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3. Dmoz, Yahoo Directory and BOTW – Are Directories important for SEO?

My personal view is,

Yes for Yahoo Directories and yes for BOTW

No for DMOZ – screw you Dmoz. – You can try, but it’s set and forget. They won’t came back to you or list your business in at least a year’s time.

The main point is are they still valid to help your SEO efforts? Are they considered by Google and other Search Engines?

Yes, they are seen differently from the other crap directories. These ones are still in the good books with the Googles of the world, as you can see in  the video below.

The most important thing, please don’t forget, if you decide to pay for the listing in one of the directories remember to be careful and pick the right categories and use the right description about your business.

Don’t use  keywords that will help you to rank better but keywords that will help you convert better on the search engines.

One example we use in the seminar:

You are a tourism agent and need to decide whether to use the keywords “tour” and “travel” .

At the begin they seem to be the same, as a matter of fact the number of searches on travel is way bigger than tour.

However, we found that users searching for the keyword “travel” are generally still very early in their research and far from making a decision – they’re still trying to decide where to go. However, those searching on the keyword “tour” were much further into the buying cycle and much closer to making a decision.

Thanks Google

Best
Lucio Ribeiro

If you are in Australia, type “best online agency in melbourne” on Google.

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As a fun exercise, below a list prepared by AdAge with Digital Predictions from 2007 to 2008 that didn’t happened

Digital Predictions That Didn’t Pan Out

1. ONLINE ADVERTISING WILL GROW 29% IN 2008

As late as November 2007, forecasters predicted a huge year for online advertising in 2008, and stuck with it even as the economy started to stumble. Their rationale: Even if the economy takes a dive, online ads won’t. In fact, online will benefit from a recession, as marketers move spending from TV to cheaper, more measurable media. Well, online advertising did grow in 2008, but just 15% in the first six months of 2008 and 11% in Q3, according to the ever-optimistic Internet Advertising Bureau.

Neither Facebook’s nor YouTube’s importance to marketers matches its scale on the web. YouTube’s challenge is to figure out how to add scale to non-scalable promotions. And Facebook’s challenge? That’s perhaps summed up best by Ted McConnell, Procter & Gamble’s interactive guru: “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”

At the outset, the News Corp.-NBCU joint venture had only two things going for it: lots of good content and rock-bottom expectations. It was, after all, another attempt by big media to create a consumer web destination. But Hulu became the sixth-biggest video site in the U.S. and allowed skittish advertisers to put dollars against trusted TV brands — at a higher CPM than TV.

It’s no wonder it’s a perennial prediction — every year Digg does seem to do a little acquisition dance with someone. This past year it tangoed with Google but came up empty. Instead, it settled for raising a whopping $28.7 million Series C round.

Despite myriad attempts (remember the massive hype around the far-too-beta Cuil?), Google has only grown share, and no one has emerged as any sort of legitimate challenger in the search space. In fact, some would-be challengers have shifted tacks, because going up against Goliath has proved impossible. Person-assisted search site ChaCha, for example, is now pushing itself as a mobile product rather than straight web search.

This didn’t happen, but whoever made this prediction probably deserves a mulligan. That’s because a major daily newspaper did go all digital (The Christian Science Monitor), but it won’t happen until April 2009. Now, CSM is a special case with a different audience and economics than your standard daily. But there, too, it almost happened. In January, the East Valley Tribune, a 100,000-circ daily east of Phoenix, will go down to four days a week. The paper fired 40% of its staff (142) and will focus on digital.

You’ve been hearing that prediction since 1996, and every year people trot it out again. Sure, there were lots of advertising milestones this past year: Apple’s 3G iPhone and App Store changed the way people think about mobile devices; the much-anticipated Google phone debuted; and touch screens became a staple of new phones everywhere. But mobile advertising remained a blip on the total marketing radar. Maybe 2009?

There was reason to believe it would. E-book readers have been hyped since the late ’90s to less-than-middling success. Amazon’s version, the Kindle, started racking up fans so devoted that they volunteered to show off their devices as part of Amazon’s “See a Kindle in Your City.” In October, Oprah delivered Amazon a coup when she endorsed the product on her show. Since Amazon hasn’t broken out Kindle sales, it’s hard to know how successful it is, but one thing is clear: It’s far from a flop.

It was a tantalizing prediction to make: In a year when the striking writers had brought Hollywood to a halt, an explosion in web-originated content would accelerate the shift of dollars away from the tube. One problem: It didn’t happen. The networks got increases from advertisers, and online video took a pittance in advertising — perhaps $505 million if you believe eMarketer.

Nobody could have known the magnitude of the economic implosion. But few expected to see Yahoo stock fall to $11.12 from $23.72 or eBay to plummet to $13.47 from $32.49 or ValueClick to drop to $5.86 from $21.70. Back in January, J.P. Morgan’s Imran Khan predicted a 34% earnings-per-share rise for major internet stocks. Needless to say, it didn’t happen. Google didn’t hit $1,000. And it didn’t cure cancer, either.

Do you want to guess/risk a prediction for 2009? What it’d be your prediction?

I’ll start it off -

1) Twitter is going to show it can generate revenue using a mix of paid subscription, supporting advertising in their apps and API access for developers besides an integration with other social platforms. Everything based on practicality, usability and usefulness .

2) Social Media Myths will be broken

3) Danny will convince more people to start blogging

More on 2009 predictions on ReadWriteWeb, and Servant of Chaos

How about you, any 2009 prevision?

cheers

Lucio Ribeiro

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I’ve been asked for different people how I see the influence of this deal on the online marketing environment,

My answer is simple – I hated it.

I don’t really care about Microsoft being or not the Evil Empire (as it’s called in Sillicon Valey). What I care is about Google dominating all aspects about Search Marketing.

Yahoo was the only viable option to Adwords (Google) arbitrary game (read “adwords slap”).

You might say, Yahoo is still serving ads from Overture. Bullshit.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington writes ;

“The deal allows Yahoo to put Google ads along side their own, presumably to maximize revenue to Yahoo. Google’s good at the top search terms (probably 80% or so of revenue potential), but Yahoo thinks they do fine in the long tail. The problem, of course, is that they’ll show Google ads for all the good stuff – and advertisers will go to Google to bid for those ads. More advertisers will leave the platform, further degrading Yahoo’s core search economics”.

I had a talk to an Australian Online Marketing Expert (he asked me to not be quoted) on Friday 13/06 and he had an incredible overview about the deal.

He gave me his opinion and how foolish Mr. Jerry was being and how emotional attached he’s with the company.

On the weekend The New York Times published an article about the deal, an article that goes exactly as my friend’s opinion.

“Jerry, you’re a billionaire because people all over the world bought your stock, and trusted you to do right by them. That’s the compact you make when you take a company public: you get to be really rich, but in return, you have an obligation to do everything you can to ensure that shareholders get a healthy return on their investment. It doesn’t matter that you would like Yahoo to remain independent, or that you can’t stand Microsoft. Your feelings aren’t supposed to get in the way of your fiduciary duty.”

Full article here.

Cheers

Lucio Dias Ribeiro

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