Yahoo Background
Yahoo is King of the directories and a great provider of traffic if you get a good listing there. Developed by David Filo and Jerry Yang at Stanford University, they started their guide in April 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet.
Yahoo Size
Yahoo contains approximately 1.5m web sites and was the largest web site directory until the Open Directory Project overtook it during the summer with over 2m sites. Yahoo however has the lions share of users with 50%+ of the total number of search queries
Yahoo Results
From the Yahoo home page it is possible to navigate through the individual directories and subdirectories to get more and more specific categories and web sites about each subject.
Search results are presented in 3 options:
Yahoo Categories: this is the first set of results returned when a search is made and lists those Yahoo categories which are most relevant to the search query. Clicking one of these links takes you to the list of web sites within that category.
Yahoo Web Sites: The second level of results are taken from the best matches from sites listed in the Yahoo directory. Sites are ranked according to the Category Name, Title and Description as listed in Yahoo A measure of the individual sites popularity for that query is also important and is determined by a system which counts how many times a link is chosen for a given search query and raises or drops the site in the rankings accordingly.
Yahoo Web Pages: The third set of results come from a filtered version of the Google database.
Use of Metatags
Yahoo does not consider metatags at all as all sites are chosen by a team of editors who decide what to include. The editors give each site an appropriate description. Keyword and Description Meta tags are not used by Google who provide the web pages results at Yahoo.
Adding a Page to Yahoo
Submissions to Yahoo must follow their submission guidelines at http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/url/ or they will be rejected. Sites must not contain broken links or be under construction, thay must contain unique content and must support different browsers and systems.
A submission to Yahoo is made by finding the most appropriate category for your site then clicking the 'Suggest a Site' link at the bottom of the page. A multi-page form must be completed and the submission may then be reviewed by an editor. You will know if your site is successful as Yahoo sends an acceptance e-mail. If you haven't had an acceptance e-mail within 5 weeks of submission then submit again. Consider if the original submission was correct. Common reasons for rejection include not having the official company name as the Title, submitting to the wrong category and not adhering to the guidelines.
BizExpress submissions are a fast track review system which, at a cost of $199, guarantees an editor will look at the site within 7 working days. It does not guarantee inclusion and the submission must still conform to the guidelines. There is an appeals process if the site is rejected or placed in the wrong category but ultimately Yahoo will choose whether to list a site or not and you are only paying for a review, not a listing.
Before submitting your site is is essential to thoughly read the Yahoo guidelines and to chose the most appropriate category for submission. It is well worth practicing on the forms before actually submitting your site as this will allow you to identify the information required and consider what to enter at each stage.
Spam
Yahoo will exclude duplicate sites, sites which lack substantial unique content and those which do not follow the yahoo guidelines. You generally only get one opportunity to get things right with Yahoo as it is extremely difficult to get them to amend a listing at a later date although a change form is available at http://add.yahoo.com/fast/change
Regional Yahoo
One of the factors considered by Yahoo is the regional nature of a site. Submit to the most appropriate regional version of Yahoo, for UK sites this is www.yahoo.co.uk . Only if your site has a truly global appeal should you submit to www.Yahoo.com.
Top Yahoo Ranking Secrets
Do a series of searches on your best keywords to identify which category is most appropriate for your site and which category apprears most frequently in the search results. Study the editing sytle in your chosen category and across Yahoo as a whole. Then create your description to match their style whilst including your best keywords. Aim to keep the description short to give the editors little opportunity to change your description and try to avoid any marketing speak. |
