How to Rank in Yahoo

According to a recent study, almost 25% of all internet searches are carried out using Yahoo. It's time to ask the question: how well does your site rank in Yahoo?

Yahoo almost seems like an old friend to many us. Once a hub at the centre of the online world, this is a search engine that has almost been neglected while Google has become so dominant in the market.

The figures above show that Yahoo is still worth spending time on - plenty of internet users still choose to search via this search engine, partly because the main Yahoo home page is used by millions of people worldwide.

If you're struggling to get good rankings from Google, then you may find that Yahoo also provides a useful way of making up for the shortfall in traffic.

Optimizing your site for Yahoo is fortunately a pretty straightforward process - the key point to remember is that this is a search engine that likes you to use HTML as it was designed to be used - that means avoiding unethical black hat techniques.

When looking at improving your Yahoo rankings, always remember that content is king. If you have great content and make solid use of the TITLE, H1 and H2 tags then you've made a very good start.

In terms of the structure of your website, you should try to make the site easy to navigate and to keep things simple. Include a site map that links to all of the pages on your website - Yahoo finds sites easier to crawl when they have a site map in place and you'll also find it a benefit with the other major search engines.

You'll also need some good inbound links to do well in Yahoo. Consider the anchor text that is being used in those inbound links - you want to use your keywords within the anchor text but don't overdo it - you may be penalised if you do.

Finally, avoid black hat techniques. Cloaking, doorway pages and hidden text are all great ways to get your website completely removed from the Yahoo rankings.

Stick to the ethical means of building your site and you'll find that Yahoo can be a great source of traffic.

About the Author

You can find out more about improving your web presence by visiting Search South, where Keith Barrett is employed as a search engine consultant. This article may be used by any website publisher, though this resource box must always be included in full.