Help with Yahoo

[kimbecker1]

for several years I had very stable keyword search placement with Yahoo! top 10 for all of my keywords

baby clothes
baby shoes
cloth diapers
baby gifts
baby toys
diaper covers

Site: www.thebabymarketplace.com

Then they disappeared.

My google are still top 10 and I hate to fiddle too much with the site for fear of loosing that.

I did stop paying Yahoo to express submit in August 2004 (now called: Yahoo! Directory Submit)

Could this be the problem?

I am still in the directory though: http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Ec...ildren/Babies/

I do have show up in the searches just not very often and not in the top 100.

What am I doing wrong?

Thank you!

[kimbecker1]

No one has any ideas?

[Irishjim]

I'm not much of an expert with Yahoo, Kim, sorry. In fact, I stopped paying much attention to them when they made it practically impossible to list with them without paying (been a few years).

However, I did an SEO check on your site and here are generic (search engines in general) things you might want to look at:

Do the following to improve the ranking for your web page on Yahoo.com for the search term "baby gifts"
OK Search engines need text to index your web pages, to determine the theme of your web site and to produce a site summary. They cannot read what is written on your graphical images or in a Flash movie. Google recommends to create a useful, information-rich site. Fresh, continuously updated content is one of the best ways to ensure that search engines return to your web site (and your visitors, too). Your web page "http://www.thebabymarketplace.com/" contains 783 words which should be enough for the search engines.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "cloth diaper covers" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "cotton diapers" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "dr. seuss" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "burt's bees" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "oink baby" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "icky baby" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "sherpa" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "hemp" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "imse vimse" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "bummis diaper covers" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "bumkins wraps" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
>> Some search engines penalize web sites if the search terms of the Meta Keywords tag don't appear in the body text of the web page. The search term "tips" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.
OK Your web page doesn't use the Meta Refresh tag so there won't be any problems with the search engines in this aspect.
>> Your web page uses the Meta Robots tag to allow search engines to index your web page. Actually, you can remove this tag as search engines will also index your web page if this tag is missing.
OK Your web page doesn't use the Meta Title tag so there won't be any problems with the search engines in this aspect.
OK Your web page doesn't use any Dublin Core meta tags so there won't be any problems with the search engines in this aspect.
OK Your web page doesn't use any Meta tags twice so there won't be any problems with the search engines in this aspect.
OK Your web page doesn't use the <title> tag twice so there won't be any problems with search engines in this aspect.
OK Some search engines and directories don't accept submissions with capitalized letters in the document title or in the meta tags. Your web page doesn't use all capitalized letters in those web page elements so there won't be any problems with the search engines in this aspect.
OK Your web page uses script code in an external file so you've already minimized the problems with scripts and the search engines.
>> Your web page uses 571 bytes of style sheet code which makes it harder for search engines to index your page. Consider putting the style sheet code in an external file with the <link rel="stylesheet" href="mystyles.css" type="text/css"> command. The file "mystyles.css" should be a simple text file that contains only the style sheet code without any HTML markup. The next time your page is spidered by the search engine robots, the important content on your page will be closer to the top of the page, and you might have a better keyword density.
OK Your web page doesn't use frames so there won't be any problems with the search engines in this aspect.
>> Some search engines consider tiny text (i.e. font size 1) as an attempt to fool the search engines. Some webmasters have abused tiny text in the past to hide dozens of keywords on a web page that human web surfers cannot see. Your web page seems to use 4,094 letters in a very small font size ("Search Store Access *** Quick Menu *** ----------------- About Us/F..."). Consider removing as much of the tiny text as possible to prevent penalizing from some search engines.
OK Your web page URL "http://www.thebabymarketplace.com/" doesn't indicate a dynamically served web page so there shouldn't be any problems with the search engines in this aspect.
OK Your web page URL "http://www.thebabymarketplace.com/" doesn't contain any of the special characters "&", "$", "%", "?" or "=" in it so there shouldn't be any problems with the search engines in this aspect.
OK Some search engines and directories rank web sites lower that are hosted at free web space providers, or if web sites don't have their own domain name. Some search engines also limit the number of web pages they'll index from a single domain. Your web site doesn't seem to be hosted at a free web space provider. If it does, consider getting your own domain name.

[sgsmorgan]

Originally Posted by kimbecker1

for several years I had very stable keyword search placement with Yahoo! top 10 for all of my keywords

baby clothes
baby shoes
cloth diapers
baby gifts
baby toys
diaper covers

Site: www.thebabymarketplace.com

Then they disappeared.

My google are still top 10 and I hate to fiddle too much with the site for fear of loosing that.

I did stop paying Yahoo to express submit in August 2004 (now called: Yahoo! Directory Submit)

Could this be the problem?

I am still in the directory though: http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Ec...ildren/Babies/

I do have show up in the searches just not very often and not in the top 100.

What am I doing wrong?

Thank you!

For Baby Clothes you are at No 18 -

How long has all of this been happening? There are all sorts of funny things going on with all the SE's at the moment. In some cases my pages are getting indexed within 24 hours on Yahoo. On MSN the I can't seem to get arrested!

This could just be a hiccup due to an algorithm change. As I said, how long has this been happening?

Cheers

Steve

[Irishjim]

ditto on Steve other than MSN seems to love me at www.tourclare.com. AOL is a shadow of Google... goes in and out with them at the same time. Luckily Google seems to like me too.

Yahoo is trying to be more like Google it seems but still I don't waste much time with them. I figure the 75% or so who use Google are good enough for us since most of our visitors are from Ireland, anyway.

(Google is very strong in Europe)

Still waiting to see what the new MSN browser does to the mix.

[DeYo]

Why don't you try paying Yahoo again and see if that makes any difference?

[jestep]

I had a similar thing happen about 9 months ago and still nothing positive from Yahoo.

Basically same scenario. We ranked for hundreds if not thousands of terms, and then one day, dumped. We have never done anything that would be considered spam, so that was never an issue. Basically we lost about 30% of our traffic in a single day, and we haven't ever got it back. We're in the Yahoo index again, but we still don't rank for anything worthwhile.

Anyway, I hope you don't have the same experience as us, but if you don't see your rankings return, or you drop off further, you should definitely contact yahoo and try to determine, if you are penalized or something else.

Right now, I would say that it sounds like natural shifting. Once you can find your site in the top 100, where you ranked highly, it is probably something else.

[jestep]

Also, as far as Yahoo submit, if you were ranking before, it isn't going to do anything else for you, except cost you money.

One of the more annoying things about Yahoo, is that if you are penalized, they will still show your site being in the index. This is because they are still pushing for the biggest index, even though no one really cares.

[RegDCP]

kimbecker1,
The search engines are getting smarter.
I took a look at your site and it seems to be written for the search engines not humans.

Do we need to be told "cloth diapers" 16 times on your page?
If it looks like keyword stuffing then it probably is keyword stuffing.

Reg

[GREENMACHINE]

Interesting that you should mention this. Yeahoo has served 20% of our traffic consitantly for three years until a few weeks ago. Now it is 2%. Google has remained a constant 50% of our traffic, although I should mention that we took a huge drop from them in May but has since rebounded.

Last Time I checked we ranked #12 for "Imperial Tea Garden" on yahoo. Even when this site was started, we could rank 1 or 2 for our domain name!!!

Time will tell! :) We don't make changes to satisfy the search engines, but just wanted to verify that we are experiencing this fall out too.

http://www.imperialteagarden.com

[craigmn3]

While Yahoo is more forgiving than google, one thing I have found that it likes is HTML Validation

Your site stumbled when I put it through the HTML validator giving me the following error message

Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 540 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.

perhaps this could be your culprit
you can check your validation at:

validator.w3.org/

Its one of many tools

[RegDCP]

Originally Posted by GREENMACHINE

Interesting that you should mention this. Yeahoo has served 20% of our traffic consitantly for three years until a few weeks ago. Now it is 2%. Google has remained a constant 50% of our traffic, although I should mention that we took a huge drop from them in May but has since rebounded.

Last Time I checked we ranked #12 for "Imperial Tea Garden" on yahoo. Even when this site was started, we could rank 1 or 2 for our domain name!!!

Time will tell! :) We don't make changes to satisfy the search engines, but just wanted to verify that we are experiencing this fall out too.

http://www.imperialteagarden.com

I see the same thing with your site. The word Tea is repeated 54 times in your body copy.

I have seen other sites drop because their keywords were repeated too many times.

Reg

[soniqhost.com]

It could be them reworking their search results, but I did come across a yahoo tool recently not sure if it will help or not but here it is.

siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

[Peter (IMC)]

Your site has 2500+ pages indexed in Yahoo. So that´s not the real problem.

If you didn't make any radical changes to your site lately, then what ever it is, it´s not something you did.

It feels like an algorithm update at Yahoo that is reducing the importance of some factors, and increasing the importance of other factors.

Many of your backlinks come from sites that seem to be "just for the search engines". Or if you want to give them another name,.. "directories". Yahoo could have decided to "do" something about these types of backlinks and give them much less value.

While I am writing this post I am running a check on your backlinks and pretty much all I can find are these types of backlinks. I opened about 15 sites randomly from all 800+ unique sites I found in your backlink list and every single one of them was the same type of site. Those "lousy" link building directories.

My advice is to stop adding these types of links, if you´re still doing that, and start promoting your website for real. Not for the search engines, but for real people. Try some creative marketing campaigs, both online and offline.

Technically your site is done good ( I´m not talking about the HTML code here, but about the way it has been set up), but it is all very cold and feels almost inhuman. Which is kind of unnatural for a site that sells baby clothes.

Yes all the necessary stuff has been done: Keywords are in there (almost too much), copy has been written for all products, etc. etc. etc. But why would anybody want to link to your website? I couldn't find any natural backlinks and it is very clear that you have been doing extreme link building. The tendency with search engine is that this is going to be less and less effective.

[leesw]

Lots of images on your index page as well. I wonder if load time might be a factor. Yahoo is searching for a distinguishing factor. That might be a very small part of it.

[moredial]

When it comes to Yahoo, the only advice I give just now is 'don't panic'. For over a year sites have been appearing and disappearing on Yahoo daily if not weekly. Some of my sites disappeared for months only to return at their old position.

One thing: I did rename some of my pages at the end of last year and that has got Yahoo into a tight knot of not knowing whether to use the old or the new url. The Yahoo clones are still showing the old url at top positions.

The paid inclusion being cancelled will result in pages being dropped from the index, but only the url included in the paid inclusion. If you want to try that again, create a new url specifically for that purpose and never use anything like a home page in paid inclusion.

Otherwise, just be patient and see what happens over the next 3 months. Nothing happens quickly with Yahoo.

Whatever you do, don't change any page which currently or previously did well in the SERPs.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by RegDCP

kimbecker1,
The search engines are getting smarter.
I took a look at your site and it seems to be written for the search engines not humans.

Do we need to be told "cloth diapers" 16 times on your page?
If it looks like keyword stuffing then it probably is keyword stuffing.

Reg

SE's are not "getting smarter". Quite the contrary. If that WERE the case, they would not be deleting hundreds, even thousands of site owners' totally legit white-hat webpages, and they'd be removing all the black-hat crap. G forums, and all the SE forums at the webmaster forums are loaded with people in this situation.

I've had about 250+ of my white-hat legit webpages trashed in Y the past few days, (ALL ranked on the first page for years), yet the jerks leave in all sorts of OBVIOUS BS pages that are tricks and techniques to get listed (redirected pages, cloaked pages, link farms, etc.). That, is a step in the WRONG direction and getting dumber.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by soniqhost.com

It could be them reworking their search results, but I did come across a yahoo tool recently not sure if it will help or not but here it is.

siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

That tool is as flawed as G's own "site:" command. It leaves out (in my case for example) about 200 pages that the regular Y SE includes. When you do a "site:" command at the regular Y search page, it sometimes will give you the results, and sometimes it will automatically switch over to the new Site Explorer search results area. Note that page says "View the most popular pages from any site...." so it sounds like from their own admission they are only including webpages "they see fit to include" instead of ALL of a site's indexed pages.

[Peter (IMC)]

SE's are not "getting smarter". Quite the contrary. If that WERE the case, they would not be deleting hundreds, even thousands of site owners' totally legit white-hat webpages, and they'd be removing all the black-hat crap. G forums, and all the SE forums at the webmaster forums are loaded with people in this situation.

And I bet that in most cases it´s because of the way the site has been marketed. Not enough for the visitors and way too much for the search engines,.. :)

Search Engines do get smarter, but that doesn't mean that all "white-hat" sites have been doing things the way that they should have been done.

I think the time has come for a .... load of associations and similar types of sites,. :) Now that link pages and standard directory scripts aren't doing it anymore. (just a prediction for the future,. :) )