The Latest Search Engine News

To start, here's a quick recap of the most recent news:

• "Yahoo! Birth of a New Machine" (Feb 18, 2004) [http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3314171]
• "Yahoo!, Overture Debut Paid Inclusion Program" (Mar 2, 2004) [http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3320161]
• "Microsoft Beta Testing New Search Engine" (Feb 2, 2004) [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=241]
• "Ask Jeeves to Buy Web Network for $343M" (Mar 4, 2004) [http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5169791.html]

The Impact on Your Search Engine Marketing

How will these changes affect your site and search engine marketing efforts? The recent changes at Yahoo and the upcoming changes at MSN will impact you differently depending on whether you rely mainly on search engine optimization (SEO) or paid placement to generate traffic for your site.

Regardless of your approach, it's unlikely that the changes will cause your site to disappear from the search engines if your site is already well established on them. But there are some important new options available to help you increase your visibility.

The bottom line: If you have a search engine marketing strategy, now's the time to reevaluate it. If you don't have one, it's more important than ever to establish one.

Understanding The Latest Changes and Options

First, don't assume you're not included on Yahoo's new search engine--or any other for that matter--just because you've not submitted your site or because they charge submission fees.

Most of the major search engines continuously crawl the web seeking new content to ensure they have a high quality database of web pages. Before determining how to invest your marketing dollars, you should evaluate how you're currently performing on the search engines.

Guides to the Search Engine Changes:

• POP's Search Engine Submission Guide [pdf][http://www.popinteractive.com/downloads/SEGuide.pdf]
  We've updated our Search Engine Submission Guide to provide you with a quick way to review the latest options available from the top search engines.
• Bruce Clay's Search Engine Relationship Chart [http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm]
  Knowing where various search engines pull their results from is the key to understanding which search engines you need to make sure your site is included on. Bruce Clays' well-known and regularly updated chart is a great resource to have handy as you map your search engine strategy.

The End of Free Search Engine Marketing

AltaVista's and AllTheWeb's free submission services closed this week, as submission to these sites was rolled into Site Match. But this isn't why I believe the days of free search engine marketing are over.

After all, you can still submit to Google, DMOZ and many other smaller search engines for free. But, in order to see the very real results search engine marketing can generate, you must spend time, marketing dollars or both.

To perform well using the free submission services you have to focus on two things: keywords and popularity. First, you need to identify the most important keywords for your site. Then you must optimize your site content for those keywords, which may mean writing or revising some or all of your copy.

With respect to popularity, you need to make sure that appropriate popular sites are linking to your site. This may mean paying fees as many highly ranked sites charge for site listings.

I'm not saying that you have to have a big budget to boost your popularity and optimize your keywords, but at a minimum you must commit some tangible level of resources to achieve meaningful results.

For those of you thinking about going the paid placement route, you'll still need to focus on keywords. If you're not sure which direction to go, I suggest reading the following article (which I have mentioned in a previous issue):

• Balancing Paid and Organic Search Listings [http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3095871]

Here are some great resources to help you get the most out of your search engine marketing efforts regardless of your strategy:

Local Search on the Horizon

I couldn't cover search engine changes without bringing up Local Search, which promises to be one of the hot new areas of search engine marketing. If you've not heard much about it, here are a few resources to bring you up to speed:

• "Search: The Trends" [http://www.clickz.com/experts/brand/buzz/article.php/3321991]
• "Local Search Growing, but Small Biz Advertisers Cautious" [http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3316741]

Don't Get Left Behind, Or Your Site Will Get Lost

In 1994, most companies were wondering if they needed a website. Some figured out faster than others that the answer was yes. Fast-forward ten years and we find companies wondering if they really need search engine marketing. Again, the answer is yes!

Some might see the most recent changes as a reason to delay establishing or reevaluating their search engine marketing strategy. Instead, I hope you look at these changes as a new opportunity to make sure your site can be found.

Search engine marketing is accessible, regardless of the size of your company's marketing budget. With just a little effort and perseverance, your site can be highly visible on the search engines--providing a return on investment that will quickly pay for itself in increased traffic and business.