Ignore the Box

There's a new secret to gaining traffic on the web. Rather than thinking outside the box, staff at the popular Craigslist site have a different motto:

"Ignore the box completely"

An interview with Craigslist's CEO Jim Buckmaster reveals the company are too busy focusing on usability to worry about what anyone else is doing. They don't even want to make money. Heck, they try NOT to make money.

Their unusual approach is working. The site publishes nearly 15 million classified ads every month from users who clearly enjoy contributing to a site without ads.

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Q and A: Does changing the name of a site impact search rankings?

Dear Kalena...

I am thinking of changing the name of my internet business site so as to direct more traffic because the current name, while nice, doesn't really spell out what we do. It is now Gilt-Edge Luxury Tours and Travel and I would like to change it to DC Luxury Tours. However, we have had this site for 10 years and it well indexed by the search engines. Does changing the name (but not the url which would stay the same) have any impact on the search engines? Or would I have to start all over from scratch if I changed the name?

Gilda

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Gilda

A site name change is not necessarily a problem. It would be different if you were changing your domain or changing your name from one with keywords in it to one without. Losing the word "travel" from your site name may slightly impact your site's rankings for searches involving the word "travel", but only if you no longer include that word prominently in your site. Your main site heading will no longer include "travel", but you can compensate by making sure that the rest of the site is optimized for travel-related keywords.

The other area that might be impacted is your link popularity. If other sites are currently linking to you using your old name, it might be contributing to your site's relevancy for "luxury tours and travel". But if ranking for "DC luxury tours" or "DC tours" is actually more important to you, then you should encourage sites already linking to you to change the anchor text of their link to your new site name and of course any new link partners should link to you using your new name. DC Luxury Tours is certainly easier to remember than your old name, so the change should be good from a marketing and usability perspective.

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Q and A: How do I find out what the pricing models are for online content?

Dear Kalena...

Not really an seo question but I saw your article on content aggregators.

We are about to launch an innovative site in Canada devoted to events across the country. It is positioned as a one-stop, free site for all kinds of event information - over 100 event categories covering the demographic spectrum and across geographies - towns, communities to large urban cities. Think of it as a 'Google' for events in Canada. We have the largest most comprehensive database of event info in Canada.

I want to sell category event data feeds tht would be integrated to other's websites i.e cultural events/ local attractions to tourism sector, hotels, etc, How do I find out what the pricing norms/ models are for online content?

Thanks!
Susan

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Susan

I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself. Firstly, if the site isn't even launched yet, you will have trouble selling your RSS feeds to other sites based on claims alone. My guess is that your potential partners will want to see your site in action for some months before being interested in syndicating your content.

Secondly, if you are offering all the event information for free on your site, why should other sites want to pay for the feeds? I think your income model is backwards. I actually think you should offer the feeds for free (like most other content providers) and use the syndication to drum up more visitors to your site. You could sell advertising space within the feeds to tourism -related sites or businesses OR you could charge a small membership fee for sites to have their events listed in your feeds, which then get syndicated to other sites. That's they way I'd do it.

But back to your real question, which is how you find out pricing models for online content. This is a difficult thing because it's very subjective. Someone in the U.S. might be willing to pay $100 for an e-book that is distributed online in China for free. It all depends on your market. A couple of sites that are successfully brokering online content in bulk include Mochila and Elance.com. Check out the pricing models they use for some tips to selling your own.


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