Why the Past is the Future of Yahoo

We spend so much of our time focusing on the new tools or latest pieces of technology to move our companies (or ourselves) forward that we often fail to look to the past. No, I'm talking about going back to the days of "horses and bayonets," but instead, I'm talking about our digital past.

That's exactly what new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is doing, and I for one am interested to see how it all plays out. In her first earnings call since being named CEO, Mayer touched on the specific products the company will focus on--such as search and mail--but her biggest observation [in my opinion] is the fact that the company's focus will be on the consumer experience. The consumer experience is everything in today's marketplace [for brands, media outlets and many others], and it's an experience that extends well beyond the desktop. By combining current tools (mobile and tablet) with past successes, Mayer is concocting an interesting formula for the future of the Yahoo--both as a company and as a brand.

In what is obviously an outdated media relations page detailing the company's history, Yahoo proclaims "Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally ..." Google [obviously] owns this mantle today, but under its new leadership, and with a blueprint for the future, it will be interesting to see where Yahoo goes from here. Sometimes, the simple answer is the best answer. We'll see if that's the case for Yahoo.

My SEO Experiment with the iPhone 5

In case you missed it (and I'm sure you didn't), this week’s biggest tech news was undoubtedly Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 5, and with Week 2 of MKT 595 focused on SEO, I decided to conduct my own SEO experiment to answer the question—what do search results look like for the term “iPhone 5?”

Using search.yahoo.com and google.com to conduct my search, the top organic search results in both instances appeared as follows:

As you'll notice, CNET is #2 on Yahoo! and #1 on Google (following the News Results) with Apple.com nowhere insight other than paid search. In fact, Apple.com does not appear on Page 1 organically until below the scroll. And while I certainly don’t know all of the ins and outs of why Apple.com is so low while CNET is so high, I do have two ideas based on this week’s readings and materials. 

For starters, the file name for CNET’s webpage is cnet.com/iphone-5; this is in stark contrast to apple.com’s URL—apple.com/iPhone. And entering the following URLs—apple.com/iPhone5, apple.com/iPhone-5 and apple.com/iPhone_5—all take users to a “Page Not Found” page instead of being redirected to its iPhone page. In my opinion, the lack of the redirects is a huge missed opportunity by Apple.

The second factor that may be contributing to the search results can be found “under the hood” in the coding of each site. While the title and description of apple.com/iphone and cnet.com/iphone-5 both include the word “iPhone 5,” Apple’s website shows no sign of keywords. Meanwhile, CNET’s code appears as follows: <meta name="keywords" content="Apple iPhone 5, Apple iPhone 5 review, Apple iPhone 5 reviews, Smartphones reviews, Smartphones"/>. In fact, the word itself (iPhone 5) is used more than 50 times on the page containing CNET’s review of the device—with plenty of links to other CNET content—and only 20 times on Apple’s website. Given CNET’s prominence within the technology community (as evidenced by the number of comments and social media shares for their iPhone 5 review page) and the number of times iPhone 5 is used, it’s no doubt that it ranks so highly.  

Now, I'm sure there are other factors impacting these search results, and I’m not suggesting that Apple—or its marketing agencies—don’t have a firm handle on their digital presence. Apple's brand is so strong that it doesn't need to be the top result on the page to  sell the iPhone 5. As we know, pre-orders sold out in an hour. Instead, this search test shows the importance of SEO during a product launch. If you're making headlines as a new company or a company who doesn't have Apple's brand recognition, it's important to make sure you have SEO tactics in place to make sure your website ranks towards the top of the page in order to drive traffic to your website.