A lot of the SEO news you are receiving lately is coming to you from Google, and this is no surprise considering that Google is the world’s top search engine. Nevertheless, Yahoo remains a force to be reckoned with. It is still one of the top five websites on the Internet and has an estimated 700 million visitors each month. It is also a consumer-driven site that is available in 30 languages.
Yahoo may not be as successful as Google or Facebook, but don’t let that deter you from considering it. And you’re not the only one to notice; actually the Yahoo brand has averaged one new CEO per year for the last five years, and it is a company trying to reinvent itself. Don’t count Yahoo out yet; it may be only one creative idea away from re-launching itself as a rival to Google and Facebook.
Still, you might as well try to get on Yahoo’s good side now. What does it take to be listed in Yahoo search results? If you have been primarily focusing your SEO strategy on Google and ignoring Yahoo, then it’s not surprising you’re getting very different SERPs for a Yahoo search.
Yahoo favors more on-page optimization than Google does. Yahoo is finicky about link quality (perhaps even more than Google and their current Penguin link epidemic). In fact, you could say that Yahoo is almost elitist in comparison to Google, since they prefer links that promote their own site, from within the same Yahoo network. Yahoo even has a paid listing for businesses, with no guarantees as to results, but the offering is conspicuous enough.
Yahoo insiders might also give you consistency tips, regarding slashes in domain names (not a good idea), high authority page links, caution in linking out, new content on a regular basis, and article-press release directory submission.
Of course, you should be interested in building quality links in general, as opposed to obsessing over Yahoo’s feelings about your site. After all, once your site earns a strong authority reputation with many quality links, you are far more likely to earn attention from Yahoo, Bing and all the major search engines. At the same time, don’t count on Yahoo doing you any special favors. Yahoo follows the crowd and right now, Google is a fairly good judge of popularity. Yahoo mirrors Google’s solid linkbuilding criteria.
The best plan of action is to develop a long-term SEO plan and keep the new content coming. Where possible, try to integrate your site and social media pages in with other Yahoo links, whether it’s Yahoo local or Yahoo Questions. Don’t expect overnight results, but expect to see improvement if you stay the course and differentiate yourself from the competition.
