How does Yahoo work?

nozzmoking · #1 (**permalink**) 09-12-2005, 09:27 AM

Hi Guys,

Hope someone can help?

I've only ever concentrated on getting my site www.castleprint.co.uk listed well in G.

I'm pretty non-existant in Y but not sure how to approach the problem.

DC (ctabuk) has very kindly done a report using IBP. The report was very good and didn't outline anything too serious. I've now made most of the suggested fixes.

Only my homepage is listed in Y and the ranking is very poor.

My question(s) is: Should I now pay the money to have my site 'looked at' by an editor? Would/could this make any difference to rank? Is my site ready or should I make sure every tiny element is fixed and Y-friendly.

Not sure of the way forward and I don't want to 'nag' DC as he's got his hands full with similar queries.

TIA

Regards,

Paul

wrmineo · #2 (**permalink**) 09-13-2005, 07:49 AM

At a quick glance, I would say that your problem could lie simply in the fact that you have too much code, specifically js, in your <head> element. While Google and others have worked around this issue, Yahoo is not so forgiving.

Your code indicates that your are using a CSS to handle the look/feel of your site, but then you have a ton of <style> in your code also; I would try to incorporate this into your CSS lightening your code and allowing the bots to get quickly to the meat of the matter - your content.

The same could be said for your tables. You code has 140+ validation errors, many of which are in your tables - try to use your CSS for your background and border colors.

There are some great code folks here at WPW and at Web TIP.

To help them help you, it might first help to see what you can correct yourself by looking at W3C.

Good Luck and Happy Ranking!

nozzmoking · #3 (**permalink**) 09-13-2005, 11:53 AM

Thanks wrmineo for your reply.

I was rather hoping that 'code' word would never crop up! Now you've said it, I suppose it's time to do something about it!

From your experience, is there a great deal involved with tidying up the code into an external file? Does it also mean every page on the site needing the same treatment, or can a lot of it be done sitewide, in one action?

Thanks for the link to the site validator. It only brought up 143 errors, so no problems there then.

Seriously though, I'm obviously concerned and need to get this fixed. If you, or anyone else, can recommend someone who can sort this I'd be very grateful. I suppose I'd be looking for a freelancer who likes getting his/her hands dirty?

Thanks again,

Paul

smo · #4 (**permalink**) 09-14-2005, 12:26 AM

After doing well in google now I am wondering what is the wrong in me for yahoo. So came to yahoo section and find your post. So I am not a great yahoo expert.

You are using Business word three times in your title. It can be UK business card design and printing, with this you will get space for your other key words also. You can add Envelop , labels there also.

Does these tags add any value ? Better to remove them

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<meta name="revisit" content="31 days">
<meta name="distribution" content="global">

Better to have one home page link at the top in all inside pages.

beanstalk · #5 (**permalink**) 09-14-2005, 01:03 PM

On the same tanget as code, we've seem measurable success on Yahoo! simply from making our site W3C compliant (which translates loosly to "clean up the code").

nozzmoking · #6 (**permalink**) 09-15-2005, 06:17 AM

A quick thanks to all of you who looked at this for me.

I'll post a msg. in the freelancer section to see if I can find someone willing to have a go at cleaning up my mess, so to speak.

Cheers again,

Paul

wrmineo · #7 (**permalink**) 09-19-2005, 06:05 PM

Paul, sorry for the late read and response. Tidying up the code to an external source shouldn't be a hard issue at all.

At your convenience, post a follow-up and let us know how things are progressing please.

Web Gazelle · #8 (**permalink**) 09-22-2005, 12:00 PM

I had heard of Google liking clean code, only makes sense that Yahoo would like it too.