SolveYourProblem
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Series
SEO Strategies for Yahoo
With the improvements that have taken place
at Yahoo over the last few months, the site is starting to
become important again. Many say that their new search
tool provides more relevant search results than Google does
now – great for Yahoo, since they were the top dog before Google
came along.
Even for a few years after Google’s conception, Yahoo! was
the high and mighty search engine. It is still the popular
choice for those who are seeking popular culture solutions
and should be the target search engine for such pages. Yahoo!
will put up a fight here for the king pin of search engines
again before too long so make sure that you have quality
results here as well as Google.
In
general, Yahoo's spiders work the same way as Google's,
following every link they find on the web and putting that
information in a database. As always, you can also submit
your site to the index manually. These manual submissions
will speed up the process slightly but probably won’t give
you instantaneous results. There are no real ways to incorporate
highly
Yahoo
places some weight on your incoming links, but not as
much as Google does – it’s more interested in your content,
which could explain why Yahoo’s results seem to be more relevant.
To get a strong ranking at Yahoo, you should pay more attention
to your keyword density than you do to your link popularity.
Yahoo is also less likely to index a huge number
of pages than other search engines are. Normally forums and posts
are not touched by Yahoo as it will deem them unnecessary.
There are times when this may seem like a good idea to many
searchers, but there are also times when these types of results
are missed. Basically, keep in mind that you will not get
as many pages indexed by Yahoo! as you will by Google, MSN,
and other search engines. You may, however, get a higher
number of hits out of each page that you get listed in Yahoo!
depending on the type of site that you provide.
At
a Glance
1. Use keyword-rich titles, about 20 words long and unique
for each page of your site. These titles are the first things
that Yahoo! sees and are the single most important aspect
of your site regardless of which search engine you are optimizing
for.
2. Use the meta description tag on each page too, with a
description that fits your site well. Yahoo! still uses meta
tags for its descriptive purposes but not necessarily word
for word. Make sure that you have a quality description so
that you don’t run into situations where you don’t get listed
because of lack thereof. Basically, your description tag
is an evasive action rather than an attempt at attaining
a high number of hits or a higher rating.
3. A meta keywords tag should be included on every page
of your website, and it should list words and phrases related
to the site. Make sure that the key words describe the specific
page rather than the site itself except for the index page.
You don’t want a bunch of people to be going to the wrong
front page. They may see the page, not find their answer
and leave. If they find your home page, they’ll probably
see that it’s a home page, look for a relevant link, and
find the answer or material that they are looking for.
4. Well-written, keyword-rich content will help you a lot
with Yahoo. Well-written content is important regardless
of search engines. This content is the entire reason for
your site’s existence. Make sure that the content that you
deliver is something that you want your name on. Something
that you can stand behind.
5. Easy-to-follow internal links in plain text will help
Yahoo’s spider – the bottom of the page is a good place for
them.
The key to getting a high ranking at Yahoo is to keep adding
keyword-rich, relevant content to your website on a regular
basis. Continual updates let Yahoo’s spiders know
that you are maintaining the site and keeping your information
updated – they’ll come back regularly to check out these changes.
Yahoo’s improvements are sure to help them in the market,
and the number of users flocking to Yahoo is starting to
show optimizers that there are more search engines out there
than just Google.
