Why pay Yahoo?

I've just been to Yahoo, intending on risking the money to get listed in the directory. Firstly i searched by freebieholics, just to see what happened. I was listed, it said by Google. The page has pr2, but the link doesn't count.

Next i tried the directory, knowing this is actually what i'm paying for. My sites not listed, as expected. so i went to spend the money.

Then i realised the page is PR0. So seeing as the link is useless for SEO purposes, why pay for the link? The main results must give more traffic than the directory results, and that's free.

Can anyone tell me why i should pay the £200?

I personally think you'd be better off spending that on a PPC or something. There's not even any guarantee that you'll get in the directory even if you do splash out on a submission, plus you'll only be slightly higher up the search results than you already are.

I think today there are better ways to spend £200 pound than at Yahoo.

I believe yahoo is still worth the cash, i've just added a site and got 2 directory entries for the one fee, already generating about 40 targeted visitors a day. + you get a longer description than most of the sites already listed so more keywords are picked up by the yahoo searchers and your listing stands out in the directory list.
I for one am a happy yahoo customer.

depends what traffic your after. yahoo US only lists google results.

Yahoo UK lists directory results.

I am doing VERY well off the yahoo listing.

Have a look at your competitors. What have they done?

For my area I'm getting 30-40 uniques per day from my Yahoo listing. Doesn't sound a lot but thats $110 EPC.

At the moment yahoo is better than google for me.

Cheers guys,

i'm gonna think about it for a week.

we could all get together and submit 10 websites to yahoo at one go and save lots of money!

toby

I would apply a formula along the following lines:

1) Work out your rpv (revenue per visitor) - or at least how much you are prepared to pay per visitor. If you are bidding on espotting, Overture or Google Adwords, you have probably already done this exercise. My sites which are affiliate based generally don't earn enough (yet) to justify any of these, so let's say your site makes 4p per visitor...

2) Use a site like www.wordtracker.com, or a programme such as "Good keywords" to work out roughly how many people are searching on relevant terms to your site. Let's say there's 10,000 relevant UK searches on your topic.

3) Previously, I'd go on 20% of those searching on Yahoo, but that figure is much lower if you take out the Espotting and Google fed results. Let's say 5%, so 500 relevant searches.

4) Find out how many other competitors there are, and if you can get a description which makes your site stand out (often difficult)

5) If you assume your site will do "as well" as everyone else, let's say - there are 10 sites, you may get 10% of traffic (more on this later).

6) You may therefore expect 50 visitors per day.

7) These will be worth 50 x 4p = £2 per day

You are spending £200 for this, therefore:

9) 100 days to pay back your investment.

Make your own decision from there, but at least make sure your site conforms to the Y! guidelines, otherwise you will, of course, be guaranteed to chuck your £200 down the drain!

I think that's a good method to go by. I have actually already decided myself that i'd give this a miss for now, but i'm sure your post will help others decide.

BTW, i stopped doing adwords PPC for the site in general as i don't make enough per visitor to make it worth while either, but i do have lots of adwords ads advertising specific pages within the site that do very well. You can also use adwords to send the visitor direct to the merchant.

Looks like Yahoo UK have now followed suit and started using google results rather than directory results in the same way Yahoo.com does.

Much trickier now to know whether paying £200 for inclusion in the directory is worth it as if you are doing well on google you would appear anyway.

I suppose if your catagory has a high PR it may be worth it for the boost but I don't think much traffic will come from the directory on its own. Doubt I will renew.

Yeah Im with you on that Im getting about 25 uniques a day from Yahoo at themoment and my terms arent that popular generally anyway so I think its best to stick with google for free if you already have ok listings.