WEB MEDIA SCHOOL session 33 Even though there are hundreds of search engines, only the major six are significant because they account for eighty percent of all search engine hits. The largest of these six major search engines is Yahoo!
When we submit your Web site to Yahoo!, we follow Yahoo instructions exactly. While other search engines use only a computer to accept Web site submissions, Yahoo! is staffed by editors who hand-check each submission. An estimated 75% of all submissions are rejected, and it can take six weeks or longer to hear from Yahoo! whether your Web site was posted or rejected. In fact, you may or may not be notified of an acceptance or rejection. For $199, you can purchase a "Business Express" to guarantee that your Web site will be reviewed and considered (does not guarantee acceptance) within seven business days. You will also receive an e-mail response telling why your entry was accepted or declined.
We select the category in which your URL belongs, not the category you would necessarily like; we only submit your home page. Yahoo! rarely accepts more than one URL per Web site; We make sure that your site is not under construction and that all the links work; Your site should offer "online transactions" over the Internet, and your business should be based in the United States; and finally Yahoo! rarely accepts URLs from the major sites known for offering free Web pages.We visit the main Yahoo site or a regional site (as appropriate), and do a search (your site title is a good one) to determine if you are already in the Yahoo index or not. If your site does not appear under the heading Web Sites, it isn't in Yahoo. We find the category page that best fits your site. At the very bottom of this page will be a "Suggest a Site" link. If there is no "Suggest a Site" link, then the page you are on does not allow listings to be added to it, most likely because it is a very general top-level page.
We do some searches that people looking for your site will do, and note which categories come up at the top of the search result. then apply to the topmost appropriate category . We follow their instructions to the absolute letter, The #1 mistake people make is that their title and description read like ad copy. Bad mistake! What Yahoo wants is a descriptive title and if you can make your description one sentence of at most 15-20 words, you're less likely to have it edited down! We use the "comments" field in the application form to point out special things about your site that the reviewer ought to look at. Yahoo lists sites alphabetically by TITLE. So if you can come up with a plausible title for your site that starts with a number or the letter A, B or C, Searches on Yahoo will find your site if the search words appear in the title, description or URL. We make sure all the important keywords are in the description and title! Yahoo Help Index : http://help.yahoo.com/help/search/url/ and their Submission Tutorial : http://howto.yahoo.com/chapters/10/1.html Here's a list of links to all the Yahoos:
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Australia & NZ http://www.yahoo.com.au/ Brasil (Portuguese) http://www.yahoo.com.br/ Canada http://www.yahoo.ca/ China (Traditional) http://chinese.yahoo.com/ China (Simplified) http://gbchinese.yahoo.com/ Denmark http://www.yahoo.dk/ France http://www.yahoo.fr/ Germany http://www.yahoo.de/ Hong Kong http://hk.yahoo.com/ Italy http://www.yahoo.it/ Japan http://www.yahoo.co.jp/ Korea http://www.yahoo.co.kr/ Norway http://www.yahoo.no/ Singapore http://sg.yahoo.com/ South-east Asia http://asia.yahoo.com/ Spanish-language http://espanol.yahoo.com/ Sweden http://www.yahoo.se/ Taiwan http://tw.yahoo.com/ UK & Ireland http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ |
Atlanta http://atlanta.yahoo.com/ Austin http://austin.yahoo.com/ Boston http://boston.yahoo.com/ Chicago http://chi.yahoo.com/ Dallas / Fort Worth http://dfw.yahoo.com/ Los Angeles http://la.yahoo.com/ Miami http://miami.yahoo.com/ Minneapolis / St. Paul http://minn.yahoo.com/ New York http://ny.yahoo.com/ S.F. Bay Area http://sfbay.yahoo.com/ Seattle http://seattle.yahoo.com/ Washington, D.C. http://dc.yahoo.com/
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Yahoo uses Google.com for matches displayed after its category and directory listings. Google.com is well known for their highly relevant search results, Google now claims to have the largest database of Web pages on the Internet. Google searches the keywords in the hypertext of a fully indexed Web page to find otherWeb pages related to a given search that it has not had time to fully index.
One of the easiest ways to gain a top ten ranking is to study the source code of pages that already rank in the top ten for your chosen keyword. The idea is to give the search engine what it wants to see. If it likes to see six hundred words on the page, then create a page with six hundred words.
Many people complain about Yahoo ignoring their submissions. Unfortunately, it's rare that they ever tell you why you were not added to their directory. Here's an important tip sent in by Steve Mays of Credit Solutions Funding Corp at http://creditsolutionsfunding.com. The e-mail was sent to him by Yahoo's technical support:
"We require that all commercial sites provide a business address somewhere on the site itself. Please consider placing your street address or city and state somewhere on the site. If this issue can be resolved I am happy to review the site again.
Many small businesses as well as big corporations bury their contact information or omit it entirely from their Web sites. This is a big mistake. The e-mail above implies listing only a city and state may be sufficient. However, you should include the full contact information and have a link to it from your home page if it's not on the home page itself. This adds credibility to your Web site,
Iwon has gained huge popularity in the past year largely from its extensive TV advertising and its cash give-aways.Iwon is among the top ten or twelve search engine portals on the Web. Lycos uses the Fast engine for results. Their domain IS www.alltheweb.com.
If you don't have a copy of WebPosition
Gold, you may download a free trial from
:http://www.webposition.com/download.htm
We
Register each individual Web page only one time per search
engine. Registering a page multiple times may be considered
spamming by some of the search engines, and your Web site could be
removed from the search engine; Submit at most five URLs per day
to a search engine. For some of the search engines, registering
more than five is considered spamming, and your entries could be
disregarded. Become familiar with each search engine's rules by
reading the entry instructions prior to submitting your Web page;
Excite typically accepts only twenty-five Web pages per domain
name. Once you've registered your choice twenty-five pages, do not
register additional pages.
Hotbot Submissions:
We only submit to Hotbot a few keywords per page. We focus on
a few keywords that are important for your Web page to be found.
We concentrate on submitting the name of your business and one
other keyword. If your name is "XYZ Travel Company," we use the
name "XYZ Travel Company" on your Web page. Additionally, if your
keyword is "Mexico Travel," we list the keyword several times on
your Web page. In the text of your Web page, you will need to
repeat your keywords 2 to 5 times. If you repeat them too often,
Hotbot can start deducting points. We place your keyword in the
title, description, and keyword META tags. The URL and the keyword
that you submit to Hotbot should contain the same name.
Many people purchase longer domains in order to incorporate
multiple keywords into the name. As you may know, domain names can
be up to 63 characters long. However, some versions of Netscape
will not open pages residing on domains over 59 characters.
Therefore, 59 characters has traditionally been the practical
limit for savvy Webmasters.
However, according to Joe
Weaver of www.SiteKicker.com, a search engine optimization
company, Yahoo has recently begun rejecting domain submissions
over 54 characters. So, although the registrar companies will sell
you longer domains, you'd be wise to stay under 55 characters (not
including the .com or other suffix).
So how does Yahoo's new ranking algorithm work? Essentially, Yahoo looks for the occurrence of the keyword(s) being searched in three areas. These areas consist of the following:
2. Title of the Web site - This is generally the company name. You'll see it as the hyperlink portion of the listing. When you submit to Yahoo, you'll still want to use an alphabetically favorable company name whenever possible. As before, the name will need to match the company name used when you registered the domain. You should also include the name in the Web site title and in your contact page. If you're inconsistent, Yahoo will reject your submission or change the title to what they feel better represents your company name. Some Web sites use their domain name as their official company name. Yahoo will accept that too, but you must be consistent.
3. Web Site Description - Always include your best keywords in the description of the site that you submit to Yahoo.
4. Web Site Domain - You'll improve your rankings by including keywords in your domain name. In the case of Yahoo, you do NOT have to have each keyword separated by dashes, although that won't hurt. For example, if your domain was carbuyingtips.com and someone searched for the word "car," Yahoo would still count it as a match.
Factors that Influence Yahoo Rankings
When using keywords in the three areas above, Yahoo will consider four factors in regard to how many "points" it will give to a listing with the keyword appearing in one or more of the three areas.
1. Prominence - Yahoo places significant emphasis on WHERE the keyword appears in each of the areas. Therefore, if the keyword appears at the start of a title, description, or domain, it will be given more credibility than if the keyword appeared in the middle or end of the area.
2. Frequency - The number of times the keyword appears in each area is important. Generally, Yahoo editors are not going to allow you to repeat your keyword more than once in any area. The only time they might allow it is if it does not make the description look awkward. Your best bet in regard to frequency is to make sure your best keyword appears in as many of the three areas as possible.
3. Weight - It is suspected that Yahoo divides the number of keywords in the description (and possibly other areas) by the total number of words to compute a keyword weight. Therefore, if your keywords occupy a higher percentage of the total description, then that keyword will have more influence. Therefore, one strategy might be to minimize the number of total words in your description. However, this is generally not a viable strategy with Yahoo since it would limit the number of different keywords you can cover and your ability to write something that persuades people to click.
4. Proximity - When searching on a keyword phrase, the closer together the words in the search phrase are to each other in your description or elsewhere, the better you'll score. Both words, or at least a derivative of each word, needs to exist in the listing. For example, you can search for European cars and still get a match on a listing containing European and the word "car" in the singular form. However, if the user searches for "European cars" (plural) using quotes around the phrase, Yahoo will not match on "European car" (singular) since the user requested an exact match.
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INDEX