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1st Singapore Web
Hosting > Web Site Promotion
How To Get Optimum Listings In Yahoo!
Back to part 1
Assuming
that your site is not listed, your objective is to get your site a higher
ranking. Here are some factors which influence the
ranking of your site in the Yahoo search:
1)
Presence of keyword or a part of the keyword somewhere in the name of
the category or a higher level category.
2)
Click Popularity. When a user searches for something in Yahoo, it tries to find out which sites
best satisfied the user's needs by keeping track of two things: a) which sites the user clicked on
and b) how much time the user spent
in those sites. The logic behind this is that if a user clicked on a
particular site and spent a lot of time there, that site must have
satisfied the user's needs and hence, must be relevant to that particular
keyword. In this case, the site's click popularity for that keyword improves
and so does its ranking for that keyword.
Don't
try to improve click popularity of your site by
regularly clicking on your site's listing in Yahoo!, and then by not going back to
Yahoo. Yahoo keeps track of IP address and ignores
repeated clicks on the same site from the same IP address. It also uses
cookies to track visitors activities.
There
are only two ways of improving click popularity of your site - the
description of your site in Yahoo needs to be attractive and you need to
build an excellent web site with great content which satisfies your
visitor's needs so that they stay longer in your site.
3)
Presence of keyword or a part of the keyword in the Title and
Description. The Title and Description that you use to submit your site to
Yahoo should contain important keywords. Note that this Title and Description is not the
one that you have coded in the Title and Description tag of your home page. Rather, it
is the Title and Description you use when submitting to Yahoo.
4)
Prominence of the keyword in the Title and the Description. Prominence means how close the keyword is to the beginning of
the Title and Description. Other things remaining the same, closer the
keyword to the beginning, higher your
ranking.
5)
Presence of keyword or a part of the keyword in the URL. You will get a
slightly higher ranking if the keyword, or part of it, is also
present in the URL of your site.
Title
Now
we talk about the Title some further. The Title is important not only because
the presence of keyword in the Title helps to boost your ranking, but also because sites in the various categories in
Yahoo are listed
alphabetically according to its Title. So if your site name starts with
letter "A", you will be listed higher than starting with
"Z". Starting with numbers will be even better.
However, Yahoo! insists that the
Title should always be the official name of your site. So, plan earlier.
Noticed our site name, 1stSingaporeWebHosting,
starts with "1" and is full of keywords?
Description
When you write the description, your aim is
to make the Yahoo editor's job as easy as possible.
You should not make the editor feel that she needs to edit
your description in any way. Once the editor starts to edit
your description, you risk having your important keywords
removed from description or worse, having it changed in
a way which does not reflect the content of your site.
Your
description should be a single sentence which conveys what your site is all
about and contains the most important keywords as close as possible
to the beginning of the description.
However, your description should not
just be a list of keywords. It should be a proper
sentence and grammatically correct. It should also be attractive
to your visitors so that they will actually click on it.
Here are the rules that you should remember when
writing the description:
1)
Make sure that the description can tell a visitor what your site is all
about. Things like "Welcome to
my site" does not tell a visitor what your site does.
2)
Avoid hype of any sort. Avoid using exclamation marks. Phrases
like "The best", "The cheapest" will be immediately
removed - at the best. The editor may just ignore your submission if she
smells any hypes.
3)
Don't capitalize any word in your description - not even the first word. For
some reason, Yahoo prefers that the first word of your description is not
capitalized. If you look at the sites in any Yahoo category, you will find
that almost none of them have the first word capitalized. Of course, if some
of the words in the description are proper nouns, then you should capitalize
them.
4)
Write the description in the third person. Don't say "We offer...",
just say "offers ...".
5)
Keep it short, 12 words at the
most. Longer the description, higher the
probability that the editor will want to edit it. Your aim is to have the editor accept the exact
description in order to ensure that your keywords are
not removed from it.
6)
Check for typos and grammatical mistakes.
Proper
category to submit
First of all, you need to
determine whether your site is regionally specific. If yes, then you should submit your site
to the appropriate Regional
Category in Yahoo.
If your site is commercial in nature
and is not regionally specific, it belongs somewhere under the Business
and Economy > Shopping and Services or Business
and Economy > Business to Business categories. If your site is targeting
at individual consumers, then your site needs to be under the
Shopping and Services category. If your site is targeting at other
businesses, it needs to be in the Business to Business category.
In
most cases, you need to dig deeper to find the exact, proper category to
submit. Simply search for the most important keywords you are targeting at. Go through all the categories which the top ranking sites belong
to. Note down the categories which contain sites which are
very similar to yours.
In many cases, there will only be one category which
contains sites similar to yours and this is the category to which
you should submit your site. If you find that there is more than one
category which contains sites similar to yours, and if you are convinced
that all these categories are applicable for your site, select the two
categories which contain the least number of sites as your primary and
secondary categories.
Business express submission
If yours is a commercial site and is not regionally specific, you have no choice but to pay them
$299 for the
Business Express submission option.
Paying them
$299
does not guarantee listing in Yahoo directory and your site is not given any preference
in its rankings. Using the Business Express option merely guarantees that
your site will be reviewed within 7 days and that, in case it is not
accepted, you will be told why your site was not accepted. You also
have a chance of appealing a rejection within 30 days.
Free
submission
If
your site does not belong to the two commercial categories, you can either submit
for free, or use the Business Express submission option. However, your site
may or may not be reviewed with free submission and you don't even know it.
Unless
you are very lucky, if you use the free submission, your site may not
be accepted in your first try. Resubmit a month later if nothing has
happened.
Luckily, all local Yahoo sites in Asia accept free
submission for all categories. But no guarantee of review.
Your
site is listed
Once you have got your site into Yahoo, it
will be added to Yahoo's What's New section. Furthermore,
your site will be marked as new and will be placed at the
top of the categories for 1 week. This placement at the
top can bring in quite a few visitors to your site every
day. After the first week, the position of your site in
the categories will be according to the alphabetical ranking
of your Title.
Back to part 1
Feel free to use this article in your
publication or web site.
It's pre-licensed to you.
The only requirement is to include this resource box:
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Article by Zac Hewlett at
1stSingaporeWebHosting
Visit http://www.1stSingaporeWebHosting.com
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