Is there any way, ethical way, of improving your ranking on Yahoo?

I am doing very well with Google and MSN, but Yahoo, for some reason, Yahoo doesn't give me much traffic at all.

Is there any way to improve this?

Thanks

Interesting that you do well on Google and not Yahoo. I think if you're building quality content that people are visiting and using then you will eventually do well on Yahoo. I've recently started to break out in Yahoo but my Google results are lagging. I figure it's just a matter of time.

Yeah, I find it strange, too. The number of visitors Google gives me is more than 8 times than Yahoo. Yahoo and MSN combine doesn't even come close to half the amount I get from Google. And I thought targetting Google is much harder than Yahoo.

I recommend making an RSS feed, and adding it to My Yahoo. This will help your rankings. Then you can ping Yahoo everytime you update the feed, and Yahoo will revisit you. To ping Yahoo, visit this URL:

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/pingu=http://yoururl.com/

Yahoo also craves content and backlinks, so make sure you do well on both of those.

Does that mean I have to submit into Yahoo! Directory? And that costs money, right?

Submitting to a directory doesn't cost money. Advertising on certain parts of yahoo does.

Originally posted by TieuDieuTu
Does that mean I have to submit into Yahoo! Directory? And that costs money, right?

No, you don't. You simply add an RSS feed into My Yahoo, which anybody can create for free. Yahoo's directory is separate from the search results, and is not required.


Submitting to a directory doesn't cost money. Advertising on certain parts of yahoo does.


Yes it does, Yahoo charges a lot for inclusion in their directory, not sure of the exact figure, but its a few hundred I think. However, many people have found that by being listed in DMOZ, Yahoo has added their listing for free. However, submitting directly into the Yahoo directory costs money, but it is not required to do what I talked about.

To improve your ranking on yahoo, you should observe what are the missing points that the top ranked sites have there and you probably missing it.

This is my thought only, I may be wrong.

Originally posted by TieuDieuTu
Yeah, I find it strange, too. The number of visitors Google gives me is more than 8 times than Yahoo. Yahoo and MSN combine doesn't even come close to half the amount I get from Google. And I thought targetting Google is much harder than Yahoo.

The reason for that is because google is the most commonly used search engine. You may be ranked will in the others, but if a lot less people use them, you aren't going to get as much traffic from them.

very good point, indeed.

Thanks a lot for all the tips :)

The difference between Google and yahoo is the emphasis they place on "off page" versus "on page" information. Check any of the SEO forums and you will find a multitude of threads discussing this topic.

Google places a lot of emphasis on who you are linked to and who is linked to you - and the more relevant the sites that mention or link to you the better you will do.

Yahoo seems to look at your site more on it's own merits than on what your link pop is. It isn't unusual to do better with one engine than another, but once you start ranking well with Yahoo the rankings seem to be more stable than the bouncing around you can experience on Google.

Yahoo also likes longevity. The sites I've had on there for more than five years are very well placed as compared to the ones in the same categories that are younger than a year or so.

Google places alot of importance on your incoming links and overall link popularity. Whereas Yahoo takes into account your internal linking and on page optimization alot more. So, try to make sure you have text link navigation somewhere on all your pages with your targeted keyword phrases as the anchor text. Also, be sure to have a sitemap. If you have a good size budget and can afford it, submit to the Yahoo Directory, this can sometimes result in a higher listing if your search terms are in your company name and description.

I am thinking of submitting my site into Yahoo the other day, but after reading their requirements, I am not sure I want to do that or not.

Yahoo asks that your site must be in English, well my site is in Vietnamese. I don't want to spent $300 only to have Yahoo rejected me. Any ideas? A problem with a non English site is that you'll have to target two different languages as if one isn't difficult enough already.

I am in the process of learning how to make a site map. It seems a bit more complex than I thought it would.

also adding more to your meta tag does alot for your ranking to

Originally posted by maester
also adding more to your meta tag does alot for your ranking to

That is a very inaccurate SEO statement. Back when search engines first came out, meta tags were as important as backlinks are to Google today, but now they have practically no value, expect for the "ROBOTS" tag (although you should do that in robots.txt) and the "TITLE" tag, which tells the SE and browser what to display as the name. Actually, I remember the first search engines, when some of them were alphabetical :)

Originally posted by TieuDieuTu
Is there any way, ethical way, of improving your ranking on Yahoo?

I am doing very well with Google and MSN, but Yahoo, for some reason, Yahoo doesn't give me much traffic at all.

Is there any way to improve this?

Thanks


People might not notice it the first time around. May also not it certain to the second, third or fourth time. But, after having seen that ad for a number of times, they might be curious

You should wait or the frequency of repetition should be increase to get traffic from yahoo.

Originally posted by etechsupport2
People might not notice it the first time around. May also not it certain to the second, third or fourth time. But, after having seen that ad for a number of times, they might be curious

You should wait or the frequency of repetition should be increase to get traffic from yahoo.

We're not talking about ads here, we're talking about organic SERPs.

Originally posted by HostingInsider
That is a very inaccurate SEO statement. Back when search engines first came out, meta tags were as important as backlinks are to Google today, but now they have practically no value, expect for the "ROBOTS" tag (although you should do that in robots.txt) and the "TITLE" tag, which tells the SE and browser what to display as the name. Actually, I remember the first search engines, when some of them were alphabetical :)

What tags are use full and what tags aren't?

I know that the Title, Description and Robots are. They keywords tag is iffy. Is there any other?

Originally posted by TieuDieuTu
What tags are use full and what tags aren't?

I know that the Title, Description and Robots are. They keywords tag is iffy. Is there any other?

It really depends on the search engine. Most search engines will only look at title and robots only. Title is by far the most important, as it displays the name for both the SE and the browser. Search engines prefer robots.txt instead of the robots tag, but I believe that they will honor the robots tag if its present. It seems that they no longer look at the description for anything. When you're looking at SERPs, it shows the content on the page that is the same that you're searching for, not the description tag. I think that it is used by some minor search engines, though.

Thanks a lot for the explanation :)