Optimising for yahoo vrs google

[pebblez]

so ill admit it, im a little bit tiffed at google, and im tired of optimizing just for them anyways. In the google forum there are hundreds of posts on how to make your site google friendly. You get a good title tag, maybe a few others, create keyword dense pages, then lots of links if you can. What does yahoo want though? Is it the same thing or is there something specific to yahoo?

Thanks for the help everyone

Joey

http://pebblez.com - the stone home decor store

[jbgilbert]

Yahoo may favor on page content a bit more than Google and pays a bit more attention to the meta tags, but the basics are the same. Some have reported that Yahoo favors "lots" of text on a page and there does appear to be something to that theory.

This is a tough question to answer -- a lot of this type of analysis has been done lately on this subject and not much in the way of concrete information has been communicated.

The old tools used for this type of analysis have (for the most part) be outdated by the progress of the SEs.

[JayDrake]

I generally try to take a SE-agnostic approach to optimization. What this generally boils down to is:

1. Make sure Meta Tags exist throughout the site and speak for the content of the page they are on. (No generic keyword Meta Tags that are the same from page to page!)

2. Make sure key phrases are found throughout the site where applicable including plain text, header text, image alt tags, a link attributes, etc.

3. Get links, which seems to be primarily, if not entirely, a Google thing.

4. Make sure pages are valid markup. - The SE's might not even really care about this right now, but they should.

5. Host on a server that has as close to zero downtime as possible.

6. Continuously change and add to your web site.

7. Make all of your site navigable by spiders.

8. Depending on your religious affiliation pray, meditate, drench yourself in chickens blood or sacrifice virgins.

I'm sure there are more that just aren't coming to mind.

[edhan]

I do agree with what Jay has said. Basically for me, I stress more on right content with targetted keywords for my clients. With the right content for your visitors, you can be sure that you will receive a fair amount of targetted traffic from search engines.

Edward

[andy_f]

im finding for some reason the the higher up a page is ranked in google , the lower it goes in yahoo, and vice versa for the same keywords, is this normal ?

[pebblez]

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions

It seams that optimizing for yahoo is almost exactly the same as optimizing for google. However a search on yahoo turns up very different results from a search on google. So something has to be different.

JayDrake Said "1. Make sure Meta Tags exist throughout the site and speak for the content of the page they are on."

Is this the way yahoo and google differ. I guess yahoo pays more attention to meta tags? So yahoo is old school optimization, matching your keyword densities to the top 10 in yahoo? but which meta tags? title, is obvious, description maybe, maybe keyword. Are there any other important ones? I find googles spiders ignore the robot meta tag and i figure yahoo would do the same

Edhan said: "Basically for me, I stress more on right content with targeted keywords for my clients."

alright, so what is content? especially right content. To take an example from another post If i run a sight that sells wedding dresses, the strict definition of right content would be to make 300 information pages on each dress i sell. Is that what content is? Or do you mean we should make a page on the history of weddings the history of love, wedding songs etc etc etc. Less helpful to visitors but not unrelated. Or is content anything we feel like making a page on, as long as the page looks good with meta tags , heavy text etc?

Does yahoo penalize you like google does if your wrong?

From talking to others the biggest problem with yahoo seams to be getting theyre spiders to your site, which, links would help with.

Does yahoo want you to pay them to spider you? Maybe its all about that over priced directory listing.

Thanks again for any help you can provide untangling this World Wide Web

Joey

[jajit]

I've observed that Google ignores meta tags beacause it's seo and yahoo will include your meta description in it's results desription if it's relevant.

Yahoo and Google obviously work totally different but both place alot on popularity. Old school is easier for me. I don't like optimizing for Google, too hard for me but some have proven successful. I think if you can get a good listing or listings on more than just Yahoo but other major ones like MSN and Alta Vista then it will improve your rankings all the way around.

[JayDrake]

Originally Posted by pebblez

Alright, so what is content? especially right content. To take an example from another post If i run a sight that sells wedding dresses, the strict definition of right content would be to make 300 information pages on each dress i sell. Is that what content is? Or do you mean we should make a page on the history of weddings the history of love, wedding songs etc etc etc. Less helpful to visitors but not unrelated. Or is content anything we feel like making a page on, as long as the page looks good with meta tags , heavy text etc?

I'll start at the end, wondering what you mean by the question of Yahoo penalizing like Google if you are wrong? - I don't understand what is meant by this.

Beyond that, content is anything you want to put in there and the more related it is, the more likely it is that it will aid you. I tend to look at this in two ways. There is content that is created specifically to aid your search engine ranking for the terms that you really want to rank for and then there is related content which aids this to a lesser degree but also draws in additional related traffic which may also be interested in what your primary key phrases are related to.

To use your own example, wedding songs and the history of weddings, love, etc. likely won't make a big difference in your ranking for 'wedding dresses' but it should help to some degree, especially when you have topics which might speak on the traditions of wedding dresses. On the other hand, those looking for wedding songs, history, etc. may well be planning a wedding and, having found your site through this means, take time to look at the dresses you have and decide that, while that wasn't what they meant to be looking for, they have found the wedding dress they want on your site.

In my experience, diversity is a good thing.

[CMYACHTIE]

Been following this interesting topic on yahoo vs google.
One thing that does not seem to get attention is how unique the search parameters are.
to give an example, I have a webpage of my sailboat which happen to be a "DOUGLAS32" now when I search either on yahoo or google for douglas32 they both show my page in the top 3, however when I search for "douglas sailboat 32" with yahoo of the 17400 results I gave up looking for me after 260 from top.
with google however am still at number 3 from top.
Any comments?
regards,
GH