The Advantages of Trusted Feed

Trusted Feed shares several advantages with Submit URL. Both appear as organic listings not ads, score additional keyword rankings, and are continually re-indexed. However, there are a few distinct advantages you can look forward to if your site qualifies for a Trusted Feed program.

Works for Deep and Dynamic Content

For content-rich sites, the pages worthy of top rankings are buried within a web site. A majority of search engine spiders won't crawl that deep into a site, certainly not without marketers at least paying a Submit URL fee, which can become expensive when adding hundreds or thousands of pages.

A secondary problem exists for sites that are database driven. If you sell products on your site and you're managing the products with an e-commerce solution, it's likely that your product data is stored inside a database. Search engines have difficulty indexing dynamic web pages that contain multiple parameters (Google can index dynamic URLs with a single parameter without a problem). Dynamic web pages are usually created with Active Server Pages (.asp), ColdFusion (.cfm), Hypertext PreProcessor (.php), and Java Server Pages (.jsp).

Are your dynamic pages spider killers? Look at your URLs. If they contain more than one stop symbol such as ?, &, $, =, +, or %, then the answer is yes. The following examples illustrate degrees of indexing difficulty for search engine spiders:

• Dynamic web page with multiple variables (bad):

  www.company.com/products.asp?product_no=1&product_sortorder=asc&product_color=red

• Dynamic web page with one variable (better):

  www.company.com/products.asp?product_no=1

• Dynamic web page with no variables (best):

  www.company.com/products.asp

• Static web page (best):

  www.company.com/products.html

Fortunately, Trusted Feed resolves the issue of indexing deep and dynamic content because it allows the content of these pages to be directly fed to search engine databases. Usually in an Excel file, you'll enter the URL, title, meta description, meta keywords, and body content, which will then be converted into an XML feed. Another option is to ask a search engine or their inclusion partner to crawl your URLs to extract page content from your site, then customize ad listing information for those pages. In either case, with Trusted Feed it's easier than with Submit URL to control what content gets indexed and how your listings appear for the pages you submit.

You can work directly with each search engine, or go through an inclusion partner who'll prepare one data feed for multiple engines. Inktomi, for example, forges direct client relationships for sites with more than 1,000 URLs. Otherwise, they refer advertisers to the partners listed in Table 9.1. You'll notice that inclusion partners often work with more than one search engine, as in the case of Position Technologies. Resellers , such as Position Technologies, sell Trusted Feed programs on behalf of multiple search engines.

Table 9.1. Search engines, such as Inktomi, allow multiple resellers to sell their Trusted Feed programs.

Inktomi's Resellers	‚	Position Technologies Is a Trusted Feed Reseller For:
Marketleap	>	AlltheWeb/FAST
Referencement.com		AltaVista
Position Technologies		Ask Jeeves
Decide Interactive		Inktomi
TrafficLeader		‚
Refer to http://www.inktomi.com/products/web_search/connect.html and http://www.positiontech.com/tf_overview.htm.

An in-house programmer can force dynamic pages to appear static by using mod_rewrite for Apache or Port80 Software for an IIS server. This process helps get content into search engines via Submit URL instead of Trusted Feed, if the first paid inclusion program is needed or preferred. However, most programmers are already too overwhelmed with their current workload to take on another task. Additionally, simply generating static pages won't impact rankings through Submit URL unless pages are optimized with relevant keywords and are void of spider-repelling elements such as frames or Flash.

There are various manual methods , tools, and outsourcing options for optimizing a dynamic site. Each company needs to evaluate their internal resources to devise a plan that is cost-effective for them. You can always ask a search engine optimization (SEO) professional to analyze your site and recommend a few options for you to consider.

Third-Party E-Commerce Pages Can Be Submitted

Here's where plenty of companies run into a roadblock. A significant number of online retailers lease their e-commerce solution. These pages are preconfigured templates that can't be customized, which means they can't be properly optimized. Search engine spiders won't index the content hosted on other people's sites and give original content owners rankings for them either.

A Yahoo! Store is a perfect example. You can usually identify a Yahoo! Store retailer because their URL switches over to Yahoo!'s somewhere within the web site. Look at Figures 9.1 and 9.2, which show Oakville Grocery's home page and Gift Baskets page. Notice the home page domain is http://www.oakvillegrocery.com, but the URL then switches over to http://store.yahoo.com/oakvillegrocery/giftbaskets1.html when you click the Gift Baskets link. The web pages you optimize need to be part of your web site.

Figure 9.1. The home page of Oakville Grocery.

Figure 9.2. Notice how their URL switches over to a Yahoo! e-commerce solution. Third-party content may not be indexed by search engines.

Leasing an e-commerce solution is extremely cost-effective for small to medium- sized companies. A Yahoo! Store includes powerful e-marketing features at no additional cost, including a tool that can be used to track paid placement search engines listings. (Yahoo! Small business merchant solutions are reviewed in Part V, "Tracking Your Return on Investment.") If you're renting an online store from a vendor, you can build flat product pages on your site, and then link over to a third-party site for the final transaction. The product pages hosted on your site can be submitted to search engines via Submit URL or Trusted Feed.

The Herrington web site is attractive to shoppers and spiders alike (see Figures 9.3 to 9.5). It uses a Yahoo! e-commerce solution, but notice that not until a product is added to the shopping cart is the customer transferred to Yahoo!'s site. This enables Herrington to host and optimize the content of each product page.

Figure 9.3. The Herrington Catalog home page.

Figure 9.4. A product page from the Herrington site.

Figure 9.5. Herrington sends customers to their Yahoo! Store once a product is added to Herrington's shopping cart (notice the change of the URL).

Are too many of your product pages already in a third-party database to consider making them static? Don't worry, a Trusted Feed program can deliver this data to search engines for you. Remember that you prepare a document with page data that is fed to the search engines. You don't have to alter the pages that sit in a Yahoo! Store. You'll simply describe the content of each page there. The link that is displayed during a related keyword query will take shoppers to that exact page location.

Low Click Fees Are Guaranteed for Competitive Keywords

What do Pay-For-Placement (PFP) and Trusted Feed programs have in common? Both are based on cost-per-click (CPC) pricing. PFP click fees for each keyword are constantly fluctuating, however, because advertisers continually modify their bids. With Trusted Feed, you'll negotiate one fixed CPC rate with the search engines, or with their inclusion partners.

For example, inclusion resellers Position Technologies and Marketleap's Trusted Feed programs average $.25 per click. Take a look at your PFP campaigns . On the more popular PFP engines, including Google and Overture, your CPC rate is probably much higher than $.25 across a majority of keywords, right? A low and nonfluctuating CPC rate makes Trusted Feed a very attractive marketing option for corporate clients . As click rates on PFP search engines continue to rise, the Trusted Feed set fee structure becomes an even bigger advantage.

Keep an eye on changes in the paid inclusion space. On which search engines or content sites are paid inclusion results offered ? Who becomes a new or dismissed authorized reseller of paid inclusion? Expect price hikes among certain players as stronger search empires are formed . In March 2003, Yahoo! acquired Inktomi, while in April 2003, Overture acquired AltaVista. Both Inktomi and AltaVista offer Trusted Feed programs. Then, in October 2003, Yahoo! acquired Overture. Price changes are inevitable. The consolidation of key players will likely result in an increase, not a decrease. If you can sign a long- term agreement to lock in rates soon, it may be a good idea.

Third-Party Tracking URLs Are Supported

Many companies utilize a third-party ad tracking system to monitor sales produced by other Internet marketing efforts, such as email or banner ads. A tracking URL that is generated redirects consumers from the ad to the tracking company's server, then over to the advertiser's web site. Third-party tracking solutions easily enable nontechnical search engine marketers to monitor sales by multiple components of an advertising campaign, such as by search engine, keyword, ad listing, and landing page.

Trusted Feed supports use of third-party tracking URLs for each search engine and corresponding landing pages. Companies can breathe easier knowing that their Fixed Placement, PFP, and Trusted Feed campaigns can be monitored under one third-party system, along with their other e-marketing programs.

Search engine spiders hate redirects, so third-party tracking URLs can't be provided through a Submit URL program. You're stuck submitting the same site URL to various search engines. (You don't want to create different landing pages for each search engine based on the same copy or you'll get dropped for duplicated content.) At least you'll get traffic flow data from a couple of inclusion programs and your web analytics reports . But you won't be able to track sales separately by venue , keyword, and landing page.

Site Pages Can Be Removed Quickly from the Index

A major concern for product retailers is inventory management. What if a national auto parts manufacturer runs out of a product, or stops making it altogether? This company doesn't want that product page sitting out in the search engines continuing to bring in frustrated prospects.

Well, both Submit URL and Trusted Feed programs allow advertisers to remove site pages from their databases. However, because Trusted Feed supports tracking URLs, which marketers can monitor for real-time sales performance, companies can react faster and delete particular product pages. Furthermore, if a landing page receives clicks but no orders from a specific venue, marketers can turn off the page listing only in that search engine.