How to rank in Yahoo
Ideas, SEO April 17th, 2008A lot of people seem to have Google all figured out. After all, there are millions of pages of search engine optimization strategies on the web and most of them pertain mostly to Google. A lot of people that rank very well in Google (first page), they tend to find themselves on page 5 or page 6 in Yahoo.
So, whats the deal with Yahoo? How do you eventually crack the search results with them? Well, here’s a few things to keep in mind:
- If you buy a link in Yahoo’s link directory, you are more likely to be ranked high in Yahoo’s search results page. The only problem with this is that a directory listing cost $300.
- Google is a lot faster at indexing websites than Yahoo is. If you aren’t ranking well now, perhaps all you need to do is wait it out a couple of months. Remember, the key to web promotion is patience.
- If you want to get a high rank on Yahoo, try dropping your link throughout Yahoo’s network of sites. Yahoo seems to place more importance on links coming from sites they own. It’s both easy and free to put your links on Yahoo Answers and Delicious. (One idea is to sign up for 2 free Yahoo accounts and with one account post a question related to your niche. With the other account, answer the question and drop your URL in the reply. With this method, I was ranked in Yahoo with my site in less than 24 hrs.)
- Yahoo seems to love image ALT tags. I can’t really explain why, but it seems to be true… so give good alt tag descriptions with every picture you post.
At the end of the day, however, Yahoo is honestly not that important in terms of SEO. If you still aren’t ranking well in your Yahoo search queries, you might want to just give up. 85% of your search engine visitors will come from Google, so all your work with Yahoo might end up being nothing but a fruitless quest. Try the methods I’ve discussed above and if you still aren’t in, just spend more time with Google.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:13 am
I’ll tell you right now. Do Not waste your money on Yahoo directory. I did this a few years ago for several sites. I never noticed any increase in rankings from this. The directory pages themselves may have good page rank but Y! directory links do not rank well themselves. You will never see a single visitor from a directory link itself either. I never have. And guess what else, I have never renewed a directory link with Yahoo yet they still carry my sites in their directory. IMHO directories are all completely dead. You will get much more mileage out of social bookmarking sites and they are free. When you make a new site, you should do bookmark submissions and forget directory submissions.
I can’t believe people are still screwing around with any directories at all. They are useful in the way fossils are useful. You can tell your children that once upon a time directories ruled the internet landscape. Now they are just a part of the historical digital strata.