Since Google has the most search traffic, most SEO articles focus on Google. However, Yahoo gets about 20% of searches. A friend recently asked me why he ranked number one on a Google search, but was much lower on Yahoo. Here are some ways that Yahoo rankings differ from Google:
- It is easier to show up faster by submitting your site to Yahoo’s Search Submit program.
- Yahoo is more forgiving about link quality.
- Yahoo puts less weight on domain age.
- When you submit a site to Yahoo humans check it right away while Google waits until a site is flagged before humans check it.
- Yahoo is not as good at detecting spam as Google is.
- Yahoo is more forgiving about keyword “stuffing” in the headings, title tags, and anchor text.
You may be able to increase your ranking faster on Yahoo, but be careful because some of the things that can increase your rank on Yahoo will actually lower it on Google. Since Google receives the most searches by far you wouldn’t want to do it at the cost of decreasing those rankings.
