Top 5 Tips for Yahoo! SEO
When discussing Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it is almost instinctive to think of Google. And while Google undeniably holds the lion’s share of the search engine market, exclusively focusing on it could mean missed opportunities. This blog aims to shed light on the potential benefits of incorporating Yahoo! in your SEO strategy.
In this guide, we delve into the intricacies of Yahoo! SEO – an often-underestimated platform that can unlock new traffic to your website. Let’s take a closer look at five tailor-made tips and best practices for enhancing your Yahoo! SEO strategy. By harnessing Yahoo!’s power, you can tap into a new dimension of search engine optimization and maximize your online presence. Let’s get started!
What is Yahoo! Search?
Upon navigating to Yahoo.com, you’ll encounter a bustling hub brimming with news articles, various functionalities such as email and shopping, and most importantly, search capabilities. This platform is a multifaceted powerhouse that caters to a myriad of tasks, but if your goal is to perform a search, simply type your query into the search bar at the top, press Enter, and voilà you’ll land on a search results page, just like Google’s.
Why Should You Consider Yahoo! SEO?
While Yahoo’s market share might seem fractional at 1.24% of total global search engine use, it’s important to note that it is the second-most-used search engine following Google in certain markets. Specifically, in regions like Japan where the usage rate is 13.29%, Taiwan where it hits 5.86%, and Hong Kong, registering at 5.23%. Thus, if your business aims to penetrate these markets, implementing Yahoo! SEO is an optimal strategy.
Moreover, Yahoo’s ranking factors are simpler compared to Google, which is known for its complex and frequently changing algorithms. Yahoo! conveniently lays out all its ranking factors on an accessible Help page, making it significantly easier for SEO practitioners to understand and follow.
Finally, there is less competition on Yahoo! than other popular search engines. As it places greater value on domain authority, if you have a well-established website and put some effort to optimize your content, there is a high chance that it can rank well.
Finally, Yahoo! SEO offers a competitive advantage due to its less saturated market compared to other search engines. Since Yahoo! places greater value on domain authority, a well-established website that invests in some content optimization is likely to rank high. Therefore, Yahoo! SEO could be the key to augmenting your website’s visibility and reach.
5 Tips for Optimizing for Yahoo!
Before we deep dive into the tips for Yahoo! SEO, it’s important to understand that Yahoo! and another prominent player in the search engine market, Bing, share a strategic alliance. Although Yahoo! initially used its own crawling and data housing services when first launched in 1995, its search results have been powered by Bing since 2009. Hence, if you want to do Yahoo! SEO, you actually need to optimize for Bing.
With this in mind, let’s unravel the 5 best practices for optimizing for Yahoo!:
TIP 1: SUBMIT YOUR WEBSITE TO BING
Bing do not crawl webpages and index URLs as frequently as Google. To make sure your website will be indexed on Yahoo! and Bing, you should submit your site to Bing Webmaster Tools.
TIP 2: STRAIGHTFORWARD KEYWORDS, OR EVEN EXACT KEYWORDS, WORK BETTER IN YAHOO! AND BING
Compared with Google, Yahoo! and Bing are not good at handling search queries with broad-matching keywords. Instead, they tend to show webpages that include exact keywords. Thus, when optimizing your webpages for Yahoo!, focus on including simple and straightforward keywords.
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TIP 3: OPTIMIZE YOUR TITLE TAG
Bing treats the title tag as an important factor when selecting which webpages to show in search results. An article on Bing Webmaster Blog says:
“Make the HTML title relevant to the queries that would be used to search your site without being overly long or repetitive.”
When you are doing Yahoo! SEO, remember to include your keywords (which should be simple and straightforward) in your H1 and H2 title tags.
However, it’s critical to be aware that just like Google, Yahoo discourages keyword stuffing. Thus, it’s essential to incorporate keywords within your titles and H tags organically and contextually. Avoid fitting in keywords arbitrarily that disrupt the natural flow and cohesiveness of your content. Always evaluate if the keyword placement logically makes sense to ensure a user-friendly and SEO-friendly Yahoo experience.
TIP 4: SOCIAL IS SIGNIFICANT IN YAHOO! AND BING’S ALGORITHM
Different from Google’s unclear stand on social media, Bing directly stated that social presence is an important factor for them when deciding which webpages to show in search results. The Bing Webmaster Guidelines say:
“Social media plays a role in today’s effort to rank well in search results. The most obvious part it plays is via influence…These positive signals can have an impact on how you rank organically in the long run.”
Therefore, social media should be a part of your strategy when doing Yahoo! SEO.
TIP 5: BACKLINKS ARE IMPORTANT, ESPECIALLY FOR YAHOO! AND BING
Backlinks are important to all search engines—“build backlinks for your site” sounds like an SEO 101 suggestion. Still, backlinks are especially important for Yahoo! and Bing. A Searchmetrics study from 2014 found that:
“In Bing search results (as with Google) the number of backlinks (links to a webpage from other sites) remains very closely connected to how the page ranks. In fact, for Bing the number of backlinks has a high correlation of 0.29.”
And again, Bing and Yahoo! favor keywords to be included in the backlinks’ anchor text:
“52-53% of the backlinks of websites ranked among the top 30 results on Bing contain keywords in the anchor text (which is about 10% more than Google).”
There are many SEO strategies, but you definitely don’t want to miss link building when doing SEO for Yahoo!.
BONUS TIPS!
In addition to the above 5 tips, some basic SEO techniques are also applicable when doing Yahoo! SEO:
- Keep your website page speed fast since Bing treats page load time as one of the technical ranking factors.
- Ensure that your sitemap is clean, up-to-date, and all unnecessary URLs are removed.
- Set up your Robots.txt correctly to tell Bing and Yahoo! to crawl all the webpages you want to index.
- Provide high-quality and well-presented content in your website.
