is there differences in optimizing for yahoo than google? On yahoo for a very very competitive keyword i rank 64 (page 7) out of 25,500,000 which i think is pretty good but i don't get any traffic from it yet. What are some tips for optimizing for yahoo?
Less is better ... My main keyword is very competitive (1,900,000) and I'm now being returned in position #1 or #3 ... This happened after I removed most of the text on the homepage and made sure that the first and last words on the page are my preferred keyword choice.
Ranking at #64 aint going to bring traffic. You want to get number 1 - 10. The above suggestions sound pretty good to me.
I've found that using good meta description and keywords great in Yahoo Rankings. Yahoo is also very server IP based, for some keywords I rank great (3 out of 256,000,000 !) in co.uk but less in .com (website hosted in Europe) See also here: http://www.web-inspect.com/yahoo-tips-for-higher-rankings.php
There's no reason why you can't optimise a site for both Yahoo and Google. Essentially Yahoo requires the alignment of title, description and content. Its that simple. Links don't seem to have much influence at this stage.
From my experience, the best results I have had goes like this... Find the most competetive keyword for your industry, then optimize for the FIRST search term suggestion you see at the top of the results. These appear to change without much frequency. Once your number one for this, you'll get your top keywords. As for optimization; Link exchanges, spam never hurt me, Title tags and meta description with keywords throughout the site. Cross linking non relevant sites and not caring who you link exchange with also makes no difference. But you'll hurt yourself on Google. MSN by the way can be spammed for number one easily. But...surprise, I really like the results despite this. All the usual tricks, alt, <h2>, <h1>, <i> etc etc.... I've got a few sites doing well like this in competetive industries, (Pills and Gambling.) By the way...why is everyone going so nutz over the Google PR update, when, it actually only proves for certain that page rank is dead???? I'm a White hat/Black hat SEO....I call it Green hat, creative. Whatever works so don't flame me.
Aside from solid basic optimization as above, I think that there is a degree of weight placed on age. I don't think it's a full-blown Google-style age filter, but it does seem that in order to rank well in Yahoo it takes a bit of time (especially in comparison to MSN).
IMHO, optimising for yahoo starts with your domain name. Make sure you have your keyword in your domain name. Then you need to include your keyword in your title -once, use H1 or H2 for the your first heading and using the keyword in your first paragraph. And scatter the keyword in your other paragraph - naturally. I make sure that the first word a spider sees is my main keyword. Check your source code and alter your table position to achieve this. I make sure the first and the last word contains my keyword. It also helps if you have links in your page that has that keyword. You do not need as many links from outside to rank high in yahoo but having links from authority sites helps to make sure you stay no 1 during volatile yahoo updates. Lastly of course, mention your keyword once in Meta Description & Keyword, preferably the closest it is to the starting word the better. Is there a diffrence optimising for yahoo vs google: Yes - A big difference.
markkk - a very good example of KISS and the one of the better clear and concise statement here that are on the mark, pun intended . iskandar also makes a great point, using the keyword in the domain if possible. However, we can't all have the perfect domain, but that doesn't mean you can't create a functional structure that utilizes your keyword in a directory or file name layout. (i.e. "duff hot pics" brings up my domain #1 in Yahoo out of 2.4M results) BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): Title, content, URL/file structure, and metas that compliment one another will do well in Yahoo.
I am seeing sites ranking number one that have no keywords in content, only in header tags and title tags. Anyone else seeing this?
has anyone seem yahoo filtering results based too many links too fast I used to always trade like close to a thousand links and see huge improvement in yahoo a couple months afterward but the last 3 sites I did it to , they went up then dropped sometimes they switch between new and old indexes, but I'm not sure thats the case this time, maybe all the link software is allowing me to actually reach more links faster and they lowered the threshold on the limit not quite sure.
I think they might have a filter for that, but please let me know if you have seen this trend in KW density. Sites that are ranking seem to have very low KW density.
On a related note, I've done some work on a site (Growthink.com) that is ranked #18 on Google, #5 on MSN and #75 on Yahoo for a fairly competitive phrase ("business plans"). I thought Yahoo cared more about on page content, and my initial thoughts were that this site might need: * More content on homepage * More content on site * More changing content The above still doesn’t explain why Growthink is ranked so poorly in Yahoo. I would like to dedicate resources to figure out Yahoo. I just can’t figure out why springboardplans.com is ranked #14 on Yahoo for “business plans†with a static homepage with less text on it than Growthink, only 5 pages on its entire site and only 178 inbound links according to AllTheWeb. (Growthink is ranked #149 with lots of homepage content and 2,410 inbound links). I'd really appreciate any advice. Thank you.
Yes, I too have seen this. In all honesty, I think that Yahoo has tried to correct past errors, to wit I mean too many spam sites have gotten ranked well, and they have "over-corrected" now, or so it seems to me. However, the <title> seems to be getting big time weight as a result. This element has always been important to Y! and other SEs, but it seems to have been given even more weight in this recent shift at Yahoo. My freshdames.com site use to rank #1 for "female celebrity news" - ironically, many of my site's pages still show up in the top ten, but not the home page which use to be #1. Furhter, my blog is now #1 - with a very low KW density to support your findings. However, my blog was recently added to DMOZ and is heavily linked to from throughout the FreshDames site, pages and subdomains, so it would seem Yahoo is giving more weight to IBLs than before.
Thanks for confirming what I have been seeing. I guess the new focus for Yahoo should be low KW density and getting inbound links.