After pondering over a few changes that I’ve seen recently, I’ve come to realize that Yahoo is fun and games, while Google is there to provide you with the most reliable resources to get the job done.

MyYahoo vs iGoogle:

As most of us are aware, Google offers you your own personalized iGoogle homepage once you are logged into your Google account. Just the same, Yahoo offers MyYahoo! personalized homepage once logged into your Yahoo account. Over the past few weeks, Yahoo has made big changes to their MyYahoo page to strongly resemble iGoogle’s features and tools. Seems almost apples to apples at first glance. However, Yahoo seems to have made their layout a little more functional, user friendly, and are working on adding even more social networking capabilities such as message boards.

Even more so, Yahoo allows you to customize both the color of your page (or theme if you wish), column layout of your page, and a feature to add further pages. As I am aware Google has all but one of these features, Yahoo seems to push the envelope with their design and easy to find “share this page” buttons. Yahoo earns 1 up on the fun factor here.

iGoogle focuses on a clean layout, few theme selections, and allows you to get down to business with what you want on your page. The tools are mostly provided by outside sources. You can integrate your Google calendar, news, and other various categories. Just looking at the popular categories to select from, we can tell the tools are for a more mature audience. Google earns 1 up on the Business factor.

Yahoo Features vs Google Features

Yahoo focuses more and more on the kids and teens (elementary/junior high)

- Yahoo 360
- Yahoo Games
- Yahoo Music
- Yahoo Kids (Yahooligans)

Google pulls in the older crowd (high school/college) with features such as:

- Scholar search
- Book Search
- News Search

Yahoo ask’s the audience, while Google gathers the facts from reliable resources. As much as reliability outweighs ‘he said she said’ answers, Yahoo answers has grown amazingly large and comes to the top for searches dealing with the question being asked.

So what have we learned today? Yahoo is fun and Google gets the job done.

How can we use this information to help out SEO/SEM?

SEO should be focused towards the target audience, and as we understand, each  search engine targets a specific audience. Have a client that is selling children’s toys? Get them set up with a PPC campaign through Yahoo. Have a client wanting to obtaining leads for car sells? Google is the way to go.

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All websites should serve the purpose of either selling services/products, or informing their users. No matter what your business plan is, the user always comes first. To have a successful online marketing campaign, you have to corner your niche and target your audience.

There are an abundant amount of online marketers that push clicks and traffic as being a buying factor into their services. The line I use all too often is that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. Horses are one thing, but when you start leading animals down to the watering hole that don’t naturally drink from them, conversions are 99 times harder to come by. This is why target marketing is so important in todays online industry.

Not only will target marketing be the soul driving factor of the search engines in the near future (I suspect within the next 3 years), it is also the easiest way to grab your audience and sell them on your purpose.

Social networks such as Facebook and Myspace are making it easier than ever before to create our own little sections and leach off it’s pre-defined juice (or users rather).

Recently I created a Mypsace profile for BestPartyEver.com to bring in targeted traffic. With BPE being it’s own social network for party goers, vendors, and event planners; what better audience to target than those already apart of a social network?

With this in mind, I also thought about the possibilities that Myspace already offers. Myspace has groups for users interested in different areas. Groups are probably one of the easiest places to scrounge around and dig up potential traffic. Since BPE is for parties, we can focus on the groups planning weddings, baby showers, army wifes, food vendors, and party/event planners.

Taking it a step beyond adding friends to our newly created Myspace, I added a list of services that we offered. This is to funnel the Myspace visitors to our BestPartyEver.com page.

Of course after users are so kindly to add us to their Myspace page, I have to thank them. What a better way than to create “comment stickers” or banners to lay out the basics of what BPE can provide to them as an individual. All comment stickers should focus on our groups for a more personal touch. Those planning a wedding will get “Plan your wedding with BPE,” and those holding a baby shower will get “Celebrate the birth of your baby using BPE” and the like.

Putting in the extra care to market a target audience per the individual’s wants and needs is a surefire way to not only increase your traffic, but your conversions as well.

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SEO for many years has moved from one level to the next. In the mid to late 90s, SEO was all about meta tags, keywords, and backlinks. Spam central hit the net as website owners grew brighter and took note on what worked. Don’t kid yourself, you know you did it too (at least to some point). It was an “if you can’t beat em, join em” scenario. Venturing into mid 2000’s, we discovered that not only did we have to have backlinks, but they had to be relevant. We also noticed that “content is king” and to be on top of your game, you must have relevant content on your website that related to your backlinks. Meta’s were still important, but the keyword tag nearly lots all meaning.

We are now approaching the end of 2007, and boy are times changing. There are enough online social networks, blogs, and user feedback sites to make your head spin. You can no longer just be “on” the internet; you have to be “in” the internet. Many markets are falling behind, as the ones that jumped on board when the internet first started or soon there after, and kept abreast of the changing online market, are striving to the top.

Within the last 6-7 months alone, SEO services took a leap up the ladder. No longer can an SEO specialist manage 50 accounts, we are cut down to10 max to give each client the understanding and dedication they deserve for their services. SEO/SEM packaged contracts dwindled down and we now must customize them per clients need. Prices have gone up as more time is needed to receive well rounded desired results, and hourly pricing is necessary to keep businesses afloat. Now we must focus on details details details. There is always more to come, so sit tight and keep focused on your target market, your niche, what they use, and who you are. That is the key, has been the key, and will always be the key, to online success.

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