This seemed like a hot topic to me so I wrote to some
SEO experts to get their opinions on whether Yahoo's worth the $299 you pay every year for a listing.
Here's what they said:
Yahoo's directory sent about a dozen visitors to Canned Books last year, so those visitors cost me $30 a pop. For $299, I can get a lot of customers through Overture. I can make a profit with Overture. Yahoo owns Overture, so they will still get paid, but I'm going to pay for results, not a hidden link.
Dan Thies,
SEO Research Labs
http://www.seoresearchlabs.com
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Only for the link value for
PR, which is why I suggest all clients do it if they can afford to. I don't think enough people know that to search the Yahoo Directory, they have to type in the URL
http://dir.yahoo.com or do a "web" search from the Yahoo front page and then click the "Directory" tab that comes up on the result page. The only other way to find your way into the directory to do a search is to click on one of the category links from the front page, then do a search. Does anyone do that but those few of us in the
SEO biz that know the difference? I sincerely doubt it.
Mike Banks Valentine
http://SEOptimism.com
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Maybe. I am waiting to see what happens when Yahoo replaces Google with some blend of the Inktomi/alltheweb/AltaVista Crawlers to figure out if the Yahoo directory continues to make sense. For bigger clients, $299 is pocket change, so Yahoo Express looks inexpensive to them. But for smaller clients, $299 can buy enough paid listings to make Yahoo Express look like a frill.
Greg Jarboe
http://www.seo-pr.com
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I've said it at conferences for over 5 years, and I'm saying it now. Yahoo is the best $299 anyone can spend for online marketing. For web site owners who want their sites to show up well on Google (or any search engine that measures link popularity), a Yahoo listing is the quickest and least expensive way to get a high-quality link to a site.
Shari Thurow
http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/
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Nope. At least not the way it is right now. You get into Google for free, and get nothing extra by being in the Yahoo directory, so why pay for it. Plus, you get saddled with Yahoo's lousy Title instead of the one you have control over.
Jill Whalen
http://www.HighRankings.com
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We look at the cost of a directory placement, the same way we look at any other paid link. If the listing is likely to generate referrals and is relevant to the business, we would consider the link. If we thought that a $299 listing in Yahoo would generate enough traffic (i.e. it was in a category that is very popular) we would still consider paying the fee. Of course, we do look at the
SEO benefit of any link, but this is secondary to the actual traffic directly from the link.
Andy Beal
http://www.websourced.com/
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It depends. Google is still providing results there, so if you have good rankings in Google, your pages will be in Yahoo! anyway.
However, if you have a brand new site with zero visibility, paying $299 a year to get into Yahoo! will put your site on the map faster and will help your link popularity as well.
It also depends on how Yahoo! uses Inktomi results when it switches over. It may offer a pay inclusion program that covers both the search engine and directory -- I've heard rumor of that, but we'll have to wait and see how they use Inktomi's results.
Paying to have your site in Yahoo! **at the present time** isn't as important as it used to be. But, a lot depends on the Web site you're working on AND on what happens when Yahoo! begins using Inktomi results.
Robin Nobles
http://www.searchengineworkshops.com
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Currently No, because there is not enough traffic from Yahoo's directory. This is because, 1. it's too large and takes too long to navigate. 2. The search form defaults to web results rather than the directory and the average user doesn't even realize this.
I think Yahoo is going to make changes to their pricing model shortly and the fee will be either performance based or much lower than the $299 because they realize they've abandoned that child.
Jason Dowdell
http://www.GlobalPromoter.com