If you are an avid Foo reader, you may have already digested our previous article on inclusion in the Yahoo search directory. However, 5 tips were not enough and we have further expounded upon the tips to optimize inclusion in Yahoo’s directory. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work!

Tip#5-Draw attention to your site’s unique content in your directory submission. Add value to the Yahoo directory by calling attention to unique aspects of your online business. Make sure you have unique content on your site and highlight it in the 25-word description or the extra comments field in the Yahoo directory submission form.

Tip #6-Get a virtual domain name for your company; (http://www.yourcompany.com) Yahoo wants legitimate organizations and companies listed in their directory. They tend to look negatively toward small start-up companies without domain names. These often dissolve before the coming year, leaving Yahoo with dead links to a URL in their directory. A virtual domain helps show Yahoo your business is legitimate and you are a serious business owner.

Tip #7-Try to get listed in one of Yahoo’s regional directories first. Commercial web sites must pay an annual fee to be listed in the Yahoo directory. If you are in one of the regional areas, you can often get your web site listed much faster in the regional directory than in Yahoo’s main directory.

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One marketing method to help drive traffic to your website is inclusion in an on-line search directory.

Yahoo serves as both a search engine and a major search directory, but be aware there are some distinct differences between the two. This article describes strategies that website owners can use to optimize their inclusion in Yahoo’s directory.

Yahoo has two submission options to their directory: “Standard,” which is free, and “Yahoo Directory Submit,” which involves a submission fee for use by commercial web sites.

If you are paying to submit, use the Yahoo Directory Submit Form. Yahoo editors will choose a category for you. All you need to do is fill out the form that is presented.

Yahoo Search-Part Spider, Part Human!

Part of Yahoo’s search results come from their search engine spiders and indexing software. The other part comes from Yahoo’s human editors called “surfers”. These web surfers view Yahoo directory submissions individually before admission into Yahoo’s directory.

Admissions to the Yahoo directory are entirely at the discretion of surfers viewing individual websites. The following tips will help you optimize your business’ placement in Yahoo’s directory

Tip #1-Use accurate and concise descriptions of website content to optimize Yahoo search directory placement. Business owners have some discretionary power regarding the descriptions that appear in the Yahoo directory.

Owners will be directed to select the most appropriate directory categories for their site and to write accurate descriptions of site content. Factors that affect directory placement are selecting the right category and writing a good concise description.

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We all know that content reigns king, and the quality of the content on your website will determine its overall value to the reader. What we may not understand is the link between the psychological principles of online content and the response generated by the reader. Below is a look at some of elements to keep in mind when you are generating content for your website.

• If a potential buyer is involved in a conflict between their emotions or their intellect, the emotions will win. It’s your job as the content producer to either make this principle work for you or to avoid such a conflict.

• People tend to seek easy formulas to make complexity simpler. Any factor-benefit, feature, or otherwise-that creates confusion regarding your web content should be dropped from awareness, no matter how great it seems. This applies to selling as well as non-selling factors.

• Negative ideas can be misunderstood and take longer to interpret. Avoid negatives in your web content; Don’t introduce problems that didn’t already exist in the potential customer’s mind, even if you see your product or service as the solution to it. That will also create confusion, and it can un-sell what you already may have sold.

• People’s responses are usually in direct proportion to that with which they personally identify. Don’t assume that just because you know something about your product or service, your potential customer will too. On the other hand, NEVER assume that your prospects know nothing-never talk down to them.

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Webmasters should all become familiar with the tools available from Alexa.com.  They can significantly help optimize a website.  The Amazon-owned, Google powered search engine is best known for its website traffic popularity rankings, but Alexa is so much more than that.

First founded in1996, Alexa grew from the visionary idea that web navigation should be intelligent and constantly improving. From that early premise, Alexa has developed one of the largest web crawls and grown into the leading internet traffic-measurement company on the web. The more people use Alexa, the more useful it becomes.

The Alexa Toolbar is at the core of Alexa’s system. Millions of members worldwide have downloaded the Alexa Toolbar to take advantage of this free web navigation service that works with users’ web browsers.  As users surf the web Alexa accompanies them and provides useful information about the sites they visit and suggests related links.

Alexa Toolbar users form a world-wide community that contributes extremely valuable information about the web, how it is used, and what is considered relevant or not. Alexa website rankings are developed based on an information sampling from about 10 million users.

From a search engine optimization standpoint all webmasters would love to tap into an audience of 10 million users! In fact, there are tremendous benefits to those who optimize their website for Alexa’s audience. Your Alexa score is influenced only by those who possess the Alexa browser plugin, thus may have stipulated that websites with subject matter catering to the webmaster audience may fair best. With that said, any and all websites can benefit from Alexa, and it is unwise to neglect their overall reach.

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Brand image is the perception consumers have of a particular brand. Just how important is a successful brand image to a company involved in e-commerce? Well, ask yourself, “What’s really in a name?”

A rose by any other name, would smell just as sweet. And while this may be obvious to the olfactory senses, consider this: Close your eyes and mentally picture a beautiful fragrant long-stemmed rose. Now, across that mental picture stamp the word “daisy” in bold letters. True, both are flowers; but this new mental image doesn’t seem very believable now, does it?

Successful Branding Creates Unforgettable Mental Images

The human brain tends to mentally reject new names for well-recognized images once a mental picture and name have successfully “branded” together into our memories. That is why some common products are recognized synonymously by their brand name. More often than not, most people refer to a box of facial tissues as “Kleenex” because that name is “branded” into our minds synonymously with an image of facial tissues.

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Developing a business online is all about building an online presence. The popular term “your reputation precedes you” is highly relevant and significantly true on the Internet.

There is nothing more important to your online presence than your slogan. This is the witty one or two line saying that will be uttered and it shall illicit thoughts of your business. It is the enduring image of your business online. Your slogan is the way that your business will live on and grow through out the Internet. It is for this reason that you will want to make sure that your slogan says the right things about you and your business.

Step One

Find a single area of your business to focus on when it comes to your slogan. A slogan that is too general will not be easily remembered. When you focus on one aspect of your business to create an online presence, you are choosing to place your best foot forward.

Step Two

A slogan should be focused around a product or service. If your slogan does not direct leads to your product or service then it is not maximizing its potential.

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The greatest concern for most webmasters is avoiding search engine optimization mistakes and driving traffic to their websites. Novice webmasters may rush to get their website up and running, only to wonder later what else they should have done to improve their website’s SEO. Sometimes all it takes to improve SEO is a little evaluation and tweaking.

Webmasters have two choices: Pay to hire a professional search engine marketer or learn to do it themselves. Either way, webmasters will still need some method for on-going monitoring and evaluation of their website.

This is marketing essential-keeping a website tweaked to optimum advantage.

SEO is critical to your website as it climbs up the search engine ranks. Many small on-line business owners with limited funds may choose the do-it-yourself “sweat equity” option. If you choose to learn basic SEO skills rather than hire a professional search engine marketer, this information may help you avoid some costly mistakes.

And even if you choose to hire a professional search engine marketer, you still may not get the kind of results you want. So either way, learning SEO skills is a valuable asset to gain. It will equip you to better understand marketing strategies geared toward search engines instead of just customers. It will also help you to learn more about your business competition and the on-line business market.

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Hello Valued Foo’s!

We would like to be the first to welcome you to our newly designed skin! Yes, FooWebDesigns.com has upgraded our look and our servers too!

Unfortunately, in the process of upgrading to high-bandwidth servers, our database was lost, and hence the majority of our content. Not to fear fellow Foo’s - we are currently developing new articles that will help you drive traffic, increase your Alexa ranking, enhance your branding, and add powerful SEO tricks to your arsenal.

So slap me some skin, enjoy our newly design skin and let’s get back to SEO, web deisgn and branding tips, tricks and ideas that will leave your comeptition in tears.. All that is left is to pity the foo!