Optimizing For Yahoo, Its Easier Than You Think
Yahoo may only be second rank to Google but it holds a significant volume of web surfers. It is considered one of the major players when it comes to search engine and web crawling applications. For someone who is in quest of keeping his website on its top search engine ranks, working out his Yahoo rankings is not as difficult as it seems. To the eye of an SEO specialist, maintaining the top ranks in Google page ranks is never enough. No website can ever dominate the popularity race without working doing something to optimize his popularity in Yahoo.
For people who have worked on their Google ranks, dealing with Yahoo page optimization should be a breeze. Not because Google and Yahoo are tight rivals, they deliberately work the opposite of ways. Contrary to the common belief, Yahoo and Google work with similar algorithms. However, it does not necessarily mean that a top ranking Google page will get the same marks with Yahoo. Here’s where their differences start.
Similar to other search engines, Yahoo also works with web spiders. It is called, the Yahoo! Slurp or the Yahoo spiderbot. This spider helps the search engine do indexing and database management by performing a specified mathematical operation to produce the pages that appropriately goes in every search result. Actually, Yahoo spiderbot is one of the most active spider crawler in the web. It works with just the same elements that Google web crawlers do. If it happens that your page misses an important SEO element, then it will be rendered not spiderable. This means that your page will never get top position, not yet. Compared to Googlebot, Yahoo spiderbot handles more pages and does more indexing. For someone who wanted to optimize his page, it takes a month or two to make all your SEO efforts to take effect in Google search results, but shorter with Yahoo.
The keywords in the title and in the URL also affect Yahoo search ranks. Similar to Google, keyword placement is also crucial to your SEO efforts with Yahoo. Having the most popular keyword on both places might earn some improvement to your Yahoo search ranks. However, you must remember that you can only place no more than 3 or 4 keywords on both URL and title. Putting your keywords everywhere might turn your webpage into a search derivative. Basically, that means not good. Since Yahoo is first and foremost a directory for submissions before a search engine, a website that carries the listed keyword in the search box stands a better chance of securing first page placements on the search results. In addition, keywords in filenames also work with Yahoo.
Another thing with keyword is keyword density. Keyword density sure makes a big difference. The higher the keyword density, the greater your chances of making it to the top ranks. However, you must not overdo and overuse keywords. Reaching above 7 to 8 percent keyword density, your web page may be classified into the keyword-stuffed category or be banned from the search results.
With Yahoo, it’s relatively young algorithm were found to favor some elements such as title tags, meta description tags, keywords in URLs, headings, Alt text images, inline links and site structure. Making slight changes on these aspects of your website can gain mixed results. You only need to have enough to find out which move works and which changes do not.
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