The major players are teaming up – Yahoo! will be pulling searches from Google and they will apparently appear to blend seamlessly within the Yahoo! searches. This means you should try to get your site listed in Google in order to take advantage. It could be a free way to get listed in Yahoo!
However – if you look at Google search sites – you will notice they are listed in ways that are not optimal. The text that Google pulls off the sites may not be what you want it to pull off your site – so your Google listing may look awful. It might still be wise, if you can afford it, to list your site on Yahoo – since the human touch is involved. People hand-index the sites on Yahoo! – making them read in a much more relevant manner.
Before you submit your site to Google – check other sites within your keyword categories, and see how they are listed. If you can figure out how to get your best text pulled out of your site, then put your keyword-rich paragraph (1-2 sentences, actually) in its optimal placement. Place the wording at the top of your page.
Make your TITLE reflect what your site offers. And if you can, try to include the keyword in your url.
I don’t have a feel for the reasoning of how Google pulls the text off the site – I have a #9 listing for a certain term (I have a lot of listings on Google but I am trying to optimize this particular page) and it pulled very relevant text from my site – some other sites had horrible descriptions (like “contact webmaster if there are problems on the site” – which has NOTHING to do with the topic). I tried to figure out where the text was on the other pages – mine was at the beginning of the page. The text descriptions were pulled from all over – 3rd paragraph, lower down, from the top – I could see no pattern. All I can suggest is to have your best keyword rich statement which accurately describes why people should come to your page – and place it at the top so no need to hunt for it. The meta tag description wasn’t used at all in Google, in any instance that I could find.
I looked at another term that showed my site as #1 for the term “attorney loans” – we fund attorneys on their cases won while they are waiting for their payments to come in. The description is pulled up from a couple areas, still somewhat relevant but not the best description. It does tell someone looking for it that that is what we offer. The other sites offered other types of loans, and presumably with an attorney present – not an “attorney loan” – so chances are pretty good that a search will see it as what they want. The site does not show up in “attorney loan” however – so it will lose a large search audience in that case. I will have to mull this one over.
Before you submit your site to Google (at www.google.com), be sure to link to it from various sites of your own, and see if you can form linking partnerships with other sites to increase your ranking from being linked to. Google does rely on how many places your site is linked to from other pages.
If you can get a good, relevant placement in Google for free, then you don’t even have to pay for a Yahoo! listing. If your site lists as muck in Google, then you might want to pay to have the Yahoo! crew submit it with better wording.
P. Roe does website optimization work, and is working on her sites all the time – many are in number 1-10 ranking on Google and Yahoo! Subscribe to “Wise Little Tidbits” for more optimization tips. mailto:ezineshere@aol.com?WLT http://doubleii.com/webservices.htm