7 replies to this topic

[darin]

You pay and your chances of losing out on the deal are high.

I run a health site thats been in existence for about 1 year. The entire site of 600+ pages were created by me -its hard work but its starting to pay off. Since I'm an engineer by day and knew nothing about html a year ago it has been an adventure to gleen from every webforum and free tips website I could find to help me earn some extra cash from my business.
After getting a #7 listing in google for "weightloss herbs" and a #4 for "herbs supplements" and more than 30 others, I still stuggle with why yahoo isn't paying much attention. My site is even hosted by yahoo. One possible reason that my primary keyword is missing out in yahoo is that IMO I'm listed in the directory. Why you ask? Because they sometimes include a hideous description that shows up in the SERPS. This description, if by chance is not included at all, is taken from words found on-page. An on-page description would be better, but there is virtually no control over that...I have submitted change requests twice and still no action.
Conclusion: Although it will get your website crawled it is certainly not worth the price of admission. You can get your site crawled by simply getting a few links from a free directory or two or 10.
Another beef with yahoo...their spider is drunk. Its not predictable at all and sometimes passes out after a look at the homepage and then slowly moves on only to return a few weeks later and still not crawl the whole site...it could then come back the next day, burp, and leave again.

Any tips from the "SEO experts"?




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Edited by Jill, 09 July 2005 - 03:08 PM.

[chrishirst]

welcome to HR darin

Well for my 0.02 GBPs worth I'd be looking long and hard and very suspiciously to one or more of the three link schemes you are running on your site.

[Jill]

Welcome Darin!

Although it will get your website crawled it is certainly not worth the price of admission. You can get your site crawled by simply getting a few links from a free directory or two or 10.

Yes, that's pretty much what Yahoo tells you also. What made you think it would be any more than that?

[darin]

Thanks for the input Chris...advise noted.

The link scheme you refer is , lets just call it, "p" links... a $10 service that gets website links from all other member sites instantly or by approval ( your choice). I read some other threads on this topic and some others have expressed concern with the service...generally, the bad thing would linking to a bad neighborhood without knowng it. My reply would be: risky ? perhaps yes. hurting me in google? definitately no. One reason why I don't think yahoo notices is that fact the some different keywords are showing up in yahoo just on page 2-10 instead of page 1.

(The other 2 link pages are my manual added link partner pages and my automated link directory which I use to build link popularity in a non-risky way.)

I plan on giving this service a month or 2 more ( to make it 6 months total) or the next google backlink update to determine its usefulness.

One more possiblity that I thought of...my # of indexed pages in yahoo appear quite different without the "www" than with it included. And, MSN seems to show the same thing - some indexed pages have the www and some don't. At MSN, the non www site ranks much higher. Google on the other hand does seem to care much if the www is present. Anyone seen this issue before?

[darin]

What made me think it would do anything other than get your site crawled? Well, for one, its listed everywhere on various SEO "how to" sites....generally the advise is - get in, its a good thing. Prominent SEO professionals like yourself should be warning people not to waste their money for a simple visit by the yahoo Slerp bot that you can get for free with ease. My main beef is that the description they use " sometimes" is always harmful rather than helpful , and they refuse to remove it and let the page words do the talking.

Live and learn , i guess.

[Jill]

Prominent SEO professionals like yourself should be warning people not to waste their money for a simple visit by the yahoo Slerp bot that you can get for free with ease.

Errmmm...look around. I've warned people like 8 million times about that!

y main beef is that the description they use " sometimes" is always harmful rather than helpful , and they refuse to remove it and let the page words do the talking.

And yep, I've warned about that as well.

A little research here, may have saved you a bit of money!

[darin]

Currently, for commercial sites, Express Submit fees are necessary to be listed in Yahoo! ($299 per year). We can also submit your non-commercial pages to Yahoo! with no registration fees, however, where your budget allows, express submissions are recommended.

hmmm, thats on your website.

[Jill]

Yes, if you have a non-commercial site that you want to get into Yahoo's directory for whatever reason, your best bet is to use the express (paid) submission.

That's what that says on the services area my site, and it's still true.

It doesn't say that I recommend being in Yahoo's directory, in general. It's a personal preference.

If you browse some of the "Is a   Yahoo Directory Listing[/hr] Worth the Money" threads you should find the numerous threads where I generally state that in my opinion it's not.

(Of course, nothing is written in stone, and there may be cases where it is worthwhile.)