I cannot believe the press this morning, but it’s official Microsoft has made a hostile takeover bid for Yahoo! All of us in the SEM industry have heard this ‘rumor’ before, now it’s for real!

The announcement of Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! didn’t come as a total surprise, these two courtesans have danced around before. A merger of these two have been speculated over for the past 18 months, ever since the companies discussed collaborating in late 2006.

Make no mistake; this deal will close. The $31 per share offer represents a 62% premium over Yahoo!’s market close Thursday.

How can the Yahoo! Board say no? We can’t find many reasons (especially with T.Semel no longer pulling the purse strings). Either way, they should not combine the names; as you can see above neither is very appealing “Yah-soft” or “Micro-hoo” (both sound like childrens candy names to me)

See Latest News Coverage:
Microsoft, Yahoo! In Possible Partnership Talks
A Messy Marriage
Microsoft/Yahoo Merger to Take on Google?
5 reasons to worry about a Microsoft/Yahoo merger
Justice Department likely to review a Microsoft-Yahoo merger

UPDATE:
BlogNewsChannel posted an amazing writeup on the proposed merger see below:

* About 30% of the search engine marketplace. Microsoft has wanted a position to challenge Google for a long time, and this would give them a big enough search engine to hopefully make some noise. However, Microsoft would have to reverse Yahoo’s decline in order to take advantage of that market share.
* Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Hotmail. Yahoo claims 255 million email account, Microsoft 280 million. Reports put Gmail at around 51 million accounts. If properly leveraged, Microsoft’s 500 million-plus accounts could represent an insurmountable number one.
* Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. As of 2006, Microsoft had 61% market share worldwide, good for #1, and Yahoo had between 27% and 37%. Yahoo’s number were the same as AOL Instant Messengers (there is more than 100% because users often use more than one client). Google Talk is a non-factor practically abandoned project, and Microsoft one-two punch could bury this market for good.
* Advertising revenue. Microsoft pulled in $1.5 billion from its online services division in 2007, most of it in ad dollars, losing $510 million. Yahoo made $7 billion in 2007, turned a profit of $700 million, on $6.088 billion in advertising revenue. It isn’t quite Google’s $16 billion, but Yahoo is a profitable online advertising company, and gives Microsoft a strong, larger base to grow from. It will take seven year for Yahoo to make enough revenue to cover the acquisition cost.

Hello SEO Experts,

I know most of the SEO techniques, but one important factor as we all know is pagerank, and to have a higher pagerank we should get inBound links to our site.
My question is, can we make our site appear in top Search Engine Results, without having any inBound links? even for challenging keywords?

Everything related to SEO seems very logical to me, but the most important thing is to have inBound links to your site. It’s really time consuming, to send emails to web masters and ask them for a link. I know a good website will result people to link to us without we ask for, but what if my site is a personal site for example, and it is a normal site, I don’t think people will link to me just like that in my case ! Does that mean I will never be in first page? (Note that I am now in page 10, but I’d like to be in page 1, for a challenging keyword).

By the way, I have submitted my site to some free directories, but I am not sure if this will help my pagerank (currently I am 0/10 and i published my website 4 months ago)

Please advice and let me know how should I go on from now, because concerning the content of my site, I assume it is * VERY WELL * optimized for Search Engines, the only thing remaining is the PageRank issue.

Best regards,
Wassim

Forum discussion continues at HighRankings Forum.
Is SEO Possible Without Inbound Links?

Search engine optimization may become an expensive exercise in terms of money and time, if you as a SEO professional don’t know your role and the expectation others have from you. Following are some suggestions that will help you to perform as an expert SEO professional.

Before developing the content, research your keywords thoroughly. If you select wrong keywords for your content then even effective writing produce no results. So, you should have clear idea about the appropriate keywords. Though many online services like WordTracker and Google AdWords Keyword Tool can help you but it is better if you develop your own keywords keeping in mind the exact purpose of content. Try to insert long tailed keywords in the titles because most of the people search the content using long tailed keywords.

Your page titles also appear on the search engine results as highlighted links. It is better to select a separate unique title for every page of your website. Just to put your company name on the top of every page serves no purpose. Titles of the pages should be able to hint about the content of particular pages.

The content of each and every page should be different, informative and latest.Relevant and compelling but different content of pages helps you on many fronts. This practice makes your website information-rich and your website link-worthy. It also increases overall keyword density in your content without suffocating the content with keywords. Your description also appears on the search engine results. Many people click the link only after going through the description. Use meta tags in your description.

Always avoid the big gap between the title of the page and your content. To keep such people intact with your site, it is better to keep your important stuff at the top. Don’t waste space by having needless JavaScript and tools to make your site more attractive. These measures ultimately serve no professional purpose.

Search engine friendly URLs alo help you to improve the ranking of your site. Hence instead of using dynamically generated URLs, always generate search engine friendly URLs. Use your heading tags to highlight main stuff of the content. Some search engines also pay attention to the content expressed with bullet. You should present your content as anchor text.

Facilities like sitemap and navigation system also attract the readers. Web crawlers’ don’t miss the links provided in the sitemap. It is also good if you submit your website to online directories. This will also improve your internet rank.

You can promote your business online through many ways but paid advertising and search engine optimization are the most popular. Online paid advertising is done through PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns by paying various web owners and bloggers to display your link on their websites. Whenever people surf through those sites, your link automatically appears on the page. It increases the traffic to your website and you get the advantage of increased response ration.

SEO is based on natural search ranking determined by search engines. SEO means targeting the right keywords and relevant terms. It doesn’t target every word on your page. Hence, appropriate use of keywords in the web content is important. Your web page is ranked according to the kind of information you provide on your website. There are many techniques that can improve your ranking.

Both of the above kinds of advertisement techniques have their own pros and cons. Today, most of the professionals are opting for search engine optimization because it has certain advantages over the paid advertising.

SEO advertisement technique remains effective for longer period than online paid advertising. If it is done properly at the very start, it is difficult to change your search engine ranking. Only big changes in search engines algorithms can affect your ranking. Naturally appearing links are trusted more by most of the net users that is why majority of the net users never clicks the sponsored or PPC links.

SEO is much cheaper than paid advertising because in online paid advertising you pay for every click whether you get revenue or not. While in case of SEO, if you get higher ranking due to the quality content of your page, you have to pay nothing for clicks. SEO maintains your website. Good SEO enhances the existing conversion rate significantly. By updating your web page content regularly or by introducing some changes in the content or formatting, you can attract right kind of people towards your products or services.

Although SEO is a trusted way of online advertisement and marketing but it has some shortcomings also. Though you don’t pay anything regularly for SEO but you need the services of a SEO professional on regular basis. However to reduce the recurring charges of SEO professional, you can hire some company or individual on contract basis. In most of the cases, SEO marketing takes long time to deliver the expected results. Till, then you can’t simply wait. To cover this shortcoming, it is better to generate some traffic through paid search engine advertising for the time being.

Though a major portion of your web traffic comes from other web sites, but search engines too can boost your site traffic, if your web content is of standard quality. Your web page ranking in any search engine depends upon the style and management of content. Hence, to improve your web page ranking, it is must to optimize your web page content. Following are some tips, which will help you to optimize your web content.

Your web content should be relevant to the keywords used in the title or in links. The content of your blog should be able to attract readers as well as search engines. Keywords should be used at the standard keywords density that is 2% of total words volume. Most of the search engines remain in regular search of relevant and fresh material according to the index. So, if your web content is relevant and updated then more search engine crawlers will click your blog and your web ranking will go up.

Your blog post titles should be unique and compelling. Compelling blog post titles attract the readers at first instance when they see title index on the search engine results. Many search engines determine the rank of your blog according to the post title. So, be careful about the post title. You can make post titles more attractive by using relevant and popular phrases. Effective use of keywords in the titles makes the web content more productive.

You should use only search engine friendly URLs. Now a days, there are many blogging softwares and content management systems that provide search engine friendly URLs. For this specific job, you should avoid using conventional publishing software because theses softwares don’t generate search engine friendly URLs. It is better to use important keywords or titles in URLs. Always provide some links to your other posts in new posts. By adapting this practice you enhance the importance of your older posts as well as your professional value. Use the main keywords in hyperlinks provided in your web content.

Structure of the content is also important. You should divide your content under headings and subheadings. Use headings and subheadings after every one or two paragraphs to highlight your views. This specific feature helps the readers as well as search engines to determine the quality of your content. Try to put main keywords in headings and subheadings but don’t enforce them.

The term ‘Accessibility’ in context of websites means that website is accessible and useful to the people of all categories. If it is designed specifically for limited segments of the readers, it will not deliver expected ranking. Hence you should be aware of the fact if your website is accessible or not.

In a bid to make the site search engine friendly, some SEOs make the site too much complicated as a result of this general net- users drift away from your site. Incorporate accessibility features into your website to make your website search engine friendly. For this there are some mandatory government regulations also. Your site should also be accessible to the visually challenged search engine crawlers. But there are many factors, which make your site inaccessible.

In absence of properly defined navigation system, your site becomes inaccessible to many crawlers. Never use too many images or flash animations to make your site attractive. If your website is about videos and images then it becomes must to insert videos and images but even then use them with proper reference. Never use needless stuff to fill up the pages of your site.

While optimizing your web content keep in mind that people who have visual or physical impairments may also be your customers. If you neglect the requirements of this segment, you will loose considerable part of generated response. Following are some suggestions that will help you to make your site more accessible.

You should place a sitemap at the top of your web pages. This makes easy to come across all of your links immediately with just few clicks. Always try to insert main keywords in the provided hyperlinks. Proper use of keywords in the hyperlinks keeps the surfers intact with your site.

Avoid JavaScript and flash animations in your web content. These aspects of your site serve no purpose for visually impaired surfers. Always use the ALT text with all the images inserted in your web content. This will facilitate the visually impaired surfers to go through the complete content.

The titles of all of your web pages should different, relevant and meaningful. Titles should contain appropriate keywords. To make the tiles more attractive, you can use popular phrases. Always keep in mind that it is title only that a browse reads first of all. Your web content should be divided in to small paragraphs with heading or subheadings. This will facilitate surfers to find out the needed information easily.

To improve ranking on search engine through optimizing web page content, it is must to keep in mind ceratin aspects. A good SEO strategy follows only highly recommended and legitimate steps. There are many general practices that can ruin all of your efforts invested in optimizing web page content to improve ranking. Following are some practices that shouldn’t be adapted as a short cut measures to improve your web content ranking.

Never stuff your website pages with primary or secondary keywords. This practice delivers only negative impresion to the readers, Search engines too don’t find any relevant information in such contents at first go. As a result, search engines block your website.

Every website has some popular pages. You get most of the traffic due to these pages only. Try to find out the most popualr pages of your site. Don’t remove these pages, while updating or improving your web content. Try to put the index on these pages. If it becomes mandatory to make changes in these pages, use permanent redirect setting in access file to redirect search engines and surfers to the new URL.

Never exchange links indiscriminately. If you exchange links with other webmasters or bloggers, it should be meaningful. Links exchanging exercise shouldn’t be done just for search engine optimization instead it should be value-based. Don’t ignore the importance of web analytics tools while optimizing your web content.

Search engines don’t value images. Always avoid use of images as navigation links and if it is necessary don’t forget using ALT attribute. It is better to use text links using CSS definitions. Always avoid using a badly defined robot.txt file because such files may block search engine traffic. This file is generally used to tell search engine crawlers about the index of your other website. Even a single command existing in this file can block an entire folder.

Don’t delay SEO. SEO should begin at the very first stage of your website launch. Without proper SEO you can’t attract relevant traffic to your website. The way you define your URLs, write the content, define navigation bar affects your SEO. If you do SEO work after launching your website, you may have to repeat about 70% same exercise again.

Don’t neglect the expectations and convenience of human visitors just to meet out the requirements of search engines crawlers. Always follow the rule: “Only human-friendly websites can be search-engine-friendly”. Don’t be impatient to get the results because sometimes it may take even 5 months or more for your website to even appear in search results.