SEO For Yahoo!

This article is part two of a four part series on optimizing your website for thethe three major search engines. Part one, titled "SEOFor MSN" covered optimizing your website to rank highly on MSN. In this articlewe will cover optimizing your website for Yahoo!

Yahoo! is the second biggest of the three major engines and includes an enormous networkof websites. The algorithm is based on that of Inktomi which Yahoo! purchased backin 2002 as part of their plan to stop serving Google results to search queries. Thealgorithm itself can pose a problem for some SEO's as we optimize client website torank highly on multiple search engines due to the way that it deffers from Google andMSN. That said, any issue can be addressed provided that the right attention is givento the right details.

The Factors

To optimize and rank highly on Yahoo!, as with any of the major engines, specificareas need to be addressed. On Yahoo! the major areas are as follows:

• Keyword density
• Site structure
• Backlinks
• Aging

Keyword Density

As noted in the article on MSN, it would be unwise for me to specify a keyword densityfor you to target on your website. There are two reasons for this. First, if thereis a delay between the writing of this article and when you read it specific numberscould well send you off in the wrong direction. Second, you will need to analyze yourspecific competitors to determine what the best density is in your area and for yourtype of website. Optimal keyword densities are no longer a one-size-fits-all calculation.Your industry and site-type will affect the optimal densities and thus, a completeanalysis using a tool such as TotalOptimizer Pro will be necessary.

Additionally, optimal keyword densities change on a regular basis and so you willneed to periodically reanalyze your densities and compare them with others in the top10 to insure that your densities remain within the optimal levels. When using TotalOptimizer Pro for the onsite analysis we generally aim our densities for the upperend of the top 10 results but not aiming to be the top. Generally you will see a rangethat appears much like a bell curve with a couple sites in the very low range (0.5to 1.0%) and a couple site in the very high range (5.0 to 8.0%). The rest will generallyfall in the middle. Ignore those in the very low and very high range and target towardsthe upper end though not the highest of the remaining sites and you will be on target.

Site Structure

On no other engine is site structure more important than on Yahoo! While having agood site structure is important for a vaiety of reasons, it was on Yahoo! that Beanstalknoted the most significant gains when we brought our homepage and key internals intocompliance with W3C standards (the rest of the site will be brought into complianceas part of our complete redesign scheduled for launch on April 24th). While slightgains were noticeable on both Google and MSN they were so minor that they may wellhave just been part of the ebb-and-flow of the results. On Yahoo! however we noteda three page jump the day the changes were picked up. No other changes to the sitewere performed during this time.

The site structure is important for two key reasons. First, the site structure determinesthe order in which your page content gets seen by the search engines and thus, whchcontent will be given the highest priority. Content that occurs higher up in the codeof your page (not necessarily in your browser) is given a higher weight than contentlower down in the code. Second, a properly structured site will be lower in code throughthe use of CSS, reduced or eliminated table use, etc. The reduction in code will pushthe content higher up the page as far as a search engine is concerned and thus, itwill be given more weight.

Backlinks

Like the other two major engines, having a solid backlink count from relevant sitesusing good anchor text practices is a major factor on Yahoo! for any reasonably competitivephrase. When it comes to calculating backlinks Yahoo! is far more similar to Googlethan MSN. Aspects of backlink counts that must be taken into consideration when optimizingyour website for Yahoo!:

• Quality of site - like Google has attempted to do in the past with PageRankand is learning to do with TrustRank, sheer numbers aren't what will get you highrankings on Yahoo!, the quality of those links is more important. We must rememberthan PageRank is a Google calculation, not Yahoo! and so it alone cannot determinethe value of a link when we are optimizing for this engine. It can be used as a quasi-benchmarkhowever when determining if a link is a quality link on Yahoo! we are better offto considered whether it is from a site that is ranking well on Yahoo! for the sameor related phrases, does it come from a site that it related to ours, does the sitelink to a site that is ranking well on Yahoo! and does the link come from a trusteddomain. For these purposes a trusted domain can be considered any domain that isover 3 years old, has a solid number of backlinks coming from a wide variety of sitesand which at least a solid number of are non-reciprocal links.
• Position of link - like all the major engines, the position of your linkon the page is important. A link at or near the bottom of the page is less valuablethan a link nearer to the top. Also, if your link is on a page with other links,the effect that link will have on your rankings decreases respective to the numberof links on the linking page.
• Anchor text - the text used to link to your site will help reinforce thatthe keywords in that anchor text are associated with your site/page. Also, if thatanchor text in in the midst of the content it will hold greater weight than if thatanchor text is in a directory-style format above a description (i.e. link a standardlinks page)
• Non-reciprocal links - reciprocal links are certainly still valuable onYahoo! however it is important to supplement these links with non-reciprocal linksin the form of directory listings and other one-way links.

Aging

The bane of new websites is the aging delay. Many focus on Google's "sandbox" whenthey think of aging delays however Yahoo! employs one as well, though it is lighterand lasts a shorter duration of time. New sites and links are not given the same weightas sites and links that have been around for a while. The aging delay on sites hasbeen extended over the past couple years however it isn't as severe as that imposedby Google. New sites can expect to find it extremely difficult to rank for competitivephrase inside of 6 months even if everything else is in place. To add to the difficultyis a delay on the value of links. When a new site launches it obviosly has no links.These links are subjesct to a delay that appears to be somewhere between 3 to 4 monthsbefore they hold their full weight.

The combination of these delays can make it very difficult for new sites to rank forcompetitive phrases inside of 8 to 12 months however because the restrictions are lighterthan those imposed by Google one can expect to see rankings for secondary, tertiaryand completely unexpected phrases far faster on Yahoo!

Conclusion

If is important to note that a very important area that needs to be considered iscoming in part four of this series. Simply optimizing your website for Yahoo! willlikely not get you the traffic you're hoping for. Part three will cover optimizingyour website for Google and part four will be titled "SEO For The Big Three: TieingIt Together" and will outline how to tie all the optimization tactics together intoa concise strategy that will result in top rankings on all three major engines.

Resources

Total OptimizerPro - A keyword density and backlink analysis tool. This tool breaks down a varietyof onsite and offsite factors giving you a full snapshot of how the top 10 got theirpositions.

Yahoo!Press Room - Read the latest press releases from Yahoo!. This may not give youthe algorithm but it will tell you the direction they're going. Understand this andyou'll be better equipped to deal with changes down the road.

DigitalPoint'sYahoo! Forum - Read the latest news, feedback and discussions on the DigitalPointforums. A great way to keep updated but beware, not everyone in there is a qualifiedopinion.

About The Author
Dave Davies is the owner and CEO of BeanstalkSearch Engine Positioning, Inc