Latest Articles

Yahoo now has Bing-Power

August 25, 2010 By Webposition SEO Team

It’s official.  Yahoo!’s transition from Yahoo Search to Bing-powered organic search results is now complete.  The Yahoo! search interface remains the same, but Microsoft’s search technology now generates the search results.  This transition began a week ago and, in a blog posting by Shashi Seth, Senior VP of Yahoo! Search Products, was stated to have gone smoothly.

“This is a great milestone for Bing and Yahoo! and our customers, and we are happy to report the transition has gone smoothly and we feel great about the progress our search alliance has been making over the summer.”

While Yahoo! continues to make improvements to its search experience, Microsoft will migrate Yahoo’s advertising customers to adCenter and is expecting to complete that phase by fall.

So far, this move is in only the US and Canada markets and is only available in English.  However, it can affect some users’ search engine rankings.  What’s really interesting is that a webpage may rank differently in Bing compared to the new Bing-powered Yahoo!.  If you’re tracking your search engine rankings, it’s still a good idea to track your rankings across Bing and Yahoo! separately.  You can do a quick check on your search rankings free at www.webposition.com.

Optimization: One Big Party On & Off the Page

August 9, 2010 By Sue Spiker

Their names imply that they’re completely separate approaches, but here’s the truth… good SEO integrates on-page and off-page optimization to grow web traffic and encourage a higher search ranking.  Neglecting one in favor of the other can do your site a great disservice because ultimately, they work together.

On-Page Optimization is what’s done to a website’s content to offer a smartly designed user experience and make the site easily explored and indexed by search engines.  Elements include title tags, meta tags, HTML tags, keywords, content, internal links, headings, images and Calls to Action (CTAs).

But after you optimize the content, coding and structure, you need to make it easy for people (and search engines) to find your site.  Otherwise, it’s like getting your house ready for a party and not telling anyone.  Sure, you may get the stray guest occasionally, but your traffic won’t be all that it can be and you won’t be listed on any Top 10 Parties lists.  You need to spread the word – that’s where off-page optimization comes in.

Off-Page Optimization focuses on generating high quality inbound links to increase your site’s link popularity, which tells search engines that your site is important and authoritative.  Remember that phrase “high quality” – it refers to the other site’s Google Page Rank, amount of web traffic and relevancy of its content.  Start by submitting your site to appropriate web directory categories, which have a very broad scope, and niche portals, which are smaller but much more specialized listings.

When your off-page optimization starts generating interest, your on-page optimization (which should already be in place) encourages users to come back and gives other sites a reason to create backlinks.  Basically, if you’re going to send out party invitations, your house must be ready to receive guests.  Otherwise, most visitors won’t stay long, and even fewer will recommend you to friends and family.

There’s no single, universally accepted SEO checklist that addresses the best practices for optimization on all search engines, or even the top three.  But here are some resources to help you get started:

• MarketPosition SEO 101: Takes you through some of the ins-&-outs of basic SEO.
• Google SEO Starter Guide (PDF): Explains some best practices for making your site user- and search engine-friendly.
• Google Webmaster Guidelines: Guidelines to best optimize your webpage and submit it to be included in Google’s search index.
• Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters White Paper: Includes SEO guidelines for ranking well on Bing’s search results.

The Giants of Mobile Search: Follow the Leader

July 14, 2010 By Webposition SEO Team

Since its popularity boomed 3 years ago with the introduction of the iPhone, mobile search has revolutionized how we access the Internet on-the-go.  Today, it’s an ever-evolving frontier in which the top three search giants are vying for the lead.  And each giant has its own strategy.

Google
The default search engine for the iPhone, Google already has the lion’s share of the market.  The first to add voice activated search, Google took the lead before others even heard the starting pistol and still continues growing its repertoire of mobile apps.  But, while Google remains the default, iPhone 4 users now have options: Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Yahoo
App-happy Yahoo offers multiple apps across a broad spectrum of categories, including popular news, finance and shopping. This multi-faceted approach could dilute its attempts to up its position in the mobile search market. Or could it? The Yahoo News app ranks #47 in the News section of Apple’s App Store, so traction has been gained.  Still, it’ll be interesting to see the effects of the supposedly upcoming Yahoo-Bing merger.

Bing
The newest of the three and therefore last out of the gate, Bing targets shopping and entertainment segments.  It has redesigned its mobile browser to appear more like a mobile app.  Its actual mobile app, which already ties users’ Facebook and Twitter updates back to its search, now includes visual scanning.  Currently #2 in the App Store’s Reference section, this mobile app has helped Bing stay in the race if not yet take a commanding position.

Competition means Opportunity
With each search provider aggressively exploring new avenues to boost their mobile search market share, there is growing opportunity to promote these services through mobile apps and mobile-friendly landing pages.  As previously discussed in SEO in the Mobile Search Space, the competition for the top results positions is fierce.  Taking advantage of the competition between Google, Yahoo and Bing could make a difference in your mobile search rankings.

Is Yahoo Flatlining?

June 21, 2010 By korbodo

We were doing some research into Father’s Day keyword positions for a SullysBlog.com post using WebPosition Reporter, and noticed something odd.

There was almost NO movement in rankings on Yahoo.

Unsure if Yahoo’s flat lines were an anomaly, we took a look at different report with over 200 keywords and saw a similar trend. There was movement in 12% of Google positions, 7% had some change in Bing and less than 3% had any change on Yahoo.

Almost as interesting is the volatility in positions on Bing – more up and down vs. a visible, gradual trend on Google. Perhaps once Bing receives an influx of traffic after the Yahoo cut-over, and therefore more user and click data, we’ll start to see more gradual trends at Bing?