Optimizing a Yahoo! Store Page and Domain

How can one access the most critical aspects?

[Eric_Lander]

I am contracted on a freelance basis to provide optimization services to a web site, that is entirely run through Yahoo's Store services.

The client has provided me with a login name, and password - and told me to simply go to town. While I would love to do this, I have to readily admit, I'm absolutely confused.

First off, administering the domain and page itself is very difficult, with three editing options. Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. While the advanced would seem most appropriate, there is still no real ability to get down the to coding of the page to truly optimize it.

Knowing that there are many SEOs here within the forums daily, I was hoping that some of you could lend some supportive ideas on how one could get into the real coding of the page to begin making modifications.

It is my feeling, that many of us will come across this again and again. It just seems logical with so many smaller to medium sized businesses relying on similar services - and of course will need their sites to be optimized.

Please post your thoughts, or experiences with the system. I am more than happy to come back to the thread often to give any more information as it may be needed and so on.

Thanks everyone,
~ Eric

edit: I'm simply a horrible speller on Mondays!

[seth_wilde]

I had a similar situation with something that had a site with citysearch. Your probably going to need and contact yahoo yourself and see if it is possible to actually get at the code (with citysearch it wasn't)...

[Hunter]

Eric,

Personally I would ask them if I can create a whole new web site for them and depending on your pay negotiations either buy the new domain for them or buy it for myself. I would then ask for a lot of control for positioning purposes and simply link to their yahoo store pages for the shopping section of the site. Best of both worlds.

I would then just optimize their yahoo store title etc... within Yahoo shopping for high placement on keyword searches within Yahoo shopping.

[mivox]

I'd be very interested to hear the answer to this one... I was considering a Yahoo Store myself.

My first hunch would be to say it can't happen. It's set up so that anyone can run a store, and nobody can break one. Allowing code access would kill that angle...

For now, why not start optimizing the product titles and descriptions, and basic page text? There's probably plenty you can do in that area before getting to the code (if you can).

[pmac]

As far as I know you can't get at the code, but as Mivox says, you can accomplish a fair bit with headings and page text. The page heading actually defaults as the title tag for all pages except for the index. I have one that does so-so, but to be honest, I don't put in as much effort on it as I should. The Y! shopping referrals are pretty darn good though, and they convert at a decent rate.

[Eric_Lander]

Wow, after a slow response to the thread - I thought all hope was lost. Mivox, I have already begun to take your advice this morning in working on the titles and descriptions of the items with a high search yield on Yahoo!

Within my freelanced contract, submission fees to Inktomi and LookSmart were included. I would assume that LookSmart would not care at all in indexing and listings... But with all the talk regarding INK's disliking third level domains - it seems unlikely that I should expect some good things.. right?

The trouble is that once you move beyond the domain.com homepage, you suddenly find yourself in a world of store.yahoo.com/users_store - Again, it just seems as though it would not yield the most favorable results.

It has however been paid in full... So, I'm giving it my absolute all. I have tried, on numerous occassions to contact Yahoo! already. They're great at throwing you around some phone directories and then just letting you listen to music before they tell you to look at some online FAQ's. Ah well... To each their own I suppose.

Has anyone tried to submit a Yahoo! store site? Successfully? What are some of the most receptive engines in regards to listing Y! Stores in SERPS?

Thank you all for your help,
~ Eric

[ebgreen]

I have a yahoo store in a very competitve field and I am ranked on GOOGLE in the top 5-10 on over 100 search terms.

[Eric_Lander]

ebgreen,

any insight as to how you have accomplished this would be appreciated. Both, for myself and apparently others.

Thanks,
~ Eric

[jatar_k]

We've done a couple of yahoo stores with mixed results. Whenever they had a good webmaster who was familiar with the interface we could do anything but when we had to do the optimizing it would take forever just to figure out where you could do what. The best ones we worked on were sites that had sites hosted elsewhere but used Yahoo for their transactions and shopping carts.

[Robert Charlton]

>>The best ones we worked on were sites that had sites hosted elsewhere but used Yahoo for their transactions and shopping carts.<<

I've not done a Yahoo Store site, but I've looked at Yahoo Store as an option for a client who had a friend who liked Yahoo Store. I came away thinking that what Jatar is suggesting is the way to go... if you must use Yahoo Store, use it for the shopping cart only.

[ebgreen]

The yahoo store has more features than you can possibly use e.g. page tracking, inventory control, coupon manager, site searches, confirmation emails, gift certificates, and a cgi script that you can use to track hits to sales from links on other domains and overture. these are only a FEW of the many things they offer.

Optomization. I just optomized the pages, built link poularity and a few other minor tweeks. The field I am in is so competitive that a lot of SEO companies will not even take on a site like mine. Why? Most of the keywords are single words and not phrases and these SEO companies say that it is just too hard to rank sports nutrition and bodybuilding supplements companies. One of the single words is Xenadrine, which is very hard to rank.

One key I found, is that "fast" and altavista place extreme weight onthe home page. I have over 40 rankings (mostly on single words) on both "fast" and altavista.

One of the problems is that if you have not used a Yahoo Store, you can accidentaly end up with three meta-titles on each page, whcih will kill your rankings.