Submitting your site to Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo is one of the oldest web directories and the the single most visited
website on the Internet. Boasting over 12 million daily visitors, Yahoo can
send more traffic to your website than all the other search engines combined.
Follow the instructions on this page to get your site listed in Yahoo and rank
high for your popular keyword phrases.
Paid listing vs. Free Listing
Currently Yahoo is only accepting paid listings for their business and economy
categories. They still allow free submission to non-business categories. If
you are in a non-business category and decide to try for the free listing please
note that it may take 8-10 weeks for your site to be reviewed if the reviewers
get around to it at all. If possible we recommend the paid listing option which
costs $299 for a one-time review. This does NOT guarantee that you will be
listed in Yahoo - it only guarantees that they will review your site within seven
(7) business days. It is very important to follow Yahoo's guidelines when
submitting your site to insure that you don't waste $299 and have your site
rejected. Ready? Let's submit your site!
Getting Started
First you need to go to the main Yahoo site at
www.yahoo.com. Once you are there do a
little research to find out what category you should be placed in. Type your
most popular search term into the box and click 'search'. A list of categories
and sites will come up. Find the two categories that most closely fit the theme
of your website. If you are not sure look for sites that are similar to yours
and choose the same category. When you have chosen your two categories write
or copy the second choice down, then click on the first.
Submitting your Site
Now that you have found your main category scroll down to the bottom of
the screen. There will be a link there that says 'Suggest a Site'. Click the
link and read through the information on the next page. It is a good idea to
read through all the guidelines and make sure your site is not listed already
before proceeding. Click the button at the bottom of the page to proceed to
step one.
Business Express Guidelines
If your site is in a commercial category you will be taken to the business
express guidelines page. Read through these guidelines carefully - they are
important and if you don't follow the guidelines Yahoo will reject your site
and take your $299! Once you have read through all the guidelines and made
sure your site is up to Yahoo's standards check all the boxes and click the
continue button.
Get a Yahoo Account
If you don't have one already you will have to sign up for a Yahoo! account.
This is probably so they can send you advertisements and other things. Anyway
just play by the rules and sign up for a free Yahoo account. Once you are signed
in with your Yahoo account you will have to check all those little boxes again
before you can continue. Now comes the important part:
Title
This is the most important part of the form. In the title box you should
enter the official name of your website or company. For example if your site
is called the 'Blue Widget Company' then type that in the box. Don't try to
cheat by inserting keywords if they are not a part of your company name. Also
don't use promotional slogans like 'We're number one!'. Hint: If your
company's name includes a keyword phrase it will increase your rankings!
URL
Next you will enter your URL. Using the Blue Widget Company as an example
your URL would be http://www.blue-widget-company.com. If you can have
keywords in your URL then it may increase your ranking in Yahoo searches and
will definitely increase your rankings in the other search engines.
Description
Finally you need to enter your description. The trick here is to make a
brief, readable sentence that contains as many keywords as possible. Keep your
title to 25 words or less. Here's an example description for the Blue Widget
Company:
Supplier of blue widgets and widget manufacturing machinery.
Summary
Here's what we have done so far with keywords highlighted in red:
TITLE: Blue Widget Company
URL: http://www.blue-widget-company.com
DESCRIPTION: Supplier of blue widgets and
widget manufacturing machinery.
Notice how the most important keywords - 'blue widgets' appear once in the
title, and 1.5 times in the description. Since Yahoo uses the title and description
to rank websites you should definitely have your keywords in both the title
and description, and the URL. Some webmasters will create an entirely new
website based around their popular keywords for the purpose of listing in directories
like Yahoo! Click continue to proceed with your submission.
Your second category
Since Yahoo will allow you to suggest an additional category where your site
belongs don't leave the next part blank! Now is the time to get out that other
category that you copied earlier and paste it into this box. If you forgot or
lost the category - no problem - just open a new browser window and go to
www.yahoo.com to find the category again. Once you have entered your second
category you can finish the rest of the form yourself. Just follow the directions
carefully and pay your $299. If you have followed their guidelines, and your
site is accepted you should see a large increase in the number of visitors to
your site.
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