Will Your Google SEO Help You With Yahoo? - Coming at You from Beyond the Site
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There is little doubt that inclusion in the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) helps a site’s rankings with the Google algorithm. Google has long valued human edited directories, of which DMOZ is considered the most important. Being listed in the DMOZ directory appears to have value with the Yahoo SERPs as well. The time spent submitting to the DMOZ directory will pay dividends in both the Google and Yahoo! search rankings.
As an incoming link, having your site listed in the Yahoo! Directory carries a $299.00 entry fee. While not for everyone, the listing does provide an important backlink in the Google algorithm. Since the Yahoo! Directory is part of the Yahoo! system, it seems logical that inclusion would carry some weight in the Yahoo! search rankings too.
Inclusion, in the Yahoo! Directory does apparently result in your site being crawled more frequently by the Yahoo! spider. Whether that results in more pages being indexed by Yahoo! is debated by many SEO experts. Overall, however, it’s probably safe to say that the Yahoo! algorithm is weighted toward sites included in its own proprietary directory. It’s up to individual website owners to determine if the investment in the Yahoo! Directory is worth consideration for your site.
As everyone involved with search engine optimization is already aware, Google values incoming links very highly. Even more emphasis is placed on the link anchor text, and the theme and topic of the linking page. In other words, Google places primary importance on links. In its simplest terms, the more links the better, and the more theme keyword oriented the link text, the better. The question then becomes, whether or not the heavy concern for links expressed by Google’s search results spills over to your Yahoo search placements as well.
Yahoo!’s algorithm takes a more content based approach to the search results. While there is importance placed on incoming links, Yahoo! does not place the same level of importance on links as Google’s algorithm. That is not to say that links are unimportant to Yahoo!. Links are very important. They are simply not weighted as heavily in the search calculations as they are with the Google search results.
If you have optimized your link anchor text, with varied keywords, you will do well in Google’s search results. At the same time, you will get that link popularity boost from Yahoo!. The emphasis in Yahoo!’s search algorithm is on content. That content requirement extends to off page and off site items that include link anchor text. Thinking about your linking will give you benefit in both the Google and Yahoo! search rankings.
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