I was wondering what would be the key features of a website that is built specifically to rank high in Yahoo and not Google as I would have a google specific website?
Hi Michaelr, I have had dozens of websites which all ranked well in Google but only a handful ever got decent traffic from Yahoo. The big difference has to be Onpage SEO (meta data: titles/description/tags headers). Offpage SEO is a factor in Googles algorithm but takes a backseat to Yahoo, and Bing if you are curious about that one as well. What this means is you must put your main keywords at the beginning of the title (even more so than usual) and borderline keyword stuff your text onpage. Yahoo traffic seems to be hit or miss depending on your niche, so I would suggest optimising for Google but if you get Yahoo traffic than it's a nice bonus. On the sites I did get Yahoo traffic I got about a 6:1 ratio...so while the Yahoo traffic was coming in, I was still managing 6 times the amount of Google traffic. Hope that helps.
What would you want a Yahoo specific site? I have several that rank #1 on Yahoo for great terms but there's no point considering what little traffic Yahoo brings. Focus on Google and forget the rest until their marketshare goes up.
Although it is true that Yahoo's traffic is miniscule compared to Google's from experience i notice at times certain niches tend to produce more traffic from Yahoo then Google....but that is rare.