Yahoo began implementing a critical overhaul to its search engine Monday.

The Sunnyvale, California, company is activating a new ad system it has been testing and hopes will allow it to compete more competitively for online ad revenue.

Yahoo will transition from the old Overture Services pay-per-click advertising technology, acquired for $1.6 billion in 2003, to its Project Panama model.

Panama is Yahoo’s effort to compete more competitively with Google in the race for advertising dollars. In fact, thousands of advertisers and billions of dollars in adverting are at stake. Analysts are closely watching the transition.

Among those keeping an eye on the move is Steve Weinstein, a senior analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, who sees potentially a 50 percent increase in Yahoo’s revenue from search, with about $1 billion at stake, if the company succeeds in creating a better advertising model.

“That’s just on their own network, not including partners,” he noted.

Annual spending on keyword ads is expected to reach $10 billion in 2010, up from $6.8 billion in 2006, according to the research firm eMarketer.

Changes in Rank

As Yahoo’s new ranking model rolls out over the course of several hours, advertisers will begin to see changes in the way their ads are ranked. The change could either elevate or lower the ranking for a given ad.

Yahoo’s new ranking model, with help from software algorithms, will list search results based on historical click-through rates and keywords in an effort to provide more relevant search results to users.

Yahoo’s prior advertising ranking model was based on an auction system. The company bidding the most money on a word received the highest ranking each time an Internet user searched on a term. 

The new model isn’t expected to favor larger brands with bigger budgets, but instead put all advertisers on a more level playing field because companies will no longer compete based on advertising budgets, according to a Yahoo spokesperson.

The full rollout of the service isn’t expected to be complete until March. Advertisers can find additional information on the changes at Yahoo’s site.

Shares of Yahoo fell $0.21 to close at $28.56 on Monday, while shares of Google dropped $14.34 to close at $467.16.

Krillion™, the leader in actionable local search, today unveiled its ground-breaking solution to the problem: why isn't search local today?

Despite the fact that 75% of those who buy big-ticket items do all their research online and make over 90% of their purchases offline, today's search engines typically are unable to find and deliver results pinpointing specific local stores with specific products.

Krillion solves this problem with its unique Krillion Localization Engine™ that scours the Web to find, integrate and present actionable local search results for the ready-to-buy consumer. As of today's launch, Krillion has over 275 million pages of relevant local search results displaying local product information for major appliances in over 40,000 U.S. cities and towns.

"Krillion delivers local search results that combine very specific product information with very specific locality information. These results truly are 'actionable' meaning that when consumers have completed their Internet research, they can grab their keys, hop into the car, drive to the store and buy the product," said Joel Toledano, co-founder and CEO of Krillion.

"We are delivering an inventory of search pages that have never before been available and we see this as a giant step forward for manufacturers, retailers and consumers," continued Toledano.

Category Focus: National Brands, National and Regional Retailers

Krillion delivers search results category-by-category and the first category to be covered is the $18 billion major appliance category: refrigerators, ovens, ranges, washers and dryers, and dishwashers. Moving forward, Krillion will deliver search results for additional categories such as consumer electronics, lawn and garden, seasonal appliances and others. Additionally, Krillion focuses on finding and delivering relevant search results for national brands that are sold by national and regional "big box" retailers. This focus enables Krillion to efficiently deliver usable search results for the majority of consumers.

"One of the historical challenges with local search, and online shopping in particular, is connecting Internet research with offline purchase behavior, which is where the majority of transactions occur," said Greg Sterling, principal, Sterling Market Intelligence. "By offering information about where to buy products locally, Krillion better serves consumers and further confirms that the future of online shopping is offline."

New Local Search Inventory for Advertisers

Krillion is also announcing today the immediate availability of millions of pages of local product advertising inventory, and customized analytics to measure the effectiveness of a Krillion-based campaign. Krillion expects to become the "last-mile" in a national ad campaign, linking the ready-to-buy consumer with the specific store where he or she can purchase the desired product. A click-to-call feature is available so consumers can quickly check on specific product inventory prior to visiting the store.

"Krillion's approach offers the opportunity to significantly redefine the ways in which brands engage with consumers at the local level. It's an innovative approach that will help drive growth in this market and better serve the needs of advertisers," said Torrence Boone, president, Digitas Boston.

Unlike many other local search providers, Krillion does not expect consumers to abandon or change their search habits. Consumers don't need to search directly on Krillion to find results by Krillion; instead consumers can search using their favorite search engine (Google, Yahoo!, etc.) and Krillion results will likely be displayed on those pages. Consumers then click to find Krillion for their local product and store information.

About Krillion

Krillion is the leader in actionable local search; local search that results in consumers taking action to buy. Krillion's mission is to transform the way ready-to-buy consumers find and buy national brands, locally. Based on its unique Krillion Localization Engine, Krillion search results are more accurate than any local search information available on the Internet. Krillion, founded in February 2006, is funded by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

Krillion™ and Krillion Localization Engine™ are trademarks of Krillion, Inc. All other product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Like thousands of other Web sites, EDN.com relies on Google Inc. to handle a lucrative piece of Internet advertising - the briefly worded links that produce revenue-generating clicks by targeting each individual reader's interests. The relationship has been profitable so far, but the managers of the technology Web site believe they could be making even more money if Google's system stopped serving up ads about potato chips or poker chips when a visitor is reading an article about computer chips.

"e;We think we could extract more value from our advertising by not mixing potato chips with computer chips,"e; said Stephen Baker, who oversees search-based advertising for EDN and dozens of other Web sites owned by London-based Reed Elsevier Group PLC.

Although he has no plans to drop out of Google's network, Baker said he may try out a new advertising alternative being announced Monday by Fast Search and Transfer, a Norway-based company that specializes in providing search tools for businesses.

Fast is marketing its platform - dubbed AdMomentum - as a one-stop solution for Web sites that want to become less dependent on Google and the other large advertising networks operated by Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

"e;It's like a digital marketplace in a box,"e; said Sue Feldman, an IDC Research vice president who reviewed early versions of AdMomentum. "e;This gives Web sites an opportunity to become more independent and take more control over their revenue stream."e;

More money is rapidly flowing into "e;keyword advertising"e; - the industry's description for the intuitive algorithms that quickly analyze search requests or other content displayed on a Web page before deciding which marketing messages to show.

Annual spending on keyword ads is expected to top $10 billion in 2010, up from $6.8 billion last year, based on estimates from eMarketer, which tracks the industry.

With more money at stake, Fast is betting Web sites will be increasingly interested in developing their own ad systems so they won't have to share revenue with Google and the other networks.

"e;Publishers are not going to want another hand in their pockets every time they are selling ads,"e; said Perry Solomon, Fast's vice president of strategic market development. Solomon declined to discuss AdMomentum's pricing model.

Some Web sites already have embraced alternative channels. In one of the biggest examples so far, Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN.com dropped Yahoo as its advertising partner in September to sell the commercial links on its own, using a platform called AdSonar offered by New York-based Quigo Technologies Inc.

AdMomentum figures to face an uphill battle in a market dominated by some of the world's most influential technology companies.

Mountain View-based Google looks particularly imposing, having raked in $20 billion from online advertising during the past three years. The company shared $6.7 billion of that amount with its advertising partners.

Yahoo has spent the past two years tweaking its system so it does a better job of matching its marketing messages with readers' interests. The Sunnyvale-based company plans to unveil the long-anticipated improvements Monday.

This isn't the first time Fast has challenged Google and Yahoo. For several years, it ran a general-purpose search engine called AlltheWeb.com that never made a dent in the market.

Fast wound up selling AlltheWeb and several other affiliates in 2003 for $100 million to a company that was eventually bought by Yahoo. AlltheWeb now serves as a testing ground for Yahoo's alternative approaches to search.

Everyone wants to have a successful web site. However, most people do the wrong things to promote their web sites.

If you want to have a successful web site and if you want to get high rankings on search engines then your web site must have the right factors. Here are the top 5 factors for successful web sites in 2007:

Success factor #1: Accessibility

Search engines must be able to access your web pages. If search engines cannot parse your web pages then they will ignore your site and you won't get good rankings.

Make sure that your web server doesn't return an error code when search engine spiders visit your web pages. If your server returns an error code, search engines won't index your site.

The correct code should be "200 OK". You can check the status code that your web server returns to search engines with IBP's search engine spider simulator (free).

In addition, make sure that the HTML code of your web pages doesn't contain errors that prevent search engines from indexing your site.

The content of your web pages must make sense to search engines. Don't use images or Flash to present the main content of your web pages. Use IBP's Top 10 Web Page Optimizer to find out if your web pages present the right information to search engines.

Success factor #2: Site and information architecture

Your web site should have a good site architecture to make sure that it is not just a collection of random web pages. The pages of your web site should be related and they should show search engines that your web site is relevant to a special topic.

This is very important because most major search engines seem to use latent semantic indexing in their ranking algorithms.

Your site should also have a good information architecture so that search engines and web surfers know where they are within your site on any page of your site.

Success factor #3: The right keywords

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important steps that determines whether your SEO campaign is a success or not.

It's best to focus on 2 or 3 word keywords for search engine optimization. One word keywords are less likely to convert to a sale and they are also much more competitive.

Use IBP's powerful keyword tools to find the keywords that will work best with your site.

Success factor #4: Content

Web sites that only offer articles and affiliate links that can be found on dozens of other web sites will have a hard time to get good search engine rankings.

Try to create unique and trustworthy content that separates your web site from the others.

Write about things you know. If you're an expert in a special field, write as much as possible about that field to make sure that your web site becomes the best resource for that topic.

Success factor #5: Inbound links

Without good inbound links, it is impossible to get high rankings on major search engines. You should get as many links as possible from related web sites. The more targeted the link, the more it will help your search engine rankings.

Search engine optimization can be tricky because a small error in one factor can destroy all of your other efforts. Take a look at the checklists in our free search engine optimization eBook to find out how your web site can get top rankings on Google, Yahoo and other major search engines.

We are often asked if professional SEO (search engine optimization) can be done effectively utilizing in-house talent. Despite our obvious self-interests on the subject, our answer is always a qualified "yes"– you can achieve professional SEO results using existing talent. However, for every company we have known that has met with great in-house SEO success, we know of many more that have seen their in-house efforts fail. We have also discovered the companies that have succeeded share some common traits.

If your company is considering doing SEO in-house, there are some critical questions that you should address before you proceed.

Do I have the proper resources at my disposal to achieve professional SEO results?

Search engine optimization takes time, and your internal SEO expert will need to have a great deal of it at his or her disposal – especially at the project’s outset when target audiences, keyphrases, and optimization schemes are first being established. Even after the initial optimization effort, the nature of SEO will require this person to spend ample time keeping up with industry trends, monitoring campaign progress, performing A/B testing, and expanding the campaign as new products and service areas are added.

Perhaps even more important than time, achieving professional SEO results requires a unique set of aptitudes. The person responsible for your internal SEO initiative must possess the ability to learn quickly and to look at your website from a macro-perspective, marrying together the needs of sales, marketing, and IT. He or she can not be an aggressive risk taker, as this is often a surefire way to get your website penalized and potentially removed from the major search engines. These gifted people exist in many companies, but given the unique attributes that these individuals possess, their time is often already spent in other crucial areas of the business.

Without enough time to invest in the project or the right type of person to execute it, an internal SEO initiative is likely doomed to fail.

Do I know which departments of my company should be involved, and will they work with an insider?

As mentioned above, professional SEO, by necessity, involves marketing, sales, and IT. The SEO expert must work with marketing to find out what types of offers and initiatives are working offline to help translate them effectively online. He or she must work with sales to identify the types of leads that are most valuable so that you can target the right people in the keyphrase selection process. And, finally, your SEO expert will need to work with IT to determine any technical limitations to the SEO recommendations, learn of any past initiatives based on a technical approach, and get the final optimization schemes implemented on the website.

Sadly, in many businesses, these departments have a somewhat adversarial relationship. However, it is the duty of the SEO expert to act as a project manager and coordinate the efforts of all three departments if you are going to get the most out of your campaign. No professional SEO project can be completed in a vacuum. For whatever reason, it is often easier for an outsider to get adversarial departments on the same page, in the same way that a marriage counselor might convince a woman of her undying love for her husband while the husband is still grimacing from a well-placed knee in the parking lot.

Will someone be held accountable for the results?

This may seem like a small consideration, but it can have a tremendous impact on the success of the campaign. If you have added this responsibility to some poor soul’s job description with the direction that he or she should "do the best you can," you’ll be lucky to make any headway at all (especially if the person is not enthusiastic about SEO). Whether SEO is done in-house or outsourced, someone will have to take responsibility for showing progress, explaining setbacks, and continually improving results. Without this accountability, it is very common to see an initiative fade as the buck is passed.

Can I afford delayed results based on a learning curve?

It’s a reality - professional SEO expertise has a steep learning curve. While the information on how to perform the basics of optimization are freely available on the web, much of the information out there is also contradictory, and some of it is actually dangerous. It takes time for someone unfamiliar with the discipline to sort the SEO wheat from the SEO chaff (on a side note, a "quoted" search of Google reveals that this may actually mark the first occasion in human history that the phrase "SEO chaff" has been used – we’re betting it’s also the last). Simply put, if the person you are putting on the job has no experience, it will take longer to get results. This may not be a consideration if you aren’t counting on new business from SEO any time soon. However, if you are losing business to your competition due to their professional SEO initiatives, time might be a larger factor.

Will it cost me less to do it in house than it would to choose a professional SEO firm?

Often, companies will attempt this specialized discipline in-house in order to save money, and sometimes this works out as intended. However, accurate calculations of the cost of in-house labor that would be involved versus the price of the firm you would otherwise hire should be performed to make an accurate comparison. When making this calculation, also factor in the opportunity cost of the resource - the tasks that your in-house people are not able to perform because they are involved in SEO.

In addition, if worse comes to worst and your in-house SEO expert is led astray by some of the more dangerous "how-to" guides available, it can cost even more to repair the damage than it would have to hire a professional SEO firm to perform the optimization from the outset. And an internal SEO campaign gone wrong can cost even more than the stated fee - websites that violate the terms of service of the major search engines (whether intentional or not) can be severely penalized or even removed, costing you a lot of lost revenue when potential customers can not find your website for a period of time.

Do I believe that the end result I’ll get in-house will be equal to or greater than the results I would have gotten from a professional SEO firm?

Search engine optimization can create huge sales opportunities, and slight increases in overall exposure can have not-so-slight increases in your bottom-line revenue. If you believe that your talented in-house resource will, given enough time, achieve results equal to or greater than those that could have been achieved by the professional SEO firm you might have chosen, it may make sense to do it internally.

However, in addition to a better knowledge of industry trends, one clear advantage that search engine optimization firms have is the benefit of the experience and macro-perspective that comes from managing many different websites over time. Professional SEO firms can watch a wide range of sites on a continual basis to see what trends are working, what trends aren’t, and what formerly recommended tactics are now actually hurting results.

This macro-perspective allows professional SEO firms to test new tactics as they appear on a case-by-case basis and apply those results across a wide range of clients to determine what the benefit is. It is harder for an individual with access to only one site to perform enough testing and research to achieve optimum results all the time, something that should also factor into the equation.

Do I have at least a slight tolerance for risk?

Neophytes to SEO can make mistakes that can lead to search engine penalization or removal. This happens most commonly when they have an IT background and treat SEO as a strictly technical exercise. We are often called in to assist companies who have had an internal initiative backfire, leaving them in a worse position than the one they were in before they started. The simple truth is that you cannot perform effective SEO without marrying your efforts to the visitor experience, but this is not something that is intuitively understood when people approach SEO for the first time.

However, professional SEO firms are not perfect either. Some firms use those same optimization methods that violate the search engines’ terms of service and can get your site penalized. So, if you do decide to outsource, educate yourself on SEO and do some research on the firm. Know the basics of the business, find out who the firm’s clients are and how long they’ve been in business, and ask for professional references - just like you would do with any major business purchase.

If you have considered all of the above questions, and your answers to all seven are "yes," your company may be uniquely equipped to achieve professional SEO results in-house. If you answered "no" to any of the first three questions but "yes" to the rest, it does not necessarily mean that you can’t perform SEO in-house - just that you may not be in a position to do so at this time. Taking the actions required to get you in the right position to answer in the affirmative might be worth your while. However, if you answered "no" to any of the last four questions, you may want to consider outsourcing the project to a professional SEO firm.

A professional SEO firm has the resources, the time, the expertise, and, most importantly, the experience, to launch an SEO initiative for your website that will have a positive effect on your bottom line. Whichever option you choose, it is important that you fully embrace the channel. A half-hearted initiative, whether done internally or outsourced, can be as ineffective as taking no action at all.

For this article the Google Sandbox Effect is defined as the situation where the results of Google's main ranking algorithms (PageRank, TrustRank, HillTop, whatever is in place) are initially inhibited when applied to a new property due to one or more temporal algorithm procedures taking effect. Put simply, when it's obvious your recently launched site deserves a decent rank based on typical factors, but instead it's nowhere to be seen.

Google engineer Matt Cutts has essentially acknowledged that a sandbox effect exists and that it's a product of their algorithm, and at least one other anonymous Google engineer is reported to referred to a "probation" period for new sites. Despite some differences in terminology, the sandbox as an abstraction for a specific sum of parts in Google's larger algorithm is almost certainly existent.

Sites most affected by the sandbox effect usually appear to fit one or more of the following key criteria:

1. Newly established
2. Target a highly competitive and/or commercial industry
3. Have attempted optimization, especially link building

By our definition, at least number one has to be true, otherwise you can label virtually any aspect of Google's algorithm that dampens rankings the sandbox, and the discussion would become too general. We can't be sure the above are actual trigger factors (i.e. a cause and not simply an effect), we only know that sites fitting this criteria are plentiful in the "sandbox."

The reported sandbox period is extremely variable; ranging from 3 months to indefinite, the typical range though seems around 6-9 months, and one Google engineer has reportedly stated the actual range is 6-12 months. Many have observed that the period appears to correlate with industry competitiveness/popularity, with the most popular and commercial industries having the longest "probation" period.

Note: I've avoided listing methods aimed at only minimizing your time in the sandbox—as opposed to methods of actually escaping it—as those are basically paramount to good SEO practises, which is obviously way beyond the scope of this article.

• Buy out old domains—Even if a domain is low on inbound links, the age factor will almost certainly be enough for it to have expired the sandbox; typically a year is good age to ensure a domain is sandbox free; if possible negotiate with original owner keeping the WHOIS record as similar as possible to prevent triggering a fresh sandbox cycle. Domains never indexed in Google, no matter what how early registration date aren't likely to avoid being sandboxed.
• Buy recently expired domains—Some theory as above, but applied to domains that have actually expired. There is some evidence to suggest very recently expired domains can avoid a fresh sandbox cycle. A good measure might be domains expired but still indexed in Google.
• Collect the low hanging fruit—While sandboxed you aren't going to rank well for competitive terms, but you may be able rank for low traffic ones. Large quantities of low traffic terms can be just as rewarding, and if you target the right ones you'll be strengthening the theme of your site for when your more competitive terms are freed from the sandbox.
• Drag your competitors down to your level—We really don't condone or recommend this; it's listed here for completeness sake, and to make you aware of tactics that can be used against you: If you can't aspire move upwards, the second option is to drag your competitors downwards, into and below the level of the sandbox. StuntDubl summarizes the main blackhat tactics at the disposal of those who willing to cross the line. Even if we did recommend this, logistically it's a non-option since you'll no doubt have hundreds or thousands of competitors' pages ahead of you, not to mention that each one of those competitors can use the same tactics against you.
• Buy your way in—Irregardless of sandbox status, you should almost always consider doing at least one PPC campaign for each of your targeted terms, in order to estimate the ROI before spending resources targeting terms organically.
• Explore non-Google traffic sources—Getting sandboxed clearly illustrates the danger of putting your eggs in one basket. Consider using your time in the sandbox to explore and make full use of other sources of targeted traffic, learn to survive without being at the whim of Google.
• Hijack your competitors rankings—Again, we don't condone or recommend blackhat tactics: Performing a 302 redirect to one of your high ranking competitors from a non-sandboxed domain (preferably of higher PageRank/trust than theirs) can sometimes succeed in hijacking their SERP listings. So that the traffic can be gleaned, the redirect can be cloaked for the benefit of the Google-bot, with regular visitors being redirected to your sandboxed site. Again, we do not recommend this, and only on small number of occasions have such tactics been publicized to work.
• Use subdomain from developed site—According a quite a few experts; since sandboxing appears to be based on 2nd level domain, hosting your site on a subdomain of an already established domain will avoid the sandbox. If you redirect all pages to the new domain once the site appears thoroughly indexed; it should reportedly maintain a non-sandboxed status.
• Acquire "trusted" links—A fair amount of SEOs have claimed to have escaped the sandbox by acquiring enough "trusted," high quality authoritative links. The most often cited source for links capable of freeing a site are high profile news sites; .gov, and .edu sites; and dmoz.org. That this method can immediately free you from the sandbox is somewhat contested, but most seem to agree that it can either a) avoid being initially sandboxed, or b) shorten your stay. At least one Google engineer is reported to have supported the theory that high quality backlinks can negate the sandbox.
• Perhaps you aren't sandboxed after all—Consider and research into the possibility that you aren't sandboxed and instead simply suffering the effect of a very ineffective SEO campaign. For this purpose SEOMoz.org offers the Sandbox Detection Tool.

Selling Your Vision: Adapting and Evolving

You have a vision for your business, and it shines through clearly in your ezine. But if you've had that vision for a while, could it be time for a re-examination and even change? Circumstances, customers, and products change in any industry, and if you expect your business to thrive, you need to be prepared to make some changes as well.

"If you are not talking dollars, you are not making any sense"

Some background

In the first part of this series, I wrote about selling your vision, developing your vision, how to make your vision real to yourself and how to make your readers “see” your vision. I also shared some real time experiences with showing vision, and ended with the concept that just as businesses and environments change, visions also change.

In this concluding part of the series, I will write about adapting your ezine's vision to changing environments, focusing your emails and not turning off your client before the first sale is completed (or the first preferred action). I will also discuss the importance of following up with your prospect when he or she finally “buys” your vision, and shows you by “buying” your product (now you can sell your customer other items).

Before I continue with the concepts and ideas for selling your vision, let me talk a little about the importance of “ROI” and not just “rankings.” I know it seems like a digression, but I want to explain why SEO experts and web designers should (sometimes) think like “marketers” and not like Mysterious Voodoo Priests. Thinking like marketers will also help you craft and sell your vision.

The “real” importance of SEO

I actually never thought SEO was about rankings, maybe because I spend ages talking (apart from writing I absolutely love talking) with my clients before writing or modifying the first tags. All clients want one thing, and one thing only: more business. They see web design and SEO as a business tool and not as an art form. I see my job as that of showing them how the web design and the SEO will make them more money (get them more business), even if it is indirectly. So keep it in mind that the whole purpose of your ezine is to “get more business.” Without money your vision will not get to a large number of people.

Now back to vision selling. Let's see all the possible ways things may change and how you may have to adapt your ezine to the changes.

Part one: the rules change, live with it

Unless you are a big mover in the Internet industry, you don’t have much say over the deliverability aspect of your emails. Sometimes solicited emails don’t get  through the spam filters of email providers! Sometimes personal email gets bumped into the “bulk mail” box if the filter believes it looks suspicious. As an email marketer, you learn the new terrain, adapt and move on.

Part two: the industry changes, adapt or die

Products get obsolescent. A few years ago pop ups were the “thing” in Internet marketing; users actually clicked on them. Now pop up blockers are hot. A few years ago, search engines such as Excite and Lycos prospered when the services search engines offered were similar to a commodity. Now the industry is an oligopoly/monopoly of the top three with Google as head honcho.

Services get new standards, customers get more informed, industries change with time. Whatever industry you are in now is facing competition from all over the world. Your next major competitor may be a teenage Filipino with a laptop and a dial up connection. Your vision has to adapt with the changing times. You cannot be offering content or products in a format which the industry left several months ago and expect the prospect to catch your vision, let alone buy it.

Passion Up Cards went into a tailspin because they did not change their mailing strategy as the deliverability rules changed. Yahoo filed a suit against them for spamming and they went from being a major online e-card provider to being just another failed e-business.

Part three: the customer changes, situation normal

Market research is a great concept, and market research should actually be done. But if facts on the ground contradict market research, you can choose to put your head in the market research and get run over, or you can chase the facts. Imagine that your market research told you most of your traffic comes from paid search engine listings; you optimize around paid listings and maybe grudgingly put up an affiliate page -- then you discover that most of your traffic comes from your referral sites...and one day, a particular site did  a review of yours and boom, you run out of bandwidth. The facts say one thing and the research said another.

The same is true with your ezine. If you assumed most people that will sign up for your newsletter are teenagers (assuming your content and offers were designed with teenagers in mind), and you later discover that young professionals make up 70 percent of your subscribers, you should find a way to enlarge whatever segment attracts the young professionals pretty quickly. I will look deeper into this illustration when I write about focusing your ezine.

Note that apart from adapting your vision, you should also have a vision in the first place. Even if you are not selling anything, it is important to identify your email with something. Of your newsletter offers email tips, your vision could be “creating and delivering emails that persuade” by “providing creative email copy and delivery options for your business!” Even if you are not an ad agency, it actually works because your subscriber identifies your email with “emails that persuade.”

The more singular your message the better. Ideally your ezine should not be too cluttered and should not try to “cut across.” Of you have many segments, then divide them into different ezines and send them separately. Of your ezine has many sections, it is probably because you did not give your subscribers a choice; a lot of times the subscriber is only interested in one section and will bear with the other sections since he or she has no choice in the matter.

Focusing helps clarify your message and your vision, and different themes and segments only confuse your branding in the user’s mind.

Avoid turning the user off

Some users will subscribe to your ezine for months before taking a desired action. It is good enough for them that they are reading your content. Probably none of your offers interest them yet, or they lack the will (money combined with desire) to pay for a particular product. Even for content providers, it is essential not to turn your users off; doing so will not help you in selling your vision, increasing your traffic and improving your long term relationship with the subscriber of your ezine. Here are some things you should avoid doing if you don't want to turn off your subscribers.

Poor design, poor ethics

In simple terms, if your site is hard to get around and the information is sloppily arranged, you will not get many repeat users. Also, if your ezine is not rendered properly, the links are dead or your graphics take forever to load, it gives the user a bad experience and your email may just get deleted without being read (even if it does get past the spam filters)

It is important to keep your database clean, respond to unsubscribe requests in a timely manner, and do not spam. Spam is inconvenient and about 70 percent of users believe spammers should be punished in one form or another. Avoid reducing your users' experience and trust in you by renting out your unique opt-in list to third parties without letting the subscriber know. It sounds harsh but on the long term, it is better all around.

Avoid telling the subscriber how great your features and benefits are. Continue giving relevant information and endeavor not to tell us how horrible the competition is and how you are the very best. You can put that on your sales page, or on an offer, but to hear it week in and week out in a newsletter gets nauseating.

Be as honest to your readers as possible. If a service you offer has certain aspects which can be done by users, you can offer DIY courses for it on your website (like an SEO professional offering free “DIY SEO courses”). You will discover that most people would still out source the service to you simply because they do not want to do the work -- plus they trust you! After all, you have their best interests at heart, and you don’t just want their money.

After the sale, say thank you

Off line businesses do it, and some get awards for it. For online businesses it is not a habit yet, but a sincere and heartfelt "thank you" after a sale, for subscribing to a newsletter, and a free gift (ebooks, discounts on products) as New Year and Christmas “thank yous” actually goes a long way. If you say thank you for an action performed today, the user may perform another action just to get another thank you (my editor does it, and it works). Go for that big thank you (and offer another product) and study the response of your users. If it works, send me an email, comment on the blog, and say thank you.

Change is normal, prepare for it

 Be prepared for your industry changing, even your product becoming irrelevant. Ideally you should be the first to make your product irrelevant; you should change your email vision before circumstances dictate you change it. You should not simply respond to the competition's new strategies and new products. Your competition may change the industry, and some day you may not be able to catch up. Now let me take some of my own medicine -- thanks for reading my article!