Six Factors On Yahoo! Search Algorithm
As Google is known to be the search engine that is receiving the largest search market share, the majority of webmasters tend to optimize their websites according to the Google algorithm. Due to the fierce competition on Google, some webmasters do feel that they can only maximize the profits out of their websites by improving rankings on Yahoo!. To improve the website rankings, however, you will first need to understand Yahoo!’s search algorithm. Here are the 6 SEO factors that you must know before optimizing your websites for Yahoo!.
Factor #1: Relevant Content
Content is always one of the key factors in SEO. When optimizing your website for Yahoo!, the more content you provide the better. This may mean adding content to your website on a regular basis. A good example of content addition is to have a blog. Blogs are a very good way to add relevant content to your website on a regular basis.
Factor #2: Keyword Density
Yahoo! is believed to be very heavily language based. You should include synonyms and plurals of a keyword when considering the keyword density of your web pages. Keyword density preference on the major search engines keep changing, though some webmasters have experimented that in general Yahoo! does allow a keyword density of up to 8%.
This is certainly one of the areas that Google does not weigh as heavily in terms of web page optimization. Some webmasters argue that Google seems to prefer a keyword density of about 2%. This means you need to make a plan and compromise between the preferences of the different search engines.
Factor #3: Website Structure
A good website structure is vital for two reasons. Firstly, the site structure determines the order in which your page content gets seen by the search engine spiders. Content that occurs higher up in the code of your web pages is often given a higher priority and therefore a higher weight than content lower down in the code.
Secondly, a properly structured website will make use of CSS to reduce or even totally eliminate the use of tables. The reduction in code will push the content higher up the page, so that the content will be given higher weight.
Factor #4: Inbound Links
Although Yahoo! places great emphasis on content, inbound links are also important. With Yahoo!, textual relevance is one of the most important factors. Being able to control the web pages where the inbound links appear and the anchor text of each is essential.
If an anchor text is in the middle of the content, it will hold greater weight than an anchor text which is in a directory-style format above a description. A link near the top of the web page is more valuable than a link nearer to the bottom. If your link is on a page with other links, the effect that link will have on your rankings decreases respective to the number of links on the linking page. Having reciprocal links is fine, but it is always better to also have one-way links.
The quantity of the links will not get you high rankings on Yahoo!, while the quality of those links is more important. Yahoo! considers a link is of high quality if it is from a site that is ranking well on Yahoo!.
Factor #5: Sitemap
Still with Yahoo!, you want its spider (Yahoo! Slurp) to crawl all or the majority of your web pages. Also, you want it to crawl as often as possible. This means you should pay extra attention to creating a legible sitemap and keeping it updated as regularly as possible. Yahoo! has a sitemap feature (Site Explorer) which is the equivalent of the Google Webmaster Tools.
Factor #6: Aging
If you think aging and sandbox only apply to Google, then you are wrong. Due to the sandbox effect, new websites can find difficult to rank for competitive keywords within the first couple of months on Yahoo!. On top of the difficulty, there is a delay on the value of inbound links. When a new website launches it should not have any inbound links. These inbound links are subject to a delay of up to 3 or 4 months before they hold their full weight.
The only fortunate fact is that Yahoo!’s sandbox has a slightly shorter effect than the one that is applied by Google. This is one of the reasons that webmasters often see their websites being ranked well on Yahoo! before Google.
