Paid Inclusion - The right choice?

[jch76]

I have been running on Yahoo's Paid Inclussion porgram for about a year under it's former name: Site Match Exchange. Unfortunately I thought (when the program was brought to me by our online media agency) that the inclusion would target Yahoo's shopping engine. After interviewing with a couple of different SEM firms I am under the impression that paid inclusions has a negative effect on my listings if I was to bail out of the program.

The same agency is pitching the paid inclussion program for my EU accounts. Before I make the decision to turn ON or not this program (Paid Inclusion) I would like have more feedback on the program. Thanks!

[demonwebb]

As I understand it, paid inclusion only speeds up the process of getting listed in Yahoo; it has no effect on position. If you are already listed in Yahoo, there is no benefit of paying to be resubmitted as far as I can see.

See this article (http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167881) for more.

[promarkweb]

Are you talking about the Search Submit function at Yahoo? Or Directory Submission?

The Search Submit function will affect your listings within the Yahoo pages. You are paying to be listed, and you are paying for clicks onto your site. So it is in Yahoo's best interest to get you up to the top. Now, the only down side is that this service can be very, very expensive if you use it, but I guess that depends on conversion and new business developed. If you can bring in an extra 200k in profit, does 50k for this program worth it? Up to you.

As you can see under some of my other posts, I have a hunch that Yahoo's results are being driven by $$ now, versus quality organic results. I'm going to run a little test using the PPC, and see how that goes.

I will add a note that when we stopped paying for PPC on yahoo a while back, our listings and rankings plummeted. On searches where we come up top 1-5 on google, our page isn't even indexed by Yahoo. Kinda fun isn't it?

All in all, I would ask if the program this company set you up on, has been profitable or not. If not, then you should probably look at reviewing services from other companies to see what else is out there. If their program has grown sales, well, it can't be all bad.

[trellian]

After interviewing with a couple of different SEM firms I am under the impression that paid inclusions has a negative effect on my listings if I was to bail out of the program.
With Site Match Xchange (now called Yahoo Search Submit Pro)

As this is the XML feed based program, which does/can indeed provide ranking boosts in Yahoo as the xml feeds that are supplied to Yahoo for indexing can be "better" optimized than what a normal page would be.

That is because with XML feeds, you do not need to include any of the page content that you do now want included, such as text links to other pages.. copyright footers etc... basically you can strip all the extra keywords on a page that deflate the keyword densities of search terms that you really want to target on that page..

So if your feed was optimized, then yes you may slip in rankings if you cancel your feed. The best way to test this is by suspending your feed and as soon as it is down, check if your rankings have changed (dropped). If not, then the chances are that your feed was not optimized in the first place.

If they do drop then you need to evaluate if the drop in rankings is significant enough to re-activate the feeds or not and use the funds saved on paying the CPC rates to other use, such as PPC campaigns that can generate more targeted clicks.

Cheers
David

[davecarberry]

Besides Yahoo are there any sites out there currently that are doing paid inclusion that are worthwhile?

[natasha499]

I submitted to the yahoo directory and have not noticed an increase in promotion from yahoo based on Traffic.

I was already getting a few links from their shopping area for vacation rentals.. and this was before I submitted the paid inclusion for their directory.

I have not notice any increase in traffic or higher rankings because of the directory listing.

Also, I have noticed some of my competitors and many listings in the Yahoo directory. How can I add more listings without paying an arm and a leg.

[DarkMatter]

It is my opinion that an entry in Yahoo directory is more useful for branding than for receiving traffic. If all the big guys in your industry are there, you might want to be there too, just to keep your name in the consumer's mind. Very few people use directories to find stuff, I personally prefer search engines.

Most websites probably don't need it. I also think it's very overpriced.