Yahoo7 launches new portal

Yahoo has always played second fiddle to Ninemsn ever since it launched. Ninemsns greater and more relevant local content tied in with its huge television and magazine promotions have given it more traffic. More traffic leads to more advertising. More advertising means more cash. More cash means a better, fresher website.

Yahoo unlike in other countries is a small player in Australia although its new initiative to integrate channel 7 content and info into the website will surely put the stick into Ninemsn.

Yahoo in the early days was a dominant player with their directory structure of providing content to web "newbies". As the web user has become more and more educated this directory structure has not been as useful because of the weird and wacky requirements for information from the more informed web user. Putting a big Search bar infront of a user these days does confuse them it excites them.

I am keen to see how this changes the online media space and perhaps some day you will see TV media sales packaged with media space on their websites?!?

Comments appreciated.

Search engine optimisation tip #1 - Page titles

Page titles are a key consideration by Google when looking at your website as to what exactly the page is all about. The key is to name your titles with the keywords you are looking to optimise the page for.

Example:
www.lasik.com.au
Laser eye surgery from Laser Sight Centres

Pages throughout this website change title as you move from different content areas. This is good SEO since you are customising each page to particular keywords and not just targetting your generic words.

This also comes back to the principle of 1 page for 1 keyword.

Any questions or comments please post.

N.B. This is a forum I read to get some new insights and opinions to our own search engine optimisation http://www.searchengineforums.com/

What works well online

I have lots of questions and thoughts about what companies actually work online. My answer to this is really based upon objectives and definition of what you mean by works.

Products that work well online are usually ones that dont need to be seen or felt or touched or tried on etc.. low human interaction is required. Good examples of this are:

• Books (Amazon)
• Computers (Dell, newegg.com, techbuy)
• Credit cards (Virgin Money)
• Pharmaceuticals (www.yourchemistshop.com.au)
• Flowers (Roses only)
• gift baskets (www.thebasketcase.com.au )
• Insurance (HCF, NIB, NRMA, QBD)
• Real Estate (realestate.com.au)
• Cars (carsales)
• Second hand goods and auctions (ebay)
• Music (mp3.com.au, hmv, virginmega.com)
• DVD rental (netflix)
• Mortgages (aussies, wizard)
• Software (sourceforge)
• Newspapers (news.com.au, smh, ninemsn)
• Dating (rsvp, match.com, lavalife)
• Pornography and sex toys (... too many .. adultshop)
• Gambling (Pokerparty, Betfair)
• Perfume
• Jobs (careerone)
• Stock trading (etrade, all banks commsec, westpac, st george)
• electronics (xbox, tvs, dvd, cameras)
• Digital photo processing
• Travel (lastminute, expedia, .. too many.. this is huge.)
• Internet access
• Web hosting (Webcentral, ozhosting)
• Jewellery
• Swimwear and lingerie
• Games (Software and real life)
• Free stuff (emailcash)
• Distress inventory (lastminute,Overstock)
• Cosmetics (strawberrynet)
• Ringtones and other mobile (blueskyfrog, jamster)

There are many more categories and many more to be added.

Some key criteria which I think work well are but are not necessarily require to be together:

1. Customer need information about the product
2. Customers are price conscious if you have the best price online customers will buy it.
3. The product is digital in nature or primarily based on technology
4. The product is information. Reports, ebooks etc..