What are Yahoo Stores?

Yahoo! provides services such as Yahoo! Domains, Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, Yahoo! Business Email, and Yahoo! Store to small business owners and professionals allowing them to build their own online stores using Yahoo!’s tools. Yahoo stores provide people with both an easy and low cost way to create an online presence for their business.

Our research is pointing to a 50% growth in the number and popularity of Yahoo stores since 2005. We’re finding that most Yahoo stores are relatively small (less then 5 employees). However, we are also finding that with an aggressive marketing plan, these same Yahoo stores are achieving very impressive growth rates. We are continually surprised and the number and quality of yahoo stores. We are finding that the single biggest determining factor in the success of an online business is the commitment to an online marketing plan. The quality of the SEO for your Yahoo store will have a significant on the success of your online business.

2. What makes some online stores successful?

In our experience, a successful online yahoo store needs several things
• Competitive price
• Relatively expensive products
• High conversion rates
• Good online visibility & marketing.

These all aren’t necessary for success. But, they’re all very important. In this article, we’re going to talk about the last three.

Relatively expensive products

We encourage our client to sell expensive items. This is because we have found only a weak correlation between the price of the product we’re promoting and the difficulty in promoting it. For example, let’s assume that we have Widget “A” and Widget “B”. Let’s assume that Widget “A” is $100 and Widget “B” is $10. In this case, it would be probably that if we spent 100 hrs promoting each product, that the traffic to Widget “A” would only be slightly less then the traffic to Widget “B”. If the conversion rates of people interested in both widgets are the same, then the vendor selling Widget “A” is going to make approximately 10 times as much money as Widget “B”. I’ve simplified things slightly, but the basic idea holds true. It’s hard to be successful if your products are under $50. It’s best if they’re over $200. High conversion Rates

I think that this if fairly self-explanatory. If 1000 people/month visit your website, and 10% of the visitors purchase the $200 product I talked about above, your website is going to do $20,000 in revenue/month. If your average order size if over $100, and your conversion rate is high, then you don’t need a large amount of traffic to be successful.
Good online visibility

The key to success of any Yahoo store is through excellent online visibility. You can achieve this visibility through paid advertising, legitimate back-links from other sources, Social media marketing, and SEO. We find that SEO for a Yahoo store is the most cost effective way to get online visibility.

Most businesses budget 20% of their total revenue for marketing. This means that if you’re a typical company that generates $1M in sales, then your marketing budget is going to be close to $200,000. For storefronts and retail spaces, most of the marketing goes towards paying rent in a prime location.

In the online world, a domain only costs $10/year. You don’t need to pay for a prime domain. You do however, still need to pay to get your domain into a prime location (in the Google and Yahoo search engine results pages). So, as with other more traditional businesses, you still need to invest in a prime location for your storefront. You just do it a different way.

How do you Market Yahoo stores?

Yahoo SEO is similar to Google SEO, but with one different. Google really cares about back-links. Yahoo is a little more concerned about what’s on your website. If you’re doing Yahoo SEO, you need to pay more attention to the content on your website.
Here are my top tips for Yahoo SEO

1) Figure out a way to add/ update content on your website on a regular basis. Yahoo likes fresh content. If you want to effectively do Yahoo SEO, you need to write fresh content and add it to you website as often as possible. We suggest changing or adding something to your website every day. The content on you main page should be changed at least on a weekly basis.

2) You need to register your domains for 2-5 years, not 1 year. This tells yahoo that you’re serious about your business and you plan to be around for more then one year.

3) Avoid buying domains with multiple dashes. If you think about it this-is-a-new-website-to-promote-a-fantastic-product-with-yahoo-seo.com looks spammy. We did some research and we an inverse relationship between the quality of a website and the length of it’s domain name. So, keep the domain short.

4) Write unique quality articles and submit them to article directories. This is just as important for Yahoo SEO as it is for Google SEO. If you’re doing SEO for Yahoo stores, you need to create quality backlinks. Bergstrom-seo.com uses article submission to create a new URL on a respectable domain in six minutes. This URL has multiple links to your wesbite and 300+ words of relevant content convincing Google/Yahoo that this URL that links to you is relevant to your business. Article posting remains a high quality way to get back-links. No Google or Yahoo SEO program should be without it.

5 ) Do use press releases and submit the to places free press release submission websites.
I hope this article answered the questions that you had about Yahoo SEO and “SEO for Yahoo stores”. If you’re like most people, you’ll have many new questions. If that’s true, give us a call our fill out our form, we’ve love to talk to you. Who knows, maybe we can help .

My own research at http://www.bergstrom-seo.com indicates that you can expect 1.5% of the people that come to your law firms website via a relevant Google search will become clients. This might not seem too impressive, but remember that the average bill for a contested divorce is over $15,000. Thus, the average client that visits your website generates $15,000 x 1.5% = $225.

I always have to do the calculation a few times because it seems too unbelievable. Even if you want to have a ROI on your marketing investment of $10 in revenue for every dollar spent, you can still spend $22.50 on every visitor. So, let’s back up once more…. If you spent $2,250/month on Google SEO, then you only need to get 100/month to get an acceptable ROI on your investment. I generally find that clients who have a monthly SEO budget of 2,000 can expect to see an additional 2,000 visitors/month after about one year. This works out
to an additional (2000 x 1.5%) = 30 clients/month. It’s almost too good to be true.

If you’d looking for a good how-to document that describes almost everything you need to know, then check out this PDF.: http://www.bergstrom-seo.com/resources/google-search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf. It’s a pretty long document (22 pages) but it tells you everything that you need to know about SEO. Good luck!

We give all our clients a skinned wordpress blog and help them upload it to their own website. Most SEO companies don’t do this because it’s quite hard. But, we’re not most SEO companies. We’re the best.

Backlinks help. Google looks at the number of other sites that link to you. If many other websites think you’re good enough to link to, then Google decides that you’re good enough to show up up in the top 10 for keywords related to your business.

On-page elements get you on the SERP pages. We worked on our page titles, meta description tags, and keyword densities. If you want to show up for “best SEO company”, you better use that phrase in the main page of your website. We did.

That’s just some of the things we did for our own site. Click here to learn more about what we do.

SEO Guide for Beginners

• A newbies Guide to Search engine optimization.

SEO Tips To Remember

• How to find Good Keywords for SEO

Tips for SEO Friendly Content

• Write better anchor text
• Page Titles and Meta-description pages
• How to write search engine optimization articles

Tips for Backlink Generation

• Why Is Article submission a Good Idea?
• How to use Press releases to get back-links

Miscellaneous SEO Tips

• Top 10 current black-hat SEO techniques
• A brief History of SEO
• Top 10 Factors Effecting your Ranking in Search Engines

Online Marketing Tips

• How to manage PPC marketing cmpaigns

If you’re one of those people that feels like you can manage your own search engine marketing campaign, you probably haven’t thought this particular plan through and you probably don’t realize that you aren’t ready to do such a thing. Many online resources will have you believe that you can successfully handle your own SEO campaign. What you are not told is that it will take more than 40 hours a week of manpower on your part, it will cost just as much as or more than the fees of a hired search engine marketing company over time and that you will wind up spending money on self-education, software purchasing etc.

You won’t be able to spend anytime focusing on your company goals because you will have to spend all of your time promoting your company. Another thing that you don’t realize is that professional SEO organizations like Bergstrom’s have tools and tricks that can get you to the top of the search engines much faster than you can with your own methods. You will never learn about these tricks because these are the tools that set companies like Bergstrom above the rest. These are tricks that can only be learned from extensive experience with search engine marketing. You will not develop these tricks in one year, nor will you develop tricks like this marketing one type of website.

You may be able to develop your own tips and tricks after many years of experience with SEO, but do you really have that kind of time? When you are managing your own SEO campaign effectively, you really must become an search engine marketing professional and not the retailer, blogger, designer, artist or a service person that you are.

Why not leave your SEO marketing to the pros. Leave it to people that know what they’re doing. Bergstrom will save you time and headaches. Bergstrom has been an experienced and trusted SEO marketing firm for many years. They can successfully carry your search engine marketing project from beginning to end. They use ethical optimization methods and provide prompt and courteous service to all customers. You will enjoy your experience with Bergstrom because you will be increasing your online profits and website traffic within a very short time.

Keywords

When major search engine web crawlers look through their massive indexes in order to match browsers with relevant websites, they are primarily looking to match the keywords that the browsers have entered into their query fields. Therefore, if you team up with the best SEO company in the industry, you can make an educated guess as to which keywords the browsers from within your niche are likely to enter into their search engine query fields. Once you have the appropriate keywords, you can incorporate them into your website content, thus signaling relevance to web crawlers and boosting your ranking in results listings.

Backlinks

The best SEO company will understand that another key way of boosting your search engine results ranking is to generate backlinks to your website. Back links let web crawlers know that your site is well connected in cyberspace. However, it is very important that you be teamed up with the best SEO company in the industry, so that you can get the right type of backlinks instead of the wrong type.

If you have backlinks coming in from SPAM sites or from other disreputable (or paid) websites, web crawlers are likely to associate your website with a “bad neighborhood” and may even blacklist you from search results altogether. The best SEO company knows the difference between bad links and valuable links. They can help you to get create backlinks from only the most respectable websites and directories, thereby boosting your results ranking.

Trust only the best SEO company in the industry with all of your SEO needs; you will be glad you did.

Search Engine Rankings

While ranking high in major search engine results is not the only aspect that top SEO companies concern themselves with, it is a very important facet of boosting a businesses online marketing campaign. A recent study performed by iProspect reveals that 90% of search engine users click on a result located in the first three pages of search results.

This overwhelming statistic proves that if you want to be noticed by web browsers in your target market, you are going to need to have top SEO companies work with you to optimize your website’s relevance level amongst search engines.

Organic vs. Paid Listings

There are two primary ways that top SEO companies get businesses listed in the first few pages of search engine results. Many top SEO companies take the shortcut to top search engine listings by paying search engines or affiliate companies in order to be listed along the top or the side of search engine results. While this can generate a lot of traffic for your website, people tend to resist clicking on paid advertisements.

Therefore, if you want to establish trust with web browsers and attract traffic to your company website that is from within your own niche, organic listings are the best way to get your site listed high in search engine results. Keyword rich text, quality links and great editorial content are three of the primary ways that top SEO companies will work with you to get the exposure and website traffic that your business needs to thrive.

We find that your realtors are hoping to spend 10% of their commission income for marketing. In the above example, the agent spent $4k on the website, and the ROI on their advertising budget was well within their goals. It’s possible to do much better.
Keep in mind that the realtor above wasn’t actively promoting their website. With a small amount of online promotion, it’s quite reasonable to expect 1,500 visitors/month after the first year and 3,000+ visitors/month after the 2nd year. Results vary widely, but you can expect this type of results if you do the standard bread-and-butter online marketing techniques with a budget of about $1.5k/month ($20k/year).

So, the question is this, is that $20k well spent?

My own research at http://www.bergstrom-seo.com indicates that you can expect 0.25% of the people that come to your law firms website via a relevant Google search will become clients. This might not seem too impressive, but remember that the average commission for a sale should be around $5,000. Thus, the average client that visits your website generates $5,000 x 0.5% = $25.
If you want to have a ROI on your marketing investment of $10 in revenue for every dollar spent, you can still spend $2.50 on every visitor.

So, if you spend $1.5k/month on Google SEO, then you need to get 600 visitors/month to get an acceptable ROI on your investment. So, based on the results we’re seeing, you can expect to begin getting an acceptable ROI well before the end of the first year (month 6-8 being typical).
So, it makes sense for realtors. If you’re a realtor and you’re not marketing yourself online – you should be. This fact is especially true because that’s how people are going to start shopping for realtors & houses. This is a tremendous opportunity for realtors to significantly increase their client base. But, this opportunity isn’t going to last. Realtors are a savvy bunch. They’re embracing the Internet as a tool to find clients (and sell real estate) at a rapid rate.

Guava, a fresh thinking, digital marketing agency specialising in Search Marketing, Web Development, Search Engine Optimisation, and PPC in the UK has released a new study on the industry. Guava is part of the pan-European Guava group with over 200 employees, the UK division is headed up by UK CEO, Graeme Radford with offices in Berkshire and Cornwall. Current Guava clients include Confused.com, Black & Decker and The Royal Mail. So, when they talk, I usually listen. The upshot of the research is that money spent on SEO is providing a better ROI then ever before.

The proportion of people who say that they are tracking paid search return on investment has increased from 33% last year to 45% in 2009. For SEO, there has been an even bigger increase in those tracking ROI effectively. This statistic has jumped from 20% to 35%.

Lucy Cokes, Director at Guava, said: “We were delighted by the response to the surveys…” He goes on to sya how amazing his company is. Kind  of reminds me of a rapper or right wing talk show host explaining how yes, he is well and truly awesome. Anyways, I digress…..

Lucy Cokes, Director at Guava, goes on to say that “companies want to take more control of this element of their marketing.” Duh…

Here are some useful tidbits of info

§ Only 5% of respondents report that the end of best practice funding has negatively impacted their return on investment. The change in Google’s trademark bidding policy has had more of an impact, with 15% of company respondents citing this as a negative factor affecting ROI.

§ Survey respondents were asked specifically about the factors which had negatively affected their return on investment from paid search in the last 12 months. The higher cost of clicks emerged as the most significant issue and CPC (cost-per-click) inflation is being driven both by increased competition and efforts by the search engines to extract as much profit as they can while still delivering return on investment.

§ Just over a third of respondents (37%) said that the credit crunch was an issue and a similar proportion (34%) said that lower conversion rates were negatively impacting ROI. These factors are very closely related.

§Only 5% of companies are paying to advertise on mobile search listings and, surprisingly, that percentage has not increased since last year although 23% are planning to do this. More than two thirds of respondents say this is either not on the radar yet (37%) or that they have no plans to use mobile search (32%).

The full Econsultancy / Guava UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmarking Report 2009 is available for download at: www.guava.co.uk/uksem2009

About Econsultancy

According to their website, Econsultancy is the leading source of independent advice and insight on digital marketing and e-commerce. They produce reports, and hope that people will read them. Eventually, they’re also hoping that people will actually pay to read them. Now word yet on how that’s going.

Join Econsultancy today to learn what’s happening in digital marketing - and what works.

Call us to find out more on +44 (0)20 7681 4052 or contact them online.
http://econsultancy.com

Increase Visibility fond that a large number of search engine optimization advice articles and has discovered the authors usually receive more benefits than the readers. The typical SEO/SEM article for a given topic provides the same information found in numerous other articles. Many of the authors take advantage of link building opportunities for their website. These (evil and conniving) authors and are not offering something of value to the reader. But, they’re also kind of wasting their time.

Increase Visibility, an award winning search engine optimization (not sure what award they got - but I don’t think it was given out by their mom - so it’s probably more or less legit) has reviewed a large number of internet based search engine optimization articles. Surprise, surprise, they discovered that the writers of the articles often benefit more than the readers. Most SEO/SEM articles basically offer the same information. New insights are not provided. The authors are really just doing it for the backlinks. They are trying to benefit from the links they placed in their articles that point to their website. Is this OK as long as they offer something of value to the reader?


By cranking out many link containing SEO articles and posting them at popular informational websites, authors are trying to increase their link count. Content is not the main priority. In addition, many search engine optimization experts are simply not going to offer the public their unique, highly successful analytical strategies. They’re concerned about loosing their competitive advantages and diluting the power of their tactics. If they have anything of true value, they usually keep this to themselves.


Increase Visibility has been ranked #1 or #2 for SEO firms from August 2008 - April of 2009 by the prestigious TopSEOs.com. The rankings are based primarily on client satisfaction and return on investment. The firm has also been honored by being placed in the top 3 in PromotionWorld’s Readers’ Choice Awards for best Search Engine Marketing (SEM) companies. So, they’re pretty good.


So, what’s the takeaway from this article? It’s that

• article writing and posting seems to work.
• article writers are doing it to promote their own website, not out of some desire to help the world
• the articles generally re-hash common knowledge
• there are some gems out there, and useful tidbits of info. But, such gems are few and far between

Lastly, if you’re going to write some content, then do us all a favor and take the time to write something good.

Here’s what YPA (Yellow Pages Association) has claimed.

Marketing Representative which represents clients who advertise in yellow pages directories in more than 3 states with 2 publishers and are in at least 20 directories. ROI Media provides its clients strategies in directional marketing, both in print and online via yellow pages, IYP, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and Local Search Optimization. ROI Media’s website will feature client login for online tear pages, call measurement and other tools giving clients easy access to valuable decision making data.

They go on to write a bunch more words without actually saying anything. I do however agree with McLaughlin when he said: “Now more than ever, its important to make every advertising dollar count.”

I got a little tired and actually went to the website. This is yellow pages. Yeah, they’re not innovative.  ROI MEDIA LLC is a yellow page Certified Marketing Representative which represents clients who advertise in yellow pages directories in more than 3 states with 2 publishers and are in at least 20 directories. ROI Media provides its clients strategies in directional marketing, both in print and online via yellow pages, IYP, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and Local Search Optimization. ROI Media’s website will feature client login for online tear pages, call measurement and other tools giving clients easy access to valuable decision making data.

It looks like ROI MEDIA LLC  resells yellow pages ads. So, we’ve got a reseller of a non-innovative company. Can you say dinosaur?