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    Web Marketing

    How are you handling 404 pages?

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    Yahoo has incorporated a new feature in it’s slurp bot to find how your website is handling missing pages. Yahoo occasionally may be requesting random gibberish URLs on your server – usually with slurpconfirm404 in them – to see how missing pages are being handled on your server. Understanding how Search Engine robots are crawling and responding to your site is vital in communicating the accessibility and relevancy of your content. What is a 404 error? A 404 error is a low level code that is supposed to be sent by a webserver when the page that has been requested is not found on the server. It communicates to the web browser (or search engine robot) that the content couldn’t be found. Even a missing graphic should return a 404 error. Don’t worry, your site correctly returns a 404 error unless you (or your “web guy”) has intentionally manipulated it to do otherwise. What should be returned when an item is missing? It makes sense to stick with predictable behaviors when dealing with both users and search engines alike. Some sites may have gotten away from sending 404 errors because that is ALL they were sending. It isn’t very user-friendly to send a page that simply says “404 error”, but with a little tweaking a sitemap and branded page can be sent to your user. This simple step will help you keep more visitors, and communicate to search engines when they have requested missing content. See more about Yahoo and slurpconfirm404.

    Yahoo Warns Growth of Internet Advertising Sales slowing in key sectors

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    Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Yahoo warned that ad sales were growing in two key sectors, but not growing as quickly as they had hoped. Semel’s warning was about the Auto and Financial services sectors. He added: “But Yahoo was careful to note that it cannot tell whether the current slowdown is a sign of broader trouble or is limited to ads from the auto and financial sectors.“

    Brand your site with a Favicon

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    Favicons are the small icons you might see for sites in your favorites  / web bookmarks. While they have been around a while, some browsers show them to you more prominently than others. IE 7, due out any time now, uses the tabbed browsing features that have made Firefox, Flock and Safari such popular browsers. IE7’s tabs will show your favicon (if you have one), and give your site a boost in professionalism among your visitors. If your site was developed by Hyper Dog Media, rest assured your site already has a favicon: We make it standard issue of the sites we develop. If you need a favicon, you may find this free favicon generator tool to be helpful.

    PPC Advertisers are tolerant of some fraud

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    A couple of high profile lawsuits against Google and Yahoo Search Marketing have made smaller advertisers stop and think about how much fraud might be happening in their PPC campaigns. After stopping and thinking, however, many search advertisers are willing to live with click fraud. How to investigate click fraud Several AdWords consultants we work with will not even investigate click fraud for clients without a certain minimum of AdWords business (think thousands per month). It just isn’t worth the effort, unfortunately. To investigate, precise traffic measurements and testing procedures must be enacted. This is beyond most AdWords consultants, as it is more of a technical process than a marketing one. Who are these PPC clickers / fraudsters? A few reports have appeared in the news the last few years highlighting houswives in India making $300/month extra income by clicking ads. A Black Hat SEO technique is to click your competitor’s ads until their daily budget is expended. While Google and Yahoo Search Marketing do make efforts to prevent click fraud, obviously more could be done. As long as money is to be made in Google Adwords, most advertisers are going to be too busy honing their campaigns instead of focusing on click fraud.

    Know Thy Audience

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    Slashdot has an interesting discussion about the Ultimate Blog Post. If you want to reap the traffic(and/or server downtime) that can result from a post on slashdot, digg or stumbleupon, it is important to consider what stories get the most exposure. Also consider whether your affiliate ads or products/services are correctly targeted to the demographic that will be visiting.

    Social Networking profiles as Marketing

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    Companies like Burger King are using mySpace and facebook profiles to market directly to certain demographics. As younger audiences are lucrative and maybe a little too marketing saavy, companies are setting up profiles to target customers in a familiar setting. Business Week has an interesting article on Burger King and Chase marketing to kids where they live.