Did you get stung by the recent Yahoo! update from last week? Get over it. The update will not be complete for another week or two, but I would like to give the same advice I do each month. Stop tracking your rankings. Successful web marketing is based on sales, leads generated, AdSense revenue, etc. The time you spend checking rankings should be better spent reviewing your web logs, updating your keyword research, writing content, researching new affiliates, testing new landing pages, contacting potential partners, etc. Take it from someone who has been in this business for nine years and studies the algorithms closely – don’t chase the algorithms. You say that you have a #2 ranking for a certain keyword phrase that alone is bringing your site 550 visitors per day? Great. In the time that you have spent gaining that ranking, I have written 285 pages of unique content, obtained 821 links, etc. and collectively I am getting over 1,300 visitors per day. “The Tale of the Tail” rewards the “low hanging fruit” keywords with higher conversion ratios – which is why you have a web business. I always find it humorous that with the trillions of combinations of keyword phrases there will be those on the forums that complain because their site dropped from the top of the listings for one keyword phrase. Search engine algorithms are complex and imperfect.
Channel your energy in fixing the problem, instead of complaining about it. Repeat after me: “Positions don’t matter – qualified traffic and conversions do.” Repeat.
While Tim Mayer was late with his “weather report” on the update, he did state, ‘We need to ensure quality results for our users,’ Mayer said. ‘If we feel that this is a much better experience for our users, we feel it’s the right thing to do.’ Many webmasters are complaining that Spam is at an all-time high in Yahoo!. My response, “It’s Inktomi, what do you expect?” Yahoo! has always allowed content spam and other intrusions into their index. Yes they have gotten better but what is needed is a complete rewrite of the Inktomi bot if Yahoo! wants to be considered a favorite of webmasters and SEOs alike. When our monthly algorithm update comes out next week, you will see exactly how this update has unfolded. I will also compare it to how it has looked over the last six months and we should see some definite trends. While Yahoo! has done numerous updates this year, this is just their third major update of their index.
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