Figuring Out Yahoo SEO Ranking

Let’s figure and see what other webmasters are saying about Yahoo SEO ranking. Let me say first that Google really need a good competition because it seems neither Yahoo! or MSN are doing very well. Let me talk about MSN and the we check yahoo:

The problem of MSN that is really easy to rank well there with some few extra backlinks, with some onpage optimization and puff done. I have tested it with a new domain and talking about the old domain like Web School it seems that is not ranked very well as it should be, may be because the scary “google” keyword on the domain?

Yahoo! has a different approach and for me it seems to much “useless” top ranking sites with some major keywords, really comparing with Google, you can see that the top results are being “gaming” the Yahoo! Search engine. Just hope that they will really improve their algorithm because I love those guys from Yahoo! (Again Please we need a One-On-One competitor for the Big G) Let’s see what other webmasters/seo experts are saying:

• Ranking in the 300s for pretty much everything. Parked domains outrank us. Site has lots of content and strong inbound and outbound links. Does anyone else have similar experiences. Seems like my site has a penalty or Yahoo! is just really bad.
• BTW, I recall talking with someone here on this board who had a hypothesis that Y! considers some trivial and widespread on-page content factors, such as < . title .> = < . h1 .>, as over-optimization and applies penalty. We’ve got < . title. > = < . h1 .> on all pages and we are nowhere in Yahoo. When I checked the first 10 results in our niche, none of them had < . title .> = < . h1 .>, moreover most of them didn’t have the tag H1 at all, and had a quite messy html, that wouldn’t validate.
  It would be interesting if others check this for their keywords and report back here
• Yea, Yahoo is so inconsistent. We used to rank number 10 on average for ‘antiques’, which was great, then Yahoo dropped us, without reason. I wrote the software that makes our site, and even re-wrote it in php and mysql and moved our hosting to Yahoo. Google still loves us, but not Y! We were thinking, Yahoo gives not a crap, esp. with this Microsoft purchase possible, why should they put any effort in to improve anything; would be just a waste of time, money, resources. I have tried contacting them a bunch about this, even the last email I was like, ‘WHAT THE F IS GOING ON?!’ and no one gets back to me. They should let Gates and his crew fix ‘em. (Be Serious Gates Crew can fix it? Why they don’t fix their own search engine?)
• I am still sorting through the mess that Yahoo seems to have created. Honestly, we utilize both on page and off page techniques to ranking sites (obviously). The on page and off page factors really seem to be out of whack here, but it is so inconsistent I cannot even get a gauge on it. I am missing something simple here and it bothers me to think that notion is more than likely true. I am thinking too logically for an illogical algo at the moment. I would hate to say that domain name is playing a significant roll here, but that is definitely factoring in at a much higher weighting. Almost looking like SERPs from 3 years ago in MSN. I could virtually guarantee a SEO client who bought the right domain name that I could get them traffic less than 4 weeks after launch because of the good old dependable MSN algo. Buy widgetinkansas.com and you could easily rank for the term “widgets in kansas” …. IMPRESSIVE.
  I have seen domains that I have not bothered to market in years surfacing in the top 10. WHY? Well, it seems that it is because they utilize the keyword phrase in their domain name. Sub pages are ranking like mad in this new algo. Example: city-keyword.com/keyword.htm or .php , etc. WOW, it ranks again with no additional marketing efforts! Yes, I used simple on page marketing techniques, but they don’t belong back in any type of top ranking position.
  I would have to disagree with a penalty for keyword density. If anything, sites in my study are sometimes being rewarded for stronger keyword density. Other keywords, on the contrary, are being penalized and this is what is confusing. The consistency level is just not there at all.
  I would get into specifics on my research here, but wouldn’t want big brother snooping into things too much. Trust me when I say that the algo is not being applied equally. Something is wrong in Yahoo land, but no one is talking at the moment over there.
• Our main website is exceptionally strong when judged based on off-page factors. We have a plenty of authority links. For our main keywords, in google we hold simultaneously #1 and #2 positions, plus #1 position have Sitelinks. In Yahoo, we are outranked by parked domains (same as textex). The site is completely white hat. What the hell does Yahoo want from us? It is funny if we are penalized for keyword prominence or density, because at this point I do NOT even KNOW what the keyword density is on our home page. As I am writing this post, I can not say if the keyword density is 2% or 7%. The page was written with our audience in mind, disregarding keywords issues whatsoever.
  May be the time for a little black hat adventure has come An interesting experiment would be to cloak the page just for Yahoo. The Slurp loves to crawl messy invalid HTML without tags, low kw density. Keep quality for the visitors, feed Y! junk.

Not Proven Points on How to Optimize your site with Yahoo!

• Density over 5% and prominence over 70% seems to trigger the filter.
• Just spotted a site using CSS to reorder page and therefore show search engines content in a different order to that seen by browsers. All of the body copy in a div called seo is inside H3 tags but it looks like a 10 point (or less) footnote in light grey. The page is in the top 5.
• Yahoo has typically been more in favor of on page techniques combined with link counts that are not as highly prioritized as google.
• Domain name is having a pretty big influence here for sure. This have to be changed ASAP by the Yahoo! Team. When you search on Google you sometimes will find the site #1 that the domain have nothing to do with the keyword but Yahoo! seems to give a lof weight on the domain names. I have always believed that domain name should play some significance, but Yahoo’s latest algo is extreme. It is rewarding some very poorly developed sites, some of which don’t even exist yet.
• 8 years old domain name and used to be #1 on Yahoo for every term I target. Now is at #21 for the most important term.

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