How To Get Listed Prominently on Yahoo!

---

It all started with a ...
... the traffic report for one of our sites Inoticed that traffic was down ...
from the day before. I soon ...
the change had occurred at Ya It all started with a gasp…while reviewing the traffic report for one of our sites Inoticed that traffic was down significantly from the day before. I soon discoveredthat the change had occurred at Yahoo.So I navigated to Yahoo, typed in the keyword, and gasped.
The trusty Yahoosearch ranking page we had come to know and love (because our site was ranked#1) was gone! It had been replaced by what appeared to be a normal,non-categorized search listing like you would find at most other search engines. Andmore importantly, our site was no longer on top of that list!By now you probably know that Yahoo has changed the way that it delivers searchresults.
The old way, of showing a page of categories (Business and Economy >Business to Business > Construction > Metals) in response to a search has beenreplaced. Visitors now see a few one-line category links followed by a list of sitesthat rank well against that search term.
What does this mean for Internet Marketers? First, it probably means that your sitehas changed in ranking on Yahoo. You might be lucky and your site is in muchbetter position now than it used to be.
But you also may not even show up in thelisting, especially if your success was based on having an alphabetically-prominentcompany name (Yahoo used to list sites alphabetically).Second, it means that the search engine battleground has probably changed yetagain. Yahoo currently represents about half of all searches on the net.
Myprediction (and I’m sure Yahoo’s hope) is that since this change makes informationeasier to find, it is going to make them significantly more popular, resulting in greatermarket share, and hence more searches, going through Yahoo in the future. (I’vealready called my broker…)Keys To Ranking High on the New Yahoo!:The formula for getting ranked high on Yahoo used to be one of the easiest tounderstand in the search directory/engine world.
Now that formula’s not so obvious,and more importantly, it may become a moving target, just like most of the othersearch engines. What works well this week, possibly won’t next.
But that’s life!In spite of that, it’s fairly clear that Yahoo will be utilizing several factors in theirequation to determine what comes up first in their ranking. Keep these in mind asyou register new sites:1.
Presence in their database. They won’t list you if you’re not there! So if youhaven’t done it yet, get off your duff, dust off your credit card, and fork over the$299 to get your site listed.
You can’t afford not to, period!2. Presence of the keyword in your URL, Yahoo title and Yahoo description.
Yahoo still doesn’t appear to be ranking their search results based on the pagecontent of your site itself, but rather by the information in the title, description andURL that is listed in their database for your site. Your site must provide valuableinformation to be accepted into the Yahoo directory, but when it comes todetermining who gets ranked first on any given search, it’s the words in the titles,descriptions and URLs that determine the ranking order, not the actual copy on yoursite.
Ideally, the keyword that people will most likely find you under will be listed in yourURL, your company name (which Yahoo will use for the title of your site in theirlisting) and right at the beginning of your site’s description on their database. Forexample:http:compostmakers.com Compost Makers Inc.Compost makers, tools, and equipment for making your garden healthywill score considerably better for a search on “compost makers” than would http:gardenstuff.com Bob’s Hardware StoreCompost makers, tools, and equipment for making your garden healthy3.
Primacy of the keyword in your URL, Yahoo title and Yahoo description. Yahoo places more weight on words at the beginning of terms than that same wordlater on in your description.
So:Compost makers, tools, and equipment for making your garden healthywill score better than:Garden tools, including compost makers, rakes, shovels and morefor the term “compost makers.”Keep in mind though, that this second example will score better on searches for theterm “garden tools” which is searched on 70 times more frequently than “compostmakers.” You need to know what terms people are actually using to search for siteslike yours. How to do that is the subject of another article, but the easiest method isstill Overture’s (formerly Goto’s) tool, (currently located athttp://inventory.overture.com/inventory/searchInventory.mp) Make sure that ifyou’re going to go to all the work to rank high against a specific search term, that it’sone that people are actually using to search for your site! It’s vital for you to not only know what you are truly selling, but also what is beingsearched on in your category.
4. Other factors.
Every search engine applies certain weights to certain site criteriaand change those weightings frequently. At the moment, Yahoo is doing that inseveral areas, which may change: A.
Placement in Yahoo’s categories. Yahoo has not abandoned their old category structure, just changed the way they list search results.
They currently seem to be giving higher rankings to those sites that are categorized under the top category for a given search term rather than the lower priority categories. B.
Giving more weight to hyphenated URL’s than non-hyphenated URL’s with the same keywords. Thus (everything else being equal) http://compost-makers.com would score better than http://compostmakers.com.
This is especially true if the keyword is not the first element in the URL: http://best-compost-makers.com would score better than http://bestcompostmakers.com. C.
Penalizing sites that have numbers or early-in-the-alphabet letters before the keyword (probably in reaction to those who tried to beat their old alphanumeric ranking system): http://1compostmakers.com probably won’t even show up in the first several pages of their listing. D.
Not differentiating between .com’s, .net’s, .org’s, etc. This opens up opportunities to achieve top rankings through purchasing alternative domains to the .com standby.
(Caution we have no idea how the new .info, .biz etc. domains will fare in Yahoo’s new structure, so approach these with caution).Several key issues are not yet clear at Yahoo:1.
There is no indication of popularity or link popularity affecting rankings. Yahoo istracking click-throughs so it won’t be surprising to see popularity affecting rankingsin the near future.
Link popularity may be farther out, as Yahoo isn’t currentlyspidering sites, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see an acquisition or licensing deal inthe future.2. There are several thousand sites that are paying extra to be listed at the top of thecategory pages as sponsored sites.
Yahoo has now significantly decreased the valuegiven to those paying partners by shunting as much as 75% of their search traffic offof the category pages and into their search pages. They stand to lose millions ofdollars in sponsorship revenues in the next few weeks if they don’t quickly find a wayto bring those sponsored links onto the search results pages in addition to theircategory pages.
All of these changes are vital for internet marketers to understand. Not only will theymost likely result in additional traffic to Yahoo, but for those who understand thesechanges it can yield major benefits of extra traffic, sales and profits! Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .