How can I get to the top of yahoo

[lovely]

Hello,

How can I get to the top of yahoo? I know that to get to the top of google and MSN one need to have a high rated/good keyword, frequently update of site, link to high quality site and others, but I think yahoo case is different.
Regards,
Lovely

[clau]

Hello Lovely,

Nobody realy knows how to get on top in any serach engine. I guess that only the guys from Google knows exactly what to do with your site to be in the first x. And they are constantly changing things adding more and more variables to the formula.

Anyway, I hope you will find the answer and you will tell it to us.

Claudiu

[temi]

But there are a few basic steps that would get your site to the top of Yahoo, google and most other search engines, here are just a few:
Good Quality and unique contents (just another web design site, or another forum like all other forum is not that unique)
Excellent internal link structure
Inbound links from quality site (not from link far, low quality web directory etc)
and many more which other more experienced SEO expert can add to this list

[OldWelshGuy]

Unique page titles
Solid hierachael folder structure
clearly defined niches within the folders
good use of anchor text in links (internal and external)
link out to quality resources from within your body copy (on topic and as tight as possible)
Good balance of inbound links (hunderds of directories and nothing else will not help you enough)
Focused content.
Balanced weighting ont he page
Clean code that validates or as near as damnit.
structured pages
Place a cabbage on top of your monitor
Only wear pink on Tuesdays!
Send me money

(1 of the last three is true, two are false)

[temi]

One of cool OWG post, will turn this to a sticky so that its easy to find in future

[Jess]

HHmm I thought you had to place the cabbage on top of your computer whilst wearing pink on tuesdays .... I didn't realise it was an option

[OldWelshGuy]

HHmm I thought you had to place the cabbage on top of your computer whilst wearing pink on tuesdays .... I didn't realise it was an option

jess be careful, if you do both you might trip a spam filter. Then again cabbage and spam is a good meal

[lovely]

Thanks everyone, my main target is yahoo. I have a site that is on top of google and 3rd on MSN but is not evern in top 20 of yahoo, so I think there is another method to get to the top of yahoo.

[OldWelshGuy]

Lovely, if you want it in plain English here goes.

Yahoo prefers on page optimisation with clean code Header tags h1, h2 h3., etc. It places more weight on keywords in the url, and prefers a far higher level of keyword saturation and prominance.

MSN & Goole on the other hand place more weight on off page links than Yahoo. This (IMO without looking) is why you are ranking on G &MSN but not yahoo, your pages are not optimised, you have just focused on getting links.

Please correct me if I am wrong, and feel free to post the site in question.

I am not sure where this 'optimising for diffferent search engines' thing comes from really I don't. ALL search engines want the same thing, they want clean sites that can be understood as easily as possible by focused pages and navigation. The only difference is Google (&MSN to a point) as these prefer the above, but also want inbound links to work with.

[dmscs]

I am not sure where this 'optimising for diffferent search engines' thing comes from really I don't. ALL search engines want the same thing, they want clean sites that can be understood as easily as possible by focused pages and navigation. The only difference is Google (&MSN to a point) as these prefer the above, but also want inbound links to work with.

OWG is so right. You have to ensure that you use standards compliant code. Visit the w3c.org and check out their HTML validator. Put your website address in and see if you have any errors. Common errors include no <DOCTYPE> and ampersand errors.

Next you need to make sure that your content is the highest quality you can afford, be it through an expenditure of time or the use of a copywriter. Points to consider is the identification of keywords which may be used to search for your product or services. But please bear in mind this is not the be all and end all of Search Engineering. Keywords are often sold by Search Engineering firms as a part of their sales process, for example they will offer you 5 keywords or keyword phrases for x amount of money. When really what you should be concerned with is the optimisation and search engineering of your whole website.

Use an xml sitemap and get it registered with Google. This will also show errors on your website and recent search phrases that people have used with Google to get to your website. I understand that Yahoo do a version of sitemaps with a .txt file this might be worth considering.

Be patient, they actually will get to you if you have the right links in the right place. So look to develop some quality links, that are relevent to your website. As Temi says, list on some SEO friendly directories, dont worry too much about the directories page rank, if it is a new one and has a page rank of 0 it might be tomorrows PR6?

More Importantly!!!
Try not to get too concerned about being on the top of SERPS! Your website is not about results on search engines. It is about traffic and conversion. The search engine results are all fine if you are getting adequate traffic and it is converting to sales or calls, but if you have x amount of unique visits and your website is not converting, then you need to worry about your website first.

Altering your website for conversion is something many SEO firms do not consider. SEO is a marketing business, its about conversion and maximum impact, something that search enigineering to 5 keywords does not cover anymore!

Thats my input! Good luck! If you need more help then we are here.