Submitting your Site to Yahoo! Directory
By John Hamman
Yahoo is a tough engine to get your blog into, least if you are trying to get in without paying. I have determined to try to find a way to get listed without paying, but that takes patience. A few weeks have passed since I attempted to submit to Yahoo! Directory and since then I have received nothing in emails from them, nor do I find my site listed in the directory yet. Oddly enough my website is showing up in the yahoo web search sporadically. So I figured its time to resubmit, but this time I think we will try some new things and discuss our methods.
Since we submitted our site to Yahoo! via the free submission, then there is a chance that the editor didn't have time to review it. So we keep trying. Especially since we didn’t receive a email with a announcement to our listing or a denial.
To get listed in the directory, for free, you need to do some research first.
Note: Be sure to read http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/appropriate.html and any other Yahoo! suggest information first. It does help.
Start out with writing down search terms that are the most defining to your site. For oursite the list looks something like this "blogging", "income from blogging", "how to blog", "professional blogging", "blogging tips", "blogging help" etc… So lets start out with searching the directory with our first search term "blogging". First navigate to the http://dir.yahoo.com and plug in the keyword "blogging" and hit search. You should get a wide variety of sites returned but what we want to pay attention to is the "Related Directory Categories", and what you see is "Weblogs" and "Weblogs about Blogging". Jackpot. I think we fit into these categories, one issue though, "Weblogs" category is to broad and is one of the "Top Categories". Our chances of getting listed here is about nil. So lets hit "Weblogs About Blogging". Take note that there is no more sub-categories and there is only 31 sites listed here, that’s a good thing.
Ok, so now we have found our category, lets get to the submission. Click the "Suggest a Site" link on the page. Now you should be brought to a page that is titled appropriately "Suggest a Site to the Yahoo! Directory". On this page you will have one of 2 views; The first gives you a choice to either submit the site via the "Standard" Submit (the free one!) or the "Yahoo! Directory Submit (with the 7 Day Guarantee and $299 us dollar fee!). The second view you may get shows ONLY the paid submit. If you get this, you have 2 choices. Either find another category that fits your site and shows you the "Standard" submit, or Pay. Since we have the option of "Standard" submission, we are going to try that. We click the "Standard Consideration" option and verify that the category is correct and hit continue. You will have to login/register with Yahoo! ID if you haven't already. The next screen should be the main submission form.
The Yahoo Directory Suggest a Site form is pretty simple to fill out. If you really don’t care, just fill out the appropriate fields and hit submit. But that's probably not going to help you in your chances nor is it going to help your directory listings if you happen to get accepted. So here we need to pay attention to what we are entering into the form. The title, in my opinion, is just as important or more important than the description. So lets take a moment to focus on the title.
Yahoo does list its directory listings in alphabetical order so you can attempt to use a title that would help your listings in that search type. Keep in mind though, if you are putting something like what you find in your everyday phone book, a title "#1 site for blogging income" or "AAA Professional Blogging Tutorials" you just wasted your time because your not going to get listed. Now if you business name is "AAA Professional Blogging" you can do that. What I recommend for your title, is that it is "Keyword" friendly and highly relevant to your site. Don’t try to pull a fast one on the editors and search users by using a slick title that doesn’t really describe your site. For our title we are going with "theladderproject's Successful Blogging by Example". Be sure not to make the title in all caps, use exclamation points or use a title that is more of a sales pitch like "Make money from home".
The description is the most difficult item to define corretly. Ideally you want to include as many relevant keywords in the description as possible. You will find that this can be difficult, especially since you do not want to list a bunch of keywords in a row. Our description will look like this "Weblog about blogging as a profession. Learn how to successfully make money by marketing your blog advertising and affiliate income". In our description we have about 10-11 keywords that someone might use to search for our topics and we kept the description under 25 words.
Next you enter in a Email Address and Contact Person for the ability of changes and contacting you about your listings. I suggest a more permanent email address that you will probably not change.
Finally there is the Additional Information box. Here you can put other categories that your site may fit under. I have found that this box is definiatly character limited and cutting and pasting 2 category url's didn’t work. I suggest you explain briefly your category suggestion and why your site should be there. I don’t think that any suggestions made here will affect your chances for listing, though you may want to type in some sweet nothings or flirtations (you never know!).
Ok, so now you review everything for errors or mistakes and hit submit. Next step is to just wait. If you don’t hear from Yahoo! After 3 weeks (2-4 business days for the paid submission) then it's time to resubmit. If this fails after 2-3 tries then its time to try some other steps.
Copyright © http://blog.theladderproject.com 2006
John Hamman has been in the internet business for 10 years now and specializes in site usability, accessibility, SEO, and online marketing tactics. He now manages the Ladder Project, a "tell all" weblog about how to make money by blogging, from start to finish. This site gives unprecedented access to the internet's best kept secrets in website promotion and driving traffic that will produce income.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Hamman
Yahoo is a tough engine to get your blog into, least if you are trying to get in without paying. I have determined to try to find a way to get listed without paying, but that takes patience. A few weeks have passed since I attempted to submit to Yahoo! Directory and since then I have received nothing in emails from them, nor do I find my site listed in the directory yet. Oddly enough my website is showing up in the yahoo web search sporadically. So I figured its time to resubmit, but this time I think we will try some new things and discuss our methods.
Since we submitted our site to Yahoo! via the free submission, then there is a chance that the editor didn't have time to review it. So we keep trying. Especially since we didn’t receive a email with a announcement to our listing or a denial.
To get listed in the directory, for free, you need to do some research first.
Note: Be sure to read http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/appropriate.html and any other Yahoo! suggest information first. It does help.
Start out with writing down search terms that are the most defining to your site. For oursite the list looks something like this "blogging", "income from blogging", "how to blog", "professional blogging", "blogging tips", "blogging help" etc… So lets start out with searching the directory with our first search term "blogging". First navigate to the http://dir.yahoo.com and plug in the keyword "blogging" and hit search. You should get a wide variety of sites returned but what we want to pay attention to is the "Related Directory Categories", and what you see is "Weblogs" and "Weblogs about Blogging". Jackpot. I think we fit into these categories, one issue though, "Weblogs" category is to broad and is one of the "Top Categories". Our chances of getting listed here is about nil. So lets hit "Weblogs About Blogging". Take note that there is no more sub-categories and there is only 31 sites listed here, that’s a good thing.
Ok, so now we have found our category, lets get to the submission. Click the "Suggest a Site" link on the page. Now you should be brought to a page that is titled appropriately "Suggest a Site to the Yahoo! Directory". On this page you will have one of 2 views; The first gives you a choice to either submit the site via the "Standard" Submit (the free one!) or the "Yahoo! Directory Submit (with the 7 Day Guarantee and $299 us dollar fee!). The second view you may get shows ONLY the paid submit. If you get this, you have 2 choices. Either find another category that fits your site and shows you the "Standard" submit, or Pay. Since we have the option of "Standard" submission, we are going to try that. We click the "Standard Consideration" option and verify that the category is correct and hit continue. You will have to login/register with Yahoo! ID if you haven't already. The next screen should be the main submission form.
The Yahoo Directory Suggest a Site form is pretty simple to fill out. If you really don’t care, just fill out the appropriate fields and hit submit. But that's probably not going to help you in your chances nor is it going to help your directory listings if you happen to get accepted. So here we need to pay attention to what we are entering into the form. The title, in my opinion, is just as important or more important than the description. So lets take a moment to focus on the title.
Yahoo does list its directory listings in alphabetical order so you can attempt to use a title that would help your listings in that search type. Keep in mind though, if you are putting something like what you find in your everyday phone book, a title "#1 site for blogging income" or "AAA Professional Blogging Tutorials" you just wasted your time because your not going to get listed. Now if you business name is "AAA Professional Blogging" you can do that. What I recommend for your title, is that it is "Keyword" friendly and highly relevant to your site. Don’t try to pull a fast one on the editors and search users by using a slick title that doesn’t really describe your site. For our title we are going with "theladderproject's Successful Blogging by Example". Be sure not to make the title in all caps, use exclamation points or use a title that is more of a sales pitch like "Make money from home".
The description is the most difficult item to define corretly. Ideally you want to include as many relevant keywords in the description as possible. You will find that this can be difficult, especially since you do not want to list a bunch of keywords in a row. Our description will look like this "Weblog about blogging as a profession. Learn how to successfully make money by marketing your blog advertising and affiliate income". In our description we have about 10-11 keywords that someone might use to search for our topics and we kept the description under 25 words.
Next you enter in a Email Address and Contact Person for the ability of changes and contacting you about your listings. I suggest a more permanent email address that you will probably not change.
Finally there is the Additional Information box. Here you can put other categories that your site may fit under. I have found that this box is definiatly character limited and cutting and pasting 2 category url's didn’t work. I suggest you explain briefly your category suggestion and why your site should be there. I don’t think that any suggestions made here will affect your chances for listing, though you may want to type in some sweet nothings or flirtations (you never know!).
Ok, so now you review everything for errors or mistakes and hit submit. Next step is to just wait. If you don’t hear from Yahoo! After 3 weeks (2-4 business days for the paid submission) then it's time to resubmit. If this fails after 2-3 tries then its time to try some other steps.
Copyright © http://blog.theladderproject.com 2006
John Hamman has been in the internet business for 10 years now and specializes in site usability, accessibility, SEO, and online marketing tactics. He now manages the Ladder Project, a "tell all" weblog about how to make money by blogging, from start to finish. This site gives unprecedented access to the internet's best kept secrets in website promotion and driving traffic that will produce income.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Hamman
