Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : SEO / SEM Discussions : Yahoo Algorithm

[Zafar Ahmed]

Hello,

Yahoo is one of the most popular search engine and internet portal, their search engine is in fact as important as Google.
People search Yahoo for relevant information, you miss out potential traffic if you do not have good ranking in Yahoo Search Engine.
Much has been changed in Yahoo’s Algorithm. Yet, no one has properly understood how it works, only few people know how to rank for Yahoo.

As you all know Yahoo has one of the biggest directory, therefore it is in the part of their algorithm, means if you are not in their directory you have to wait for a long time in order to appear in their SERPs. Sad? I know.
However, this is not really true. Yahoo ranks website with high inbound links in terms of both quantity and quality links and the factors discussed below. Although, Yahoo and Google; they both have the “sandbox” penalty, which sometimes makes it difficult.

How can one optimize their website for Yahoo?
Here are few factors that helps optimize your website for Yahoo.

Title of your website:
Title is the biggest and and the most important ranking factor of Yahoo. Hence, you should have your major keywords in the title.

Relevant Content:
The more relevant content you add to your website, the better ranking you get. One of the best way is to create a “blog” and update the content daily through blogs, blogs are good for relevant content.

Inbound Links:
With Yahoo, inbound links are vital. Do not forget to put the anchor text, as with Yahoo anchor relevancy is very essential. Remember, the quantity of links will not really help, it is the quality links that matters.

Click Popularity:
This must be something you have never heard of. But, this is a part of Yahoo’s algorithm. The more clicks your site gets on Yahoo Search Page, the more changes of your website getting on TOP 10. Yes, this is not part of Google’s algorithm and probably something new to you.

These were few important factors discussed above, remaining like: sitemap, age of domain, keyword density are important part of Yahoo as well and should be treated same as others.

Good Luck and feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Regards,
Zafar Ahmed –

[Biju]

I would rate Keyword density and the use of keywords in contents as the highest than anything. Its pretty simple that if you don't optimize for your important keywords you won't rank anywhere near regardless of the sitemaps , titles and contents etc etc.

Normally clients require a fast results but its a hard slog thing which everyone should know that SEO takes months to show results. If you need fast results go for PPC or nag behind the search engines. lol

[marcbarak]

I would agree Biju - SEO is a very long and tedious process that requires a lot of patience and faith in your business model.

We suggest clients just starting use PPC to push their presence as it takes a good 6-12 months before SEO even begins to reflect progress.

As to Zafar stating Title as the most important I would say the whole group are equally the most important as they are equally dependent on each other.

A site will need a combined effort of a well planned SEO effort (all the tags starting with Title, Keywords and description) dynamic content additions, inbound links and soooo much more

A big effort that many clients fail to recognize

What hurts the SEO industry is providing false promises as so many "experts" claim

In the long run hard work in all the angles of SEO will show improvement but patience is truly a virtue in this world of SEO

[ForumsAddict]

Zafar I am not sure how well you know the internal operations but here is a pointer. All you need to do is to sign up with CJ and pay about $100 to $150 per sale for whatever product you are selling. Wait around 1 to 2 weeks and you would notice that your website is on top of yahoo search results for your most competitive keyword.

[incrediblehelp]

Well most of these points described are nothing more than the same techniques you should be using for optmization on all search engines.

[Zafar Ahmed]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Well most of these points described are nothing more than the same techniques you should be using for optmization on all search engines.

Have you even read it? There is new thing I have mentioned called "click popularity" - read that, please.

[Outlaw Web Master]

Yahoo's a pile of crap anyway.

I've never chosen to feed off the scraps left to it by Google which the majority of folks use these days.

It's better to concentrate optimising your site(s) for the masses.



owm

[weycrest]

Depends on your ambitions. Yes it can take months and a lot of work to rank well on highly popular, high volume keywords, but I've have had domains and web sites ranking in days for "long tail" keywords, and thats with new brand new domains.

Do your keyword research and look for longer tail keywords with two, three or even four words.

Also acquiring back links seems to be a lost art but still very important. Its also never been easier with so many Web 2.0 sites, blogging and microblogging services, rather than relying on "directory" listings.

[MrCat]

All good points raised here. Yahoo may be the 2nd top SE out there, but traffic from it tends to convert more than those from Google - atleast for our sites.

[ElTino]

If I was to optimize my site for Yahoo I would probably do something like this:

First off, I'd research and find what the most searched keywords for my niche are. The next thing I'd do is build a squidoo lens that targets the phrases and keywords in question.

The optimisation of such a lens would probably take like 2-3 hours of work. This lens should definitely have the best keywords
for that particular niche. Mind you that the content that will include these words and phrase should be unique as the PLR articles. In case you take content from the article directories the effect will literally go to hell!

The next move would be to promote the lens by stumbling it and adding it to a wide range of RSS feeds directories. Digging and submitting the lens to social bookmarking sites should not be disregarded as this will improve your chances of getting to the tops SERPs even more.

Spending like 2-4 hours for visiting other people's lenses and leaving comments on the lenses will eventually add your comments to these lenses and give you better ranking in Yahoo.

And last but not least, don't forget to put your site link somewhere in the lens if you want to send targeted visitors to your site!

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Zafar Ahmed

Have you even read it? There is new thing I have mentioned called "click popularity" - read that, please.

If you really think this is a big factor then you have much to learn. If it was I could create a spider and simply click only my listing to effect this. I dont think so.

[weycrest]

Originally Posted by MrCat

All good points raised here. Yahoo may be the 2nd top SE out there, but traffic from it tends to convert more than those from Google - atleast for our sites.

I think you might be right there, but Google might convert better on higher value items and services. I also think people coming from Google are more "techie" minded.

[The Stealthy One]

Zafar, thank you very kindly for your post. Those methods you listed worked for me (though I discovered them by trial and error) to get one of my sites to the first page in Yahoo! for a very competitive term. I wish your post existed when I started trying to SEO that site!

[Zafar Ahmed]

Originally Posted by The Stealthy One

Zafar, thank you very kindly for your post. Those methods you listed worked for me (though I discovered them by trial and error) to get one of my sites to the first page in Yahoo! for a very competitive term. I wish your post existed when I started trying to SEO that site!

You are welcome, sir. Feel free to ask if you'd like to know anything related to Yahoo Optimization.

[Jamie Edwards]

Hi Zafar,

What is your source that Yahoo considers click popularity highly? I am very interested.

The reason I ask is because this is because the general consensus is that click popularity contributes no major weighting the to search algorithms of any of the major search engines (Yahoo, Google and so on), otherwise the Internet as we know it would look markedly different to what it is now (link farms, search engine results and so on).

I think you may be mistaken about what has changed in the Yahoo search algorithm; it is not so much they have added click popularity weights, but instead that they have taken them away.

It was reasonable in its day, but is too easily manipulated, too difficult to track and does not work effectively on a large corpus - especially as large as the Internet today.

Originally Posted by Zafar Ahmed

Much has been changed in Yahoo’s Algorithm. Yet, no one has properly understood how it works, only few people know how to rank for Yahoo.