SEO for Yahoo

Last time, we've talked SEO for MSN. Today, Let's take a look at Yahoo, which is considered as the second largest search engine right after Google (Which I will talk about in my next lesson).
The algorithm of Yahoo is based on Inktomi that Yahoo purchased in 2002 as part of their plan to stop serving Google results to search queries. The major ranking factor for Yahoo include:

• Keyword Density
  


• Site Structure


• Aging Delay
  


• Link Popularity

Keyword Density

As noted in the article on MSN, it would be unwise to specify a keyword density for you to target on your website. You may want to use some SEO tools to find out about an average value of keyword density for the sites ranked in the top 10 places in Yahoo. As far as I am concerned, to rank well on Yahoo, you should have a relatively higher keyowrd desity than the situation you want to optimize for Google. But again, keep in mind, always put your audience in the first place, don't just put keyword there to increase the density where it does not make any sense to your audience.


Site Structure
On no other engine is site structure more important than on Yahoo! While having a good site structure is important for a vaiety of reasons, it was on Yahoo!

The site structure is important for two key reasons. First, the site structure determines the order in which your page content gets seen by Yahoo and hence, content that occurs higher up in the code of your page (not necessarily in your browser) is given a higher weight than content lower down in the code. Second, a properly structured site will be lower in code through the use of CSS, reduced or eliminated table use, etc. The reduction in code will push the content higher up the page as far as a search engine is concerned and thus, it will be given more weight.


Aging Delay
Many focus on Google's "sandbox" when they think of aging delays however Yahoo! employs one as well, though it is lighter and lasts a shorter duration of time. New sites and links are not given the same weight as sites and links that have been around for a while. New sites can expect to find it extremely difficult to rank for competitive phrase inside of 6 months. You can look at my site as an example. As I mentioned in my previous lesson, my targeted keyword "platform bed" get ranked 3rd on MSN while nowhere to be found on Yahoo.

Link Popularity
Of the 3 search engines, Google consider backlinks as one of the most important factors when place your site for organic search; thus, I will leave this factor in my next lesson.