Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

So I asked this question in our forums:

Where would you rather rank: #1 on MSN or #6 on Yahoo?

I think a few weeks ago I would have said # 6 on Yahoo since it would bring more traffic. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

So we have a site that is doing well in MSN and Yahoo. It ranks # 1 in MSN and # 6 in Yahoo for the same keyword. (one word) I was so happy when the site finally hit # 6 because I was thinking Yahoo would give us butt loads more traffic. Guess what??? It didn’t happen so I did some research and here is what I found:

MSN # 1 SERP = 65% of total visitors
Yahoo # 6 SERP = 35% of total visitors

This is out of an average of 1200 unique visitors a day… so it’s not a little keyword that people stumble on. I’m sure there are factors that cause this…

1) If the searcher finds what they are looking for in the first few results… game over no need to go to # 3 let alone # 6.

2) Related to the above but if someone goes to a site that has an affiliate or contextual ads they are then redirected away from the search results.

3) Theme of the search. MSN has a more mature user base and some search you can see the difference. i.e. real estate, finance, etc.

Now I’m not saying that MSN brings in more traffic than Yahoo. We have sites rank # 1 on both and Yahoo brings in double if not more of the traffic. What I am saying is that position dictates traffic and a few spots can make a big difference.

Our very first online adventure was seven years ago selling beanie babies on the Internet. (stop laughing) We didn’t have a shopping cart program we just took phone and email orders and sent the product out via US Mail. It was very small operation but we did however sell butt loads of beanie babies.

Looking back there sure was a lot of work involved in finding the beanie babies, maintaining the inventory levels, taking orders, verifying the shipments and then finally shipping the merchandise.

A couple years back we had a decent size (500 products) website that sold medical supplies and equipment. If there is one thing I learned from owning and operating your own ecommerce website is it’s a lot of work. Then I discovered affiliate programs and the easy money.

Why are affiliate programs easy money? It’s simple… you deliver the traffic and a vendor handles the rest. No taking phone calls that last 30 minutes just to sell a $2.95 gauze. The great thing about affiliates is you can actually make money while you sleep or play golf. Of course you need to work hard at get traffic to your website… traffic is the big key to success.

Right now we use three affiliate programs one of which is Amazon. Regardless of what anyone says Amazon is not dead… they don’t always pay the greatest but there is a trade off. Conversion can often be a little higher as people know they are dealing with a major company that will deliver what’s ordered.

Of course contextual publisher advertising (Adsense & YPN) bring in good money but having a good affiliate is the icing on the cake. The best part is you don’t have to hear a 45 mintue story about some old man’s colostomy bag.

I must get a few emails and PM’s a week form people asking me how they can get there site back in Google. Here is an example of the type of email I get:

Dear Site Sift Guy,

My site was banned in Google a few days ago and Joe Blow (name changed) from Digital Point Forums said I need to speak with you. Can you tell me how I can get all 200,000 pages back in Google? My site is only a six months old but it would be nice to know how you got back in so fast.

Thanks,

Igotbanned

So my first thought is WOW 200,000 pages in six months probably why you got banned but who am I to judge the guy wanted to know how I got back in so here it goes.

First off there was a lot of speculation on why Site Sift Web Directory was banned. Nobody knows for sure but the people at Google and anyone that says different is guessing.

The first thing I did was send an email to Google inquiring about the ban. I got back a very template like email that mentions the common reasons why people get banned. Then I waited a few weeks after the ban to take in all the debates and to figure things out. In that time we worked on organizing some categories and taking care of what I felt might be the issues.

About three weeks into the ban I felt like we did a good job of identifying issues that lead to our ban. Around the same time I read a post on Matt Cutts blog about filling a reinclusion request. I also did a bit of research on what to say in the email for reinclusion.

I didn’t keep a copy of my original email but it went a little something like this:

Dear Google,

On Aug 26, 2005 my site www.site-sift.com was banned from the Google index. After careful review of the webmaster guidelines we have made the following changes to our site.

1) Change number one.
2) Change number two
3) Change number three
4) Change number four

The changes we made are permanent and we plan on strictly adhering to the webmaster guidelines going forward. We appreciate your consideration for reinclusion into the Google index.

Thank you,

Stuart McHenry
Site Sift Media, Inc.

So I sent a communication off via the Google form and labeled it attention: reinclusion request. I heard back from Google a few days later saying they had received my email and forwarded to the right department.

At that point I figured it would take a few months to get back in the index. A few days later I was doing my regular routine (checking Google daily) and I saw that Site Sift was back in. I really didn’t believe it at first and I thought something was funny and Google was serving up old data. Then I realized that Google is improving webmaster relations and this is proof of it.

I figured it’s time to get my own blog where I can rant and speak my mind to the world. This blog will be a collection of my thoughts and will not be specific to one topic. However, most of my post might be about search engines, SEO, directories and things I do day in and day out.

I have made a commitment to myself to post at least 3-4 times per week.