10 Factors Google and Yahoo Consider For a Top Search Engine Ranking

Want to get into the top 5 of either Google or Yahoo? Make sure your website contains the top 10 factors for deciding a top search engine ranking.

It does not matter if you have the cure for cancer, if nobody knows about it you are not going to make any money. A top search engine ranking in either Google or Yahoo is the surest way for buyers to find your products so you can become a wealthy marketer. Google and Yahoo are responsible for about 80% of all search engine traffic in the world.

Make sure your online business or website contains these top 10 factors used for determining sites with a top 5 search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo.

Factor #1: Number of Quality Sites that Link to Yours

Google and Yahoo put a lot of significance on how many quality sites link back to yours with a page rank of at least 4 and above. This is probably the most important factor when considering a top search engine ranking.

When search engines see lots of important sites link back to yours it must mean that your site is also pretty important.

Remember the purpose of the internet is to provide information back to the end user. As someone is conducting research on the World Wide Web, sites must also participate and flow and connect to other related sites allowing those searching for your keyword terms various paths to the information being inquired.

Factor #2: Number of Pages Your Website Has

A website with less than 50 pages is really going to struggle to get a top search engine ranking unless it has more quality back links coming into it than their competitors.

Factor #3: Keywords in Your Title Tag

Google and Yahoo look to see if your keywords are contained in your page title and description. Make sure your keywords are also listed within your heading and subheading tags.

Factor #4: Keywords Showing in Links

Keywords that are highlighted within a link are considered more significant than those not at all highlighted within a link.

Factor #5: Keywords in Bold

Likewise words in bold are also considered more important than those not in bold.

Factor #6: Keywords in URL

Websites that are in less competitive markets that contain the keywords within their URL are considered more important than those sites that respectively do not.

Also keywords in the URL that come before unrelated words are considered better than a URL that follows an unrelated word within the URL. For example if your keyword is televisions, a URL with `televisions’ followed by unrelated words such as your name `Mike’ is better than putting your name `Mike’ before `televisions.’

Factor #7: More Significance Given to First 25 Words on Page

The first 25 words of each page are given more weight than all other words on the page. Make sure your keywords are in the first few words of your page. However, if you try and just list the same word or phrase 25 times repeatedly Google and Yahoo will penalize you.

Factor #8: Greater Than 300 Words on Your Homepage

Make sure you have at least 300 or more words on your homepage.

Factor #9: Keyword Density

Keyword density is not as important as it once was in the past but it still is an important factor. In order to get a top 5 search engine ranking look at your competitors sites and compare the density of their sites to yours and try and match their density.

Factor #10: Page Rank

Want to find out the page rank of your website or the page rank of another site? Download the Google toolbar and make sure the page rank indicator is activated. One major factor in determining your page rank is the first factor listed in this article. Quality back links are the most important factor for formulating your page rank.

A top search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo is decided most often by the combination of these 10 factors. If you want to get into the top 5 of the two most important search engines than make sure your website applies these major search engine ranking factors.

Author: Tim McGaffin

How To Get A Pagerank 7 In 200 Days

With a reported 22.1% of search traffic Yahoo is second only to Google’s 64.4% (src: Hitwise) for search user volume so it is extremely important not to forget that attaining a top ranking in Yahoo can be a big boon to the bottom line. As a result, I decided to write this update on how to attain superior rankings in Yahoo using today’s useful tools and tactics.

OVERVIEW: Optimizing for Yahoo!
Algorithmically Yahoo is Google’s much younger sibling. I say this because many of the requirements for a successful ranking mirror Google’s requirement about 4 years ago and they sum up to one distinct fact; optimize your content boldly on Yahoo and you will be rewarded. When I say “boldly” I do not mean use SPAM; by nature SPAM and optimization do not mix… they are two entirely separate concepts (black and white in fact).

The following are the current generalized specifications for achieving solid rankings in Yahoo.

WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION
SEO tactics have not changed a great deal over the past 10 years I have been an SEO. In general terms the only effect time has had on SEO is to vary the intensity of the optimization for particular page elements. That is the rub of course; some search engines appreciate the optimization of particular page elements over others. In the case of Yahoo, this old property with a relatively young algorithm tends to favour the following elements:

Title Tag: Keep your title tag as short as 5 small-medium sized words and include one complete incidence of your keyphrase. Yahoo! blatantly favours sites that include the keyphrase in the title tag. For an example check out “car sales” or for that matter any phrase. Within the top 10 results you will notice that the majority of sites listed will include at least one incidence of the keyphrase or a crucial portion of it (i.e. “cars”). The ones that do not include the keyphrase tend to be sites that have are extremely popular so even basic title tag optimization is not required to attain a top ranking.

Meta Description Tag: Start this tag with an incidence of your keyphrase and then produce a short 15 – 18 small-medium sized word sentence clearly describing your site. Include one more incidence of your keyphrase in the sentence. Keep in mind that the description tag is often utilized as the description for any rankings you achieve so it is best to make it alluring.

Meta Keyword Tag: Keyword tags have long been considered ineffective and no longer have any importance on Google; however Yahoo does still consider the keyword tag so it cannot hurt to include it. The keyword tag should start with the keyphrase and then all following words or phrases should be ordered according to their relevance to your website; place the most important ones up front. The max size of a keyword tag should be 250 characters – comma-delimited. Do not over repeat words; no more than 3 repetitions of a single word within the tag.

Keywords in URL: Create keyword-based filenames that closely represent the content within the file. Yahoo rewards keyword-based filenames a small amount – perhaps enough to push past your competition.

Headings: Heading 1 and 2 tags should be applied on every page where appropriate to embolden the relevance of the page. In other words, use the page’s keyphrase within a Heading 1 tag to further enhance the visibility of the keyphrase on the page.

Alt text for images: Don’t forget to provide appropriate ALT text for each image on your website. The ALT text must not provide information that is already written on the website. ALT text is supposed to provide a clear and concise description of what the image is. Fortunately this means that adding an incidence of the keyphrase or a portion of the keyphrase is totally appropriate which can add slightly more credibility to your page score when Yahoo’s crawler (Slurp) indexes the page.

Inline Links: In the midst of your page it is beneficial to include links to related pages from related content. These links will apply relevance to the linked page; which is optimized for the same keyphrase you linked from.

Site Structure: Site structure is a vital component to ranking success on Yahoo; especially in competitive marketplaces where every advantage is required to reach the top. One method that would be successful at Yahoo (and happens to work as well on the other major search engines) is a tried and true technique that revolves around the linear progression of related content throughout the website; it is commonly known as Themeing. The following example should shed some light on this subject:

Your site is a car sales site focused on Audi. In order to create a linear site structure you would focus each section of the site on an individual relevancy. Say you pick “Audi A5” as the relevant topic (see Figure 1.0). As you move deeper into the Audi A5 section you only see A5 relevant content. The search engine spider and your users will not be distracted by links to other vehicles – only information on the A5. This progresses as you proceed deeper into this arm of the website and because this section of the site is utterly focused on the subject “Audi A5” the odds of achieving a ranking for that term increase considerably.

Your site is a car sales site focused on Audi. In order to create a linear site structure you would focus each section of the site on an individual relevancy. Say you pick “Audi A5” as the relevant topic (see Figure 1.0). As you move deeper into the Audi A5 section you only see A5 relevant content. The search engine spider and your users will not be distracted by links to other vehicles – only information on the A5. This progresses as you proceed deeper into this arm of the website and because this section of the site is utterly focused on the subject “Audi A5” the odds of achieving a ranking for that term increase considerably.

LINKS
When building links for Yahoo concentrate on quality not quantity. Quality links would be one way links from sites that specialize in content directly relevant to the content on your own website. Building these links can be done by creating content and syndicating it to your own industry for link love and to build credibility. In addition, if your website is a worthwhile resource it is entirely reasonable to tell the world about your site in order to build links; hopefully they will link to you because they like your site so much.

Finally, there is another tactic that has mixed results; send out press releases once a month using PRWeb or an associated press release agency. A good press release can easily build the links you need in no time at all. Unfortunately the mixed results I noted occur when press releases inevitably become archived, at which point the link relevance will fade. As a result, link building with press releases is only useful as an ongoing practice and should be considered a small facet of a robust link building campaign.

SITE EXPLORER SETTINGS
Yahoo’s Site Explorer is a fantastic tool for monitoring your website(s) and running basic link reports. If you have not already done so you should create an account at Site Explorer and then validate your website (prove you own it) so that you can manage the information Yahoo has for your website. Once you have validated your website I have noted some Site Explorer functionality that may help your website perform on Yahoo:

• Make certain to create a sitemap and submit it to Yahoo:
  If you haven’t already done so use a XML sitemap generator to create a sitemap for your website and then submit it to Yahoo using the “Add Feed” form within your website’s Site Explorer profile.
• Removing unnecessary dynamic content from your URLs with new add-on within Site Explorer:
  Does your URLs content session ID’s or other dynamic content that is unnecessary within the URL? If so, this information can be indexed by the search engines and ultimately can cause havoc with your rankings. Thankfully Yahoo has implemented a new tool within the Site Explorer domain management section called “Dynamic URLs Beta”. Here are the instructions to use the Dynamic URLs tool.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
After reviewing our notes from current and previous Yahoo promotions and taking a look at a variety of top 10 results the following points appeared noteworthy:

• Ensure open indexing by using Robots.txt wisely
• A lot of our client’s older content appears to be sticking to top rankings with little or no monthly tweaking. As a result, I think it is fair to assume that fresh content is not currently gaining much weight in the Yahoo algorithm.
• In many cases top ranking sites have pushed the envelope and their sites border on SPAM. Considering the top ranking these sites have it appears Yahoo’s SPAM filters are far less sensitive than Google’s. I expect Yahoo will change this in the near future but then again I have been surprised how long this has been the status quo.
• One common claim throughout forums is that achieving a placement in the Yahoo Directory provides an instant boost to Yahoo rankings. Unfortunately we have not seen conclusive evidence that the annual $299 fee will increase rankings dramatically in the short term. That said, I strongly believe that a Yahoo Directory placement is a very reputable incoming link that does pay dividends in the long run at any search engine that weighs incoming links (the ones that count).
• Yahoo Search Submit was re-introduced back in February 2007 to significant criticism due to the potential favouritism to those who pay to get into the Yahoo index. Despite the negative feedback there appears to be some potential benefits to paying for submission. For one, in July I noted an interesting story where a website was banned from Yahoo and the webmaster got the site back into Yahoo’s index by paying for inclusion (“Banned from Yahoo?”). A second reason Search Submit may be worthwhile is the guarantee that your site will be indexed. Furthermore, the Yahoo’s Search Submit Pro service allows you to recommend your own title and description tags for each page submitted and to submit pages that may not normally be indexed by Slurp.

by: Ross Dunn, CEO StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Yahoo Search Improves News Injection In Web Results

The Yahoo Search Blog announced they have made "significant enhancements" to how they show news results in the web search results. Yahoo is now showing news results in different positions throughout the web search results, based on their new "News Direct Display (DD)" algorithm. In addition, Yahoo improved how they detect news queries and will show more news boxes in the search results due to that improvement.

For example, a search on spears returns a news box in the middle of Yahoo Search:
Yahoo News in Search Results

I decided to see how Yahoo handled a search for Cuil (for more on Cuil, see Cuil Launches -- Can This Search Start-Up Really Best Google?) and yes, they do show a news result at the top of the listings, just like Google:

vs:

Yes, Google ranks cuil.com as the number one result in the web search results, while Yahoo currently does not - but that is for a different blog post.

Google has also had news results within the different positions of the web search results since they launched Universal Search in May 2007.

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by Barry Schwartz