Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

Tab le 4.2

Yahoo! Basics

URL

www.yahoo.com

Percent of search traffic

29.5% (Source: comScore Media Metrix, February 2006)

Primary results

Robot crawler

Organic listings also influenced by Yahoo! Directory

Ways to submit your site

Paid submittal to Yahoo! Directory, paid inclusion, or wait for the

robot to spider you

Pay-per-click services

Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM)

In five words or less

Constant growth means survival.

Keep an eye on

Local search,Yahoo! Mobile, Web 2.0 search

An important point to keep in mind is that Yahoo!’s market share as listed in

Table 4.2 includes searches in Yahoo! properties and “channels” such as news, shop-

ping and sports. That means Yahoo!’s percentage of “standard” organic searches might

be lower than the number implies. Still, Yahoo!’s healthy share of traffic will come in

mighty handy if your Google juice fails you.

Riding the Algorithm Roller Coaster

Susan McKenna is a marketing consultant who also owns an online traffic school at

www.opentrafficschool.com

. Her business lives and dies by its search engine traffic,

which brought in close to 60 percent of its prospective students in 2005.A change in ranking

algorithm can really shake things up for this type of business, as Susan learned the hard way.

She says,“I was ranked #1, 2, or 3 for the terms ‘traffic school,’‘online traffic school,’ and ‘california

traffic school’on Yahoo! for half of 2004 and most of 2005….And then it happened:We disap-

peared from Yahoo!’s results in a matter of days,dipping to 300, then 400,until we were com-

pletely off the map.”

Susan jumped into action within weeks, with a sweeping site optimization campaign as well as

new link-building efforts. Her ranks have been gradually climbing since then: “My traffic school is

really beginning to gain traction,”she says. Next, she plans to begin taking some of the content-

building steps you’ll read about in Chapter 9,“Month Three: It’s a Way of Life.”

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