Not buying or licensing Google's technology in 1998

In 1998, Google's two young co-founders approached Yahoo when they were making the rounds for backing in Silicon Valley.

According to a book written by John Battelle, that opened the door to an investment, licensing deal or an outright acquisition of the duo's technology. But Yahoo (and other major players) weren't interested.

Turning to Google for search results in 2000

Two years later, at the height of the first .com boom, Yahoo saw that search was becoming far more important than it had anticipated and it looked to third parties for search technology while it worked on its own.

One of those third parties was upstart Google, which it struck a deal with to power search on yahoo.com. That deal, of course, was far more favorable to Google than any deal would have been in 1998.

Paying billions for Broadcast.com in 1999

While Yahoo's 1999 acquisition of Broadcast.com for $5.7bn didn't kill Yahoo, it is arguably one of the worst-timed acquisitions in tech M&A history, and one has to wonder how the ill-fated acquisition impacted Yahoo in subsequent years.

Not buying Google in 2002.

According to reports, Yahoo had the opportunity to purchase Google for $5bn in 2002. Although that price was high for Yahoo in relation to its own value at the time, it would prove to be the last chance Yahoo would have to acquire Google.

It didn't, and the rest is history.

Failing to take full advantage of its Overture acquisition

Google AdWords may be the king of pay-per-click advertising, but the model was pioneered by Overture, a company Yahoo acquired in 2003 for $1.4bn.

As part of a patent lawsuit settlement, Google obtained a perpetual license to a key Overture patent that would spell trouble for AdWords. The price: 2.2m shares of Google stock.

While there were questions about the legitimacy of Overture's patent, and some suggested it would be found to be invalid, in retrospect, Google got a bargain of a settlement.

Hiring Terry Semel as CEO

Some consider Yahoo's second CEO, Terry Semel, the worst tech CEO in history.

While that may not be entirely fair, one thing is hard to dispute about Semel's reign at Yahoo: with his total compensation pegged at some $500m or more over his tenure, he has done far better than the company he ran.

Botching the Flickr and Delicious acquisitions

While there's no denying that Web 2.0 upstarts Flickr and Delicious wouldn't have saved Yahoo, the company's failure to manage the assets it purchased, particularly given its built-in audience, represented another huge missed opportunity that could have helped Yahoo find its way on the modern internet.

This excellent article from gizmodo looks more deeply into this. The restrictions on Flickr's mobile development is a particular missed opportunity, opening the door for the likes of Instagram. 

Not buying Facebook

If watching as its Flickr and del.icio.us acquisitions stagnated or went south wasn't bad enough, Yahoo's failed attempt at acquiring the social networking behemoth adds insult to injury.

As the story goes, Yahoo was nearly able to acquire the popular social network in 2006 for $1bn but due to a faltering stock price, Yahoo lowered its offer to $850m, allowing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to walk away from the deal.

This Friday, Zuckerberg and company will take 900m-plus user strong Facebook public at a valuation exceeding $100bn.

Rejecting Microsoft's buyout offer

Yahoo has made plenty of bad moves in acquiring (or not acquiring) other companies, but its crowning failure was its handling of its own potential sale.

In 2008, the Redmond software giant, eager to compete with Google, was willing to pay $44bn for Yahoo, but thanks to what many considered gross incompetence, Yahoo's board rejected the offer.

Today, Yahoo's market cap sits at just below $19bn.

Partnering with Microsoft

Months after having failed to make it to the altar with Microsoft, the worst financial crisis in decades hit. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, must have breathed a sigh of relief and he capitalized on his luck by inking a partnership that gave him most of what he wanted without having to buy Yahoo.

While this deal may have been a convenient way to turn back the hands of time for Yahoo, at least partially, it was a far better deal for Microsoft, and didn't help Yahoo answer any of the fundamental questions crucial to its future.

Get your content out there

It’s all too easy to talk about content, but very few businesses actually get it written and published. If you want content success you need to have a plan and complete it. List what you want to write and when, and then stick to that plan.

Even the simplest editorial calendar will help you achieve more.

If Benjamin hadn’t finished the book, there wouldn’t have been a movie and his Zoo wouldn’t have had the publicity. Be honest, have you been failing to see your content through to completion?

Tell a story with your content

A story is often more interesting than a technical piece of writing. Yes, even if you’re in a tech industry. Great content is easy to follow, has a clear start, middle and end and most importantly takes the reader on a journey.

The desired destination is a place that’s helpful, inspiring or interesting for the reader.

Enjoy what you’re writing

You need to have a passion for what you’re writing. There’s no point tasking an agency or a member of staff to write your content if they’re not passionate about it. You can always get your work edited after you’ve written it; I couldn’t survive without our editors. Just focus on sharing your passion and let someone else worry about dotting the i’s and crossing t’s.

Make the most of your successes

If you’re lucky enough to get a few bites, just like Benjamin Mee did — no pun intended — you’ll need to make the most of them.

Sometimes your content can get you PR and you may even set out with that intention. If you get success, make the most of it. Dartmoor Zoo have the book featured on their homepage, they have additional web pages explaining their story, it’s available to purchase in the shop and Benjamin does as many interviews as he can.

He was even smart enough to get pictures of movie star Matt Damon wearing a DZP (Dartmoor Zoological Park) t-shirt.

Make your content work harder

Writing the content is just the start. The key to success is getting it in front of your target audience. Share your content on your website, emails, social media, at events and anything else you can think of. You need to make it work hard.

You should also think about how your content helps your SEO. Wherever possible optimise your content even if you’re just adding a few keyword rich links to other pages on your site.

When you find something that works don’t be scared to do it again. Everyone loves a sequel right? Following up on interesting content can be very successful.

Focus on your business but be creative

There’s no point writing content about subjects that are completely unrelated to your business. Benjamin wrote about a Zoo, that makes sense right? However, you should also think about what interests your audience.

A great example of this is the Skull Candy App. Skull Candy make headphones, so what kind of content do they have in their app? It’s not about headphones, it’s snow, surf and skate-related content. This is the content that interests their customers and more importantly their potential customers.

Your business should provide content that helps your customers and prospects and encourages them to reach out and share it with other like-minded people. That’s successful content.

Get your content out there

It’s all too easy to talk about content, but very few businesses actually get it written and published. If you want content success you need to have a plan and complete it. List what you want to write and when, and then stick to that plan.

Even the simplest editorial calendar will help you achieve more.

If Benjamin hadn’t finished the book, there wouldn’t have been a movie and his Zoo wouldn’t have had the publicity. Be honest, have you been failing to see your content through to completion?

Tell a story with your content

A story is often more interesting than a technical piece of writing. Yes, even if you’re in a tech industry. Great content is easy to follow, has a clear start, middle and end and most importantly takes the reader on a journey.

The desired destination is a place that’s helpful, inspiring or interesting for the reader.

Enjoy what you’re writing

You need to have a passion for what you’re writing. There’s no point tasking an agency or a member of staff to write your content if they’re not passionate about it. You can always get your work edited after you’ve written it; I couldn’t survive without our editors. Just focus on sharing your passion and let someone else worry about dotting the i’s and crossing t’s.

Make the most of your successes

If you’re lucky enough to get a few bites, just like Benjamin Mee did — no pun intended — you’ll need to make the most of them.

Sometimes your content can get you PR and you may even set out with that intention. If you get success, make the most of it. Dartmoor Zoo have the book featured on their homepage, they have additional web pages explaining their story, it’s available to purchase in the shop and Benjamin does as many interviews as he can.

He was even smart enough to get pictures of movie star Matt Damon wearing a DZP (Dartmoor Zoological Park) t-shirt.

Make your content work harder

Writing the content is just the start. The key to success is getting it in front of your target audience. Share your content on your website, emails, social media, at events and anything else you can think of. You need to make it work hard.

You should also think about how your content helps your SEO. Wherever possible optimise your content even if you’re just adding a few keyword rich links to other pages on your site.

When you find something that works don’t be scared to do it again. Everyone loves a sequel right? Following up on interesting content can be very successful.

Focus on your business but be creative

There’s no point writing content about subjects that are completely unrelated to your business. Benjamin wrote about a Zoo, that makes sense right? However, you should also think about what interests your audience.

A great example of this is the Skull Candy App. Skull Candy make headphones, so what kind of content do they have in their app? It’s not about headphones, it’s snow, surf and skate-related content. This is the content that interests their customers and more importantly their potential customers.

Your business should provide content that helps your customers and prospects and encourages them to reach out and share it with other like-minded people. That’s successful content.

We like to think we're pretty good at spotting trends and working out the kinds of services, content and events that digital marketers want to see, but sometimes there's no substitute for asking your users directly. The survey is completely anonymous. 

We'd like to know:

• How do you use Econsultancy?
• Do you use our training courses or attend our events?
• What kinds of services and features would you like to see more of in the future? 

More than 400 people have already taken our user survey, raising more than £1,200 ($1,700) for Save the Children. 

Please take five minutes to complete our survey and help bump that amount up... 

It has a ring of truth. After all, Google has for years taken more notice of how others regard you rather than how you regard yourself.
 
However, when you decide how much resource to put into this area you need to consider how much weight these signals are really going to carry with Google in the long term.
 
History has shown that the amount of weight Google gives an indicator is always inversely proportional to how easy it is to manipulate. As it became easy to stuff keywords, flood directory sites, get reciprocal links, spam discussion boards etc.. their power in Google's eyes has declined.
 
And when you look at how easy it is to manipulate social media signals you also have to question their future long term relevance for SEO.

Take Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers for example. Offer free cake for every “like” or “follower” you get and all but most the ardent calorie counter will flock to you. For You Tube channel views it’s even easier.

Take an ear abusing song such as “Everything I do, I do it for you” by Bryan Adams, stick it on your channel and, hey presto, over 45m views follow.
 
When it comes to artificial manipulation of link gaining (ie link buying) Google can impose penalties to reduce its abuse. However, it won’t be able to do the same for people who artificially try to increase their social media signals.

Why? For the simple reason that companies will be able to point to a legitimate commercial, non SEO-related, reason for incentivising “likes” “views” “follows” and the suchlike. Companies can say that it’s to simply increase their subscriber base for future commercial gain and is unconnected to the manipulation of search engine results. Who is Google to say otherwise?
 
As it will be easy to manipulate social media signals and as Google will have no powers to penalise this manipulation, surely the emphasis Google is going to place on it is not going to be as prominent as some people predict?

Yes, social media can be used to gain other Google influencing factors such as links from people who see your social media campaigns. But when you are investing in social media for SEO I would treat it as a means to an end rather than the end in itself.