I've noticed recently that new sites can skyrocket to #1 in Yahoo with nothing more than a keyword rich domain and a number of links from directories and other non-related sites... Of course these are less competetive terms, even moderately competetive... I'm not sure how long these new domains can hold on to #1 but I've seen sites (mine and others') hold on for over a month with NO additional work. Obviously if you continue to do SEO it will hold on longer. Has anyone else seen this? I'd like to see what works for others in Yahoo.
It depends on the niche. A lot of the competitive serps have handpicked entries that fill up the top 5 so its totally impossible to hit number 1.
Yahoo is weird, i've seen pages with no content and links exclusively from comment spam , ranking in top 10 for very competitive kw along with authority sites. As a general rule, what works are large numbers of links ,related or non-related ,but try to obtain them from sites other than blogs , they carry much more weight (exchange links, submit to ditectories, article submission,etc) and a minimal on-site optimisation.
I rank #1 for a fairly competitive keyphrase in yahoo and I am not exactly sure how I did it. My site is not spammy and does not include non-relevant or spammy links.
I own fifa07.us and I have never used spamming. Just bought some blog reviews and added it to 8-10 paid directories. After just 7-10 days, I was #1 at the keyword "fifa07", and I'm still so
I got 4-5 sites for 10-15 terms to the top recently. It was not hard at all. Yahoo and MSN can provide decent traffic if you rank well.
I would argue that a domain with exact keywords does will in Y! and a domain with exact KW BLs does well in MSN/live.
I agree with ScottFish. I have a keyword-keyword domain which is currently doing amazingly well in Yahoo! ... also very well in MSN due (likely) to the KW BLs.
Does anyone know anything specific about what's being done to improve the Yahoo and MSN algorithms right now? Seems to me like there's a lot of work to be done there.