Yahoo SEO Techniques

Is it possible to optimize for Yahoo?

[cyberprofit]

Now that Yahoo has launched their search engine, I would like to know if anyone has any information on optimizing for Yahoo? Much has been discussed concerning that factors that affect one’s ranking in Google.

However, when it comes to the new Yahoo search engine, does anyone know the correct properties of SEO? There has to be some scoring system that determines how well Yahoo will rank one’s content for relevance and assigned scoring.

Based on that premise can we conclude that Yahoo will:

1.Use keywords on a page as one of the prime ways to yield queried results?

2.Factor in keyword density?

3.Factor in keyword proximity?

4.Make use of meta tags (Title, Description, and keyword meta tag)?

5.Employ the use of backlinks for page voting importance?

6.Use some sort of equivalent pagerank system?

7.Count the number of internal backlinks within one’s site?

8.Count the number of external backlinks point to a site within a text anchor?

9.Will the number of pages within a site on a given subject give it more weight?

10.Will Yahoo look at sites as authority or portal sites like Google?

I may be asking these types of questions too soon, but I also realize that many of you may have some insight that I don’t have. If so, please share your thoughts.

[onlineshrine]

This is an interesting thread. I thought I had an Inktomi penalty on one of my sites, but it turns out my Google optimization just killed me for Inktomi. Since I came up good on av.com and alltheweb.com and others, I figured Ink just whacked my site. Which of course I didn't care about until a few weeks ago when MSN and Yahoo started using Ink.

I e-mailed the kind folks at the address Tim gives out and they told me I actually don't have an Ink penalty. It would just seem that my Google optimization means I am overoptimized for Ink maybe.

Thank you for posting this thread, I am eager to see everyone's ideas. What I can bring to the table, other than what's Good for Google isn't necessarily good for Ink, is that keywords in the URL seem to be a HUGE factor in Ink, much, much more than Google.

My sites that do well in Ink are almost entirely un-optimized. Maybe that says something too. They do have good links coming in with good anchor text, though.

If I have too choose between ranking well in Google and Inktomi/Yahoo, I will choose Google still. But hopefully there is some middle ground where you can do well in both on competitive terms.

[Aman]

I found this on Yahoo:
[help.yahoo.com...]
It has some basic SEO stuff.

[walkman]

I'd suggest no SEO to play it safe. What does great on google might give you a nice lifetime ban on Y!. Having 30% of the traffic cut off, it's not fun. Unless you want to have two domains, one for each engine...(and risk a ban for that reason ;))

[2_much]

There are few sites I have ranking on both Yahoo and Google, meaning we are creating separate clusters of sites for each engine. We'll ban the respective bots so the sites aren't indexed in both and seen as dupes. We don't want to lose rankings in Google yet we want to rank in Yahoo. This is our only option.

[onlineshrine]

2_much,

I am thinking about doing a version of my site for Inktomi/Yahoo. I suffered a loss of 30% of my traffic and frankly it sucks. I want it back.

How would I set up the robots.txt on each site to ban Google from the one and then Yahoo from the other?

[soccer_star]

Many of my sites were whacked on Google by the last 2 updates. I considered de-optimizing them but when Yahoo launched their own results there I was, riding very high with the exact same sites that had triggered an OOP in Google.

So I've left them as they are and am building new sites for Google now.

Anyone else find that what worked very well in Google (before the last 2 updates) now works very well in Yahoo?

[DaveN]

I would wait and see what effect of the sitematch data being inserted is , before trying to hard ;)

DaveN

[michael heraghty]

Some basic pointers are indicated in this recent thread: [webmasterworld.com...]