at anchor text for important clues about a page’s content.

I will be speaking, as well. The topic is Search Engine Optimization and WordPress. This will not be the same SEO and WordPress presentation I gave at WordCamp Vancouver. The focus will be on keywords and the importance of links for search engine optimization.

Did I mention that WordCamp Portland also features awesome food – and BEER?! How many conferences, un- or otherwise, have you been to that have kegs of killer microbrew at the snack table? Right.

My presentation was called “Get Found Easier and Grow Your Business: 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress”. Thirty minutes is just about enough time to get through the essentials of SEO for WordPress, although I’m sure it could be a two-hour presentation without too much trouble.

Half of the time does not involve using WordPress! I do a quick overview of what a keyword is, how to pick a good keyword, how to check your initial search ranking, and, after optimizing, how to see if your optimization efforts had any effect!

Understanding keywords is absolutely critical to search optimization, but it’s not often talked about in a way that most people can get. This is going to have to change as more businesses use WordPress and other CMS solutions for websites and then decide that they need to do their own SEO.

The 5 Tips for Better SEO are spelled out in the presentation slide deck below. They are also available in PDF form here (right click and select “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…” to download).

5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress (PDF)

At the end of the slides and the PDF, there are links to SEO Plugins, Tools and Resources. If you would like the .pptx file of  the presentation – including the Notes – contact me.

Here are the 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress in case you want a quick overview:

Tip #1: Use keywords in your HTML page title

Tip #2: Write a page description that makes people want to read more (include keywords)

Tip #3: Customize permalinks

Tip #4: Use keywords in the visible page

Tip #4 continued: Make content “sticky”, useful, a resource

Tip #5: Links