A complete guide with insider tips for seizing the full power of Yahoo
Yahoo.com actually uses two different databases. In order to get your share of Yahoo's 20 Million Visitors a day, your site should be listed in both Databases.
Have you ever noticed that when you search for something on Yahoo.com, that if Yahoo.com does not find a relevant link, or at the end of the links it did find, that Yahoo.com will open up a window showing you WebMatches?
First you should get your site into this "Web-Matches-Database". Later on I will explain, how to get your site into the directory Database. But getting into the "Web-Matches-Database" is quicker in most cases, so you should start with that.
Have you ever wondered where you can submit your link to be included in the rollover of a Yahoo.com search?
Now, the Web Search is powered by the Google Search Engine. And, getting listed on the Google Search Engine is necessary. On the Yahoo-Help-Pages, they tell that you dont have to do it. See here, what Yahoo says. But if you want some traffic, you should not rely on a that. Take control and submit your site to google.com.
Here is what Yahoo admits:" ... doing a very specific search,
and Inktomi's (Inktomi was the searchengine they
used before google)
results may be right on the money. "
See Yahoo FAQ
So, go to Google.com and submit your site.
You just have to key in your URL (someting like http://www.yoursite.com) and if you want, an additional comment.
Sometimes the following link works better: Add URL to Google
The spider from google.com (a spider is actually a program that "visits" your site and "reads" what it finds) takes about 20 words of your page and uses that as a description. If you are not happy with the result, change these first words on your page.
After you submitted your site and waited for at least a week, go to Yahoo.com and type in your URL (yoursite.com) to check whether your site is there.
As soon as your site is there, you can see what I mean with this description.
These words have to contain your keywords. That what is contained in these words may come up if someone performs a search on yahoo.com. So, the best is, if you rewrite these first words of your page accordingly, stuff them with keywords and submit your site again to google.com.
But there is one key thing: The google spider does not start from the top of your page. The spider looks for the first bold printed word and starts from there.
Bold means, on your page a word has to use <B>word goes here</B>
So, your "description" has to be the first
Example: Lets say you have a site selling pets supplies. Your keywords will be
"pets supplies"", pets food", "dog food", "cat food" and so on.
Your website will then look someting like:
Example Source code
Best pets supplies, cat and dog food
As you can see, Google.com uses these description words and it uses the title of your site.
In order to achieve a high ranking in google.com and through that a high ranking on yahoo.com for
your keywords, you have to:
- stuff your web page titel with your keywords
Attention: Google does not use word-parts! If your keyword is "cat food",
Meta Tags for keywords and description are disregarded by google. But they are very important
for other searchengines. So why not do it right in the first place. Then other
search engines will "like" your site, too.
Title Tag Keyword Meta Tag Description Meta Tag
And Google uses the link popularity of a site as an additional factor. So, it is
very imortant that you also submit your site to other searchengines. Listings in FFA
Linkpages here and
here are higly recommended to
improve your ranking with searchengines and especially with google.com.
Google has a cache feature. Once a page is indexed by Google, it keeps a copy of that
page on file.
Tip (for advanced Webmasters): If you don't want Google to cache your page to their
server, they offer you a way to opt-out. You may add the
following meta tag to the HEAD area of your page to accomplish
this:
If you're currently in their cache, add the above tag and then
re-submit. Once they re-spider your page, your competitors
will be unable to see the exact HTML the engine saw.
There is one drawback to the NOARCHIVE tag. If your Web site
is temporarily inaccessible or you rename the page after being
indexed, Google users who would otherwise be able to view
your page via Google's cached copy will be unable to do so.
However, if your site is hosted on a reliable server, this
may not be a concern for you.
Through applying this data, your site will be found in the Web-Matches Database on Yahoo.com.
And you have quite some control over your keywords and ranking.
You may submit your site to the "Web-Matches-Database" once a day.
There is no penalty for that. Sometimes sites fall out of these Databases. So,
you should submit your site at least once a month here, to keep the listing fresh.
This submission can be a pain in the neck. But there is a way out. You can add an other
Meta Tag that forces the searchengine spiders to revisit your site frequently and
through that keep your listing active:
Revisit META Tag
This is important for
general Keywords.(see:
Yahoo FAQ
) As this
can be a bit difficult, I divided it into 10 Steps
To get listed in the Category-Database takes at least a couple of weeks in most cases.
To make
sure you get visitors from Yahoo.com during this process, make
sure you submit your site to the Web-Matches-Database, first.
Yahoo.com is a directory and not a search engine. Real living
beings evaluate your site. So make sure your site is perfect
before you submit it to Yahoo.com.
Perfect here means:
- all Links are working
Keep your pages simple! If in doubt, ask yourself, would Yahoo.com publish
my page as one of their own?
Now to avoid getting rejected, follow the steps. (There is a special
URL on Yahoo.com with
Suggesting Sites to Yahoo!, but certain important
points are missing there.
But I highly recommend that you read "Suggesting Sites to Yahoo!".)
For the following you should create a textfile on your hard drive in order to
prepare your Yahoo submission. If your site does not get listed
after two weeks, just use that textfile and submit your site
again. There is no penalty for that.
Part A: One site with one Product
Step 1. Create now a textfile on your hard drive
with the following information (the explanation follows):
Category 2:
Title:
URL: http://
Description:
Contact info
Contact Person:
This is to make sure that you site is not already listed. If it is
already listed you may jump to part B of this guide. If it is
not listed, proceed with step 3.
Step 3. Find the right categories
Go to Yahoo.com and perform searches for:
- your most relevant Keywords
- your competitors or sites similar to your own site
This will give you a very good idea, which categories are the
best for your site. If in doubt choose the category that comes
first in the Alphabet.
That gives you an advantage as
yahoo listings are alphabetically. Put these Categories in
your textfile.
Step 4. Find the right title
The title should be short and appropriate. If possible put
one or two of your Keywords into the title. But be careful not
to be too self promoting, as the yahoo editors will change your
title if it is not ok. Or even worse Yahoo may simply reject
your submission.
But if your site is owned by a company, the actual company name will be
your titel. If you do not like that, there is only one way out: Create a
new company with a better name, whith the only purpose of holding your
website or rename your company (what will be practically impossible in most
cases). If you try to suggest your site with a title that differs from
your company name, either your site will be rejected, or they rename the
title.
Avoid all capital letters and don't start your title with an " a "
unless your company name actually starts with an " a ".
Special tip: Name the page you submit to yahoo.com with the
same title!
Note the title in your textfile.
Step 5. Note the URL of your page in your textfile.
Usually the URL is your main page something like index.html.
If that URL is different from your main entrance page, justify
that in the final comments section!
Step 6. Develop your description and put it into your textfile.
Yahoo allows 25 words. But I highly recommend to use less! If
you use only 15 words,
you avoid the liability that one of the
Yahoo editors changes your description. So stay with a 15 word
description, containing your keywords.
But the description should communicate. And it should not be a
bluntly promotion.
Step 7. Type your contact information in the textfile.
Step 8. Create a final comment
This should be in a few short sentences a description why
your site should be included in the yahoo.com directory. Tell
the Yahoo editors something about your traffic or your
satisfied customers. Put this into your textfile.
Step 9. Review everything!
Make sure there are no typos. Make sure your site is up and
running. Are all the graphics loading properly? Is your URL
correct? Are the categories correct? Everything tested?
Tip:
Yahoo requires that all commercial sites provide a business address
somewhere on the site itself. So, place your street address and city
and state somewhere on the site and make it easily accessible!
Step 10. Go to your first category of choice and submit
On the bottom of that yahoo-page you will find the link
"Suggest a site". Follow that link. Yahoo will now ask you
to make sure some points are in. Check the boxes. If you are
not sure, click the link to get the information. Now proceed
with your submission and paste all the information from your
textfile into the proper fields.
If you are finished with the submission, do not delete your
text file. You may use it again if you are not listed after
two weeks. Keep submitting every two weeks!
If you are not listed after two month, your site was probably
rejected.
Sit back and take a good look at your pages. Are they really
good? Do you have satisfied customers? If you were the owner
of Yahoo.com, would you accept the page?
If you feel your site should be listed in Yahoo, just drop
them a note. Send them an e-mail or better a postal mail. Or call them.
Here is the contact information:
Yahoo! Inc.
If that does not help, you may consider their business listing
service. It will cost you $ 199.- but it is no guarantee for getting listed.
The URL is
Yahoo Business Listing.
And finally if you are listed, Yahoo will send you an e-mail.
If you want to change your listing go to
change Yahoo Listing
In closing, one important thing:
Do not fool around with Yahoo! If you send them something that
is not in compliance with their rules, you will not be listed.
Part B: One site with different products
Warning:
If your site is listed on Yahoo.com with one site and one
product you may use part B.
Do not use this until your site is listed with one product!
Ok, here is what you may do, if you have different products
that you want to sell on one site:
You create an entrance point to your site but with different
domain names.
Not these usual doorway pages. You might know them. They are
usually ugly pages with no real content, that should get you a better listing in
dumb search engines. That is not what I mean.
No, you create a special page for each product. That special
page has to have real content!
Build something like a news
page related to your product.
Lets take an example: Your main page is a pets page. You
sell pets food. Lets assume you sell dog-food and
cats-food. You get your main page listed on Yahoo.com.
Then you create a page for dogs and one for cats.
On your dogs-page you give information on the different
dog-breeds, post stories from people having adventures
with their dogs, list addresses of specialist for certain
dog-problems etc. A site that might stand there on its own.
And of course you put a link to your food-site for dogs.
You do the same with cats. You get the picture. You really
have to be creative with this. And you have to invest some
time doing it. Do some research.
Build an excellent page!
Then you get yourself for each page an additional domain.
As these pages should only be entrance points to your main
page, a free hosting service is the optimal solution for
this. But be careful not to choose one of the free hosting
providers that give you pop-up-pages!
There are free providers that let you choose to place a
banner on your page, instead of a pop-up. If a visitor of
your new entrance page is first presented with a pop-up,
the visitor will know that it is a free page. You have
immediately lost any confidence in your company!
But if the visitor sees a Banner at the bottom of your
page, nothing is wrong with that. The visitor eventually
takes that as a good indicator. You have so many visitors
that other sites pay you for advertising on your page.
The free hosting provider that I can recommend (I do not
receive any commission from them, so they are really good)
is Virtual Avenue.
Your domain will be
http://yourname.virtualave.net, where "yourname" is any
name chosen by you. There is no charge for signing up
and using a sub-domain.
Or you may choose to sign up for a New Domain if you want
your domain to be http://www.yourname.com . Such domain
names have to be registered at interNIC. If you sign up
for a New Domain, they will send a domain registration to
interNIC for you. You will not be charged any fee by them
for their service, but you will be charged $70.00 by interNIC
for possessing the domain.
TIP:
Hassle-free domain name registrations for $15 per year – directNIC!
As soon as you have your new pages on the new domains up
and running, use the "Web-Matches-Database"-Information and
then proceed with each page using Part A of this guide.
I hope you got it: This procedure of adding multiple
pages to the Yahoo directory only work with:
- different domain names!
- real content on each of the pages!
if you search for "cat food":
...delivers pets supplies, dog food, cat food. The best pet supplies. Cat...
...like our cat food and dogs would buy our dog food. Cats and dogs like us...
bestcatfoodsupplies.com/index.html -
Show matches (Cache)
- 6k -
Similar pages
- create a description, starting at least with a bold letter
"cats foot" won't do it. You have to feed google the complete word.
- all images are displayed properly
- your page loads quickly (total size of your page under 40K)!
- you have real content on your pages
- NO spelling errors
Category 1:
Contact e-mail:
Company Name:
Company Phone:
Company Fax:
Company Address:
City:
State/Province:
Postal Code:
Country:
Final Comments:
Step 2. Go to Yahoo.com and search for your site
3420 Central Expressway
Santa Clara, CA 95051
Phone (408) 731-3300, listing support: (408) 731-3333
Fax (408) 731-3301
Office Hours
8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST
e-mail: joe@j0e.us
If you are still not listed, go to:
The Regional Yahoo-Directory
and list your site there.
Usually regional listings are added within a couple of days
and appear after a few weeks in the main Yahoo directory.
This part is a little bit tricky. You should first get your
site listed on Yahoo.com using Part A of this guide.