Forum Moderators: open
Pleaes feel free to add to, or contradict, all of this...
* Crafting your title/description:
1. keyword research (target appropriate keywords)
2. use keywords as title of your site (if possible...also, if you can, use this title in the whois)
3. write short description, reflective of the descriptions of other sites in the category
* Flash - provide html alternative, few "just flash" sites listed, sites with bits in flash seem to be okay
* Regional/business listings - if you pay, you're entitled to a business & a regional listing (if applicable)...better to use the business listing for optimization purposes...to get in for free, you can try the regional listings
* Free submissions - still work, depending on the category, take a lot longer to review, sometimes (not always) send out letter of inclusion
* Yahoo sumbissions with recurring fees - focus on ROI, track site to find out if ROI is worth it, if not drop after a year (not sure if possible) (essential to spend more time than ever choosing the right keywords and description)
* Changing listings (free and paid) - [add.yahoo.com...]
(most often doesn't work, haven't heard of anyone who got in for free, request a change and get dropped)
* Commercial/non-commercial listings - if your site sells a product you have to pay, if you have a couple of banners I think it'll depend on the editor, a banner or two should be okay...bait and switch is possible but there's a risk of being dropped if an editor reviews the category
* Yahoo shopping - [webmasterworld.com...]
* Multiple listings - possible for huge websites that have unique content for different categories...seldom possible for small sites, a possibility for large sites (where this is justified)
* How results are displayed - [webmasterworld.com...]
SERP:
1. category matches
2. sponsored
3. website matches
4. web pages
Category Pages:
1. category
2. sponsored
3. most popular
4. alphabetical
* Choosing categories - high level categories best, category with keyword in it, cat most relevant to the website/product offered
* Affiliates - many affiliate sites in the directory, probably bait and switch, yahoo's becoming more lenient (they allow banners and other suble forms of affiliation)
* Long domains - ok now...63 characters are okay
* Appeal process - if rejected, modified your site, add some unique content, reply to the rejection from the bizex editor, mention what unique content the site has as compared to other similar sites in the directory...focus on why your site will benefit yahoo's users...soft and gentle works better than being cross and difficult...
* Adding unique content - message boards, newsfeeds, content, contests, pop ups with images, glossary, resources, manuals, etc.
* Click pop - seems to have gained more importance since yahoo changed how it displays its serps, yet still far less important than title, description, domain, and PR...
* Browser compatibility - apparently yahoo editors are on mac's using old versions of netscape (4.0)...try and make sure your site is compatible with as many browsers as possible
* Ranking -
1. title
2. description
3. domain
4 PR
5. click pop
others-
1. KW proximity
2. Category
* Ranking Changes - could be that Yahoo is updating its SERP's or our PR was decreased...also, new sites are sometimes added to the first page temporarily, and then dropped back to their category...have to use valualbe optimization chores.
* Support - very bad, they stopped doing phone URL support, only by email now, rarely respond, awful support
* Dropped sites - they may be dropping sites with bad load time or other glitches...i've noticed and heard a few people of complaining of this glitch, where a site is seen through category search but not through the search engines... best to email the editor who accepted the site and hope for the best...
* New categories - suggest during the submission process
* Suggest a site help: [help.yahoo.com...]
And here's a very brief, vague outline of some changes we've recently seen...shows a clear trend doesn't it:
* northern light
* recurring fees
* hotjobs
* goverture
* cut 400 jobs
* raised rates on bizexpress
* changed its look
* sponsored listings
Here is the scenario:
Have finally been listed in the Yahoo directory (today) - my site has been crawled by Google two weeks ago but is not listed as yet (assume its in the next update whenever that happens) - Have been in ODP for a few weeks - got some other decent links to my site from industry specific directories - all my keywords are in the correct place - I think I'm using the correct keywords - my content reflects the keywords - there is no attempt at spamming.
Still my listing doesn't show when I search my keywords on Yahoo. What am I doing wrong? Or do I just need to be patient? Is there be a time lag between the directory and search listings? How does the process normally work?
Thanks for the replies
Yes, there can be a day or two till your info propagates through the Yahoo system. I noticed this a few weeks ago when I accomplished getting a word added to my existing description. That word did not fetch my site in the search for about 30 hours, then viola!
My site comes up on yahoo for just a few of the keywords.
The content is there along with all the right keywords.
Should I just wait a bit longer for them to further index my site... or is there something I need to worry about?
Thanks
That's because Netscape is more pickey re the code than IE. I design pages in Netscape for that reason. I have a Mac and was often used by the owner of a large site to verify new pages would work on an older browser.
