With the improvements that have taken place at Yahoo over the last few months, the site is starting to become important again. Many say that their new search tool provides more relevant search results than Google does now – great for Yahoo, since they were the top dog before Google came along.

Even for a few years after Google’s conception, Yahoo! was the high and mighty search engine. It is still the popular choice for those who are seeking popular culture solutions and should be the target search engine for such pages. Yahoo! will put up a fight here for the king pin of search engines again before too long so make sure that you have quality results here as well as Google.

In general, Yahoo's spiders work the same way as Google's, following every link they find on the web and putting that information in a database. As always, you can also submit your site to the index manually. These manual submissions will speed up the process slightly but probably won’t give you instantaneous results. There are no real ways to incorporate highly

Yahoo places some weight on your incoming links, but not as much as Google does – it’s more interested in your content, which could explain why Yahoo’s results seem to be more relevant. To get a strong ranking at Yahoo, you should pay more attention to your keyword density than you do to your link popularity. Yahoo is also less likely to index a huge number of pages than other search engines are. Normally forums and posts are not touched by Yahoo as it will deem them unnecessary.

There are times when this may seem like a good idea to many searchers, but there are also times when these types of results are missed. Basically, keep in mind that you will not get as many pages indexed by Yahoo! as you will by Google, MSN, and other search engines. You may, however, get a higher number of hits out of each page that you get listed in Yahoo! depending on the type of site that you provide.

At a Glance.

2. Use the meta description tag on each page too, with a description that fits your site well. These titles are the first things that Yahoo! sees and are the single most important aspect of your site regardless of which search engine you are optimizing for. Yahoo! still uses meta tags for its descriptive purposes but not necessarily word for word. Make sure that you have a quality description so that you don’t run into situations where you don’t get listed because of lack thereof. Basically, your description tag is an evasive action rather than an attempt at attaining a high number of hits or a higher rating.

3. A meta keywords tag should be included on every page of your website, and it should list words and phrases related to the site. Make sure that the key words describe the specific page rather than the site itself except for the index page. You don’t want a bunch of people to be going to the wrong front page. They may see the page, not find their answer and leave. If they find your home page, they’ll probably see that it’s a home page, look for a relevant link, and find the answer or material that they are looking for.

4. Well-written, keyword-rich content will help you a lot with Yahoo. Well-written content is important regardless of search engines. This content is the entire reason for your site’s existence. Make sure that the content that you deliver is something that you want your name on. Something that you can stand behind.

5. Easy-to-follow internal links in plain text will help Yahoo’s spider – the bottom of the page is a good place for them.

The key to getting a high ranking at Yahoo is to keep adding keyword-rich, relevant content to your website on a regular basis. Continual updates let Yahoo’s spiders know that you are maintaining the site and keeping your information updated – they’ll come back regularly to check out these changes.

Yahoo’s improvements are sure to help them in the market, and the number of users flocking to Yahoo is starting to show optimizers that there are more search engines out there than just Google.

Bookmark to:

Although Overture (now owned by Yahoo) can be used by itself, it’s often better to use it together with another PPC engine, to get the best chance of being seen. Overture is the largest of the PPC engines so it is a great place to start if you’re going to try making money by spending money, but make sure that you don’t try to provide your visitor with too much too quickly. It is very easy to over diversify your online advertisement portfolio and, in effect, pull yourself out of the game with a strained wallet.

Overture does nothing to hide the prices of its advertising from you – they’re straightforward from the beginning. This is a great advantage for users of Overture, as you can never spend more than you want to. You know exactly where your ads will show up, and you can change them as often as you want. The ideology behind Overtures open display of its prices is that an informed customer is the best kind of customer. You never run into customers who complain about what they got because you tell them what they get. This is the kind of attitude that more online utilities and web sites should adapt. It gives web users a fair shake at optimizing the return on their financial investments.

You can include prices and other details in your listing so that people are better informed before they click – this saves you money on people who click and turn out not to be interested. After all, you don’t drop the big bucks just to watch your hits climb. You pay for quality hits that will result in sales or whatever else you are trying to deliver via your web page. Make sure to only pay for key words that are going to deliver quality traffic with sales potential. You should write a different ad for every keyword you’re targeting, taking the time to do it correctly. Use the keyword in the ad, as Yahoo will put it in bold to make it stand out, and more people will click on your ad.

Remember that one of the biggest reasons that you are probably using Overture is that it is so outspoken with its prices. If you are selling something, why not put the price right out there in the advertisement? This is a quick way to avoid getting hits from those users that are seeking free versions of whatever you are selling. Believe me, no matter what you are selling, somebody is trying to get it for free.

Since using Overture gives you more flexibility and room when it comes to writing ads, you’ll be able to do more with them. Other sites you typically give you a standard 3-line ad area and no more, which doesn’t leave much room for creativity.  In the case of Overture you can generate spectacular ads that really give you a chance at displaying your product as something that the user would want to buy before they even click on the link.

One thing to remember when you create an advertisement is to state the most important things first, in case some of the ad gets cut off or the reader gets bored before they finish.

When you’re one of the top 5 bidders for a keyword at Overture, you get a little bonus. Yahoo will list you twice when you have one of the top five positions – once at the side of the page, and once at the bottom. If you’re not in the top 5, you’re missing out on this free exposure – so it’s much better to pay a little extra to become #5 than to stay as #6.

Check your advertisements at least weekly, making sure you’re still where you want to be relative to your competitors. Change the ads every time you launch a new product or service, and don’t be afraid to try out new keywords you think of.

Be creative, and create short-term Overture ads for special offers – if you’re offering free shipping or free gifts for a limited time, say so! Use your ads to promote, advertise, and sell. After all, sales are what you’re paying for, right? Many people are unaware that Overture lets you do this, so it’s a chance to stand out.

Bookmark to:

MSN may be the most complete search engine out there. It seems to me that every web site that I look at in order to find the number of pages that it has listed has the following fallout: MSN has the most results, Google comes in second, Yahoo! comes last. Other search engines will generally fall somewhere between Google and Yahoo! This is a result of some very extensive work by the team and MSN. The beautiful thing about MSN is that you can find results for just about everything. If you can’t find it at Google, can’t find it at Yahoo! head on over to MSN and you’ll find something even if it is nothing more than a forum posting.

It’s still quite easy to figure out what you need to do to your site to rank highly at MSN. MSN generally indexes every page that it can find anyway and is a pretty handy search engine in that it is the third most popular out there and it is also a nice one to foreshadow what may be happening to your listings at Google in the not too distant future. They’ve recently changed their algorithm, though, and everyone wants to know how it works. Well, here are some answers.

MSN’s ranking algorithm analyzes factors such as page content, the number and quality of the sites that link to your pages, and the site content, and keyword relevance. Keep in mind that there are lots of differences between MSN and Yahoo and Google. All search engine algorithms are similar, but little differences can have big effects when it comes to SEO. The nice thing about MSN is that its algorithm isn’t as strict as those of Yahoo! and Google and is therefore a very powerful SEO tool in and of itself.

Relevant themes and topics are very important to MSN optimization, and you should also consider keyword density – remember, no keyword stuffing, as MSN explicitly says this is against their rules. The general rule is that you should make sure that there are key words in your title and then follow the basic platform for key words. Put a few in a header at the top of your page; scatter a few throughout the page including several in the first and last paragraphs; finally, put a couple of links that contain key words towards the bottom of your page. These steps are common for all search engine optimizations and should be a set process for every page that you attempt to optimize. Complete this work before attempting any other SEO procedures as this is the basis of SEO.

Links are important, and maintaining good incoming links with your keywords will get you good rankings. It’s very important to get as many natural links as possible – providing interesting and useful content can make this happen for you with no extra work at all! You’ll seem completely natural to MSN’s spider. These natural links are the basis of link SEO.

If you are trying to attain links you should first attempt to attain these links from pages that would naturally link to you but may not have heard of your site yet. After you have done this you should go to directories and other sources of links that may not be as obvious. First things first, don’t mess up your search engine listings because of a bunch of bogus links from unsuitable, questionable, or malicious locations. These links can and will get you banned.

MSN doesn’t allow you to pay to boost your site’s ranking, but they do offer advertising. This advertising will allow you to pay a certain amount for links in their “sponsored links” boxes on the top and sides of each results page. The value of these links depends on the demand for them. At any particular time a sponsored link could become very expensive by somebody bidding an outrageous amount for a link, or by a large number of people trying to overwhelm a niche market.

MSN doesn’t update often, but when it does it often removes links it believes to be out of date, so make sure you change your site occasionally.

One thing that MSN likes a lot is well-formed HTML code, with closed, valid tags. Watch out for broken links, and make sure you have static URLs that don’t move around, and contain your keywords.

Bookmark to: