I see people daily preaching about how web site owners need to pay upwards of $7,500.00 or more for a marketing consultant who also practices search engine optimization. The reason given for this is that any SEO can get you top rankings, but that will not help you sell your products. They preach that searchers have no trust, they say that getting a #1 position for your relevant keywords will only bring visitors, not sales.

To an extent this is true. But fact is, this is said so you will pay fee they ask. They know their service, they know their prospect's mindset, and they do a fine job of turning you into a new customer.

You know your products or services better than they possibly could. You know your customers better than they ever could. This stands true of any industry or business model. Make that work for you!

Instead of shelling out dinero, why not sit down and lay out groundwork for a plan of action based on what you know about your business and it's customers. What do they want to see, how much detail do they want to see, and above all, what does it take to close sale.

Once you know all of this, rest is merely laying it all out on web site according to your plan. It sounds easy, and it really is not, it takes hard work on your part. But you are not relying on someone who claims that they will research your business and be expert enough in a matter of days to sell your product line.

Do not fall for hype.

What is new Yahoo?

Last year, Yahoo bought AltaVista, Fast, and Inktomi search engines. The new Yahoo results are none of these. Many people are saying that results come from a new Inktomi because results are similar; but results are also similar to all other search engines out there. In comparing these engines, it seems to me that Yahoo's results are from a brand new engine. Maybe they took parts and ideas from all search engines they bought - maybe they even took best parts - , but whatever they did, result is something completely new.

Which search engine is better?

I will be comparing Google and Yahoo for terms "music", "art prints and posters", "Bahamas real estate", "mosquito nets", and "liposuction". The other search engines all hold less than 4% of market share (except for MSN which uses Yahoo's Inktomi), so I won't be considering them. Here is what I found in top 10 results for each keyphrase:

Music

Yahoo offers a lot of music resource sites. Information about music from different sources such as magazine, TV and other music news sites are found 6 times in top 10 results. It also offered downloading and file sharing programs 3 times. The 10th result was an audio player program site.

Google has a lot more diversity. There were 3 music resource sites (but no magazines), one downloading program, one CD store, one radio station (Yahoo radio), one music directory, and 10th result was an audio player program site. Google also had 2 sites in its top ten that were of no value whatsoever; MP3.com which just has one page stating that they no longer offer services that they used to (with links to their parent company), and music.com, which is nothing more than an email gathering site for a newsletter (not a single link on entire page).

Google's diversity is a big bonus, but 2 spam/junk/useless sites really hurt it. The results? Yahoo 1, Google 0.

Art Prints And Posters

Yahoo offers 6 stores, while Google offers 5. The other links are all affiliate spam with no content whatsoever (just links to stores), with exception of one of Yahoo's links, which has some biographical content about artists. So Google has 5 spam sites, and Yahoo has 3 and a half.

Yet another round goes to Yahoo.