Yahoo doesn’t get as much traffic as Google but they are far from being a ghost town and I assure you that there is traffic to score! Learn how to submit your site to Yahoo.
Google accounts for a very high percentage of my traffic on all my sites across the board. Some sites have over 95% of the traffic come from Google. While this is a very nice and much appreciated gift from Google, I can not help but get a little nervous about that. Constantly, I have in the back of my mind how dead my sites would be if I lose my Google traffic. It’s a scary thought. On July 1st, 2007 I wrote an article that teaches people how to submit their site to Ask.com. In this article, I want to show you how to submit your site to Yahoo.
The reason why I am publishing tips on getting your site listed in other search engines is not to spite Google. I love Google and feel that they do a great job in providing people with accurate information. The reason why I want to show people how to get listed in other search engines is for the simple fact that it may not be the best idea to “Bank” on getting all your traffic from one place. Just as investors will tell you that its not a good idea to invest all your money into one stock. Investors recommend having a diversified stock portfolio. And I recommend having the same thing with your web site traffic.
With investing in to stocks, if you have all your money into one stock, what will happen if that stock crashes? The result is you go broke! Well, the same goes with web site traffic. If you put all your eggs into one basket (Google) and if Google decides to remove your site, or reduce your ranking, etc… you lose!
Now, I am beyond preaching about best practices and quality guidelines. In short, the secret to success with Google is writing content that is useful for others. However, regardless of the level of quality and craftsmen ship you apply to your site(s), there is always the possibility that Google may adjust how well your site can be found in their search engine.
The safe solution is to exercise a lot of effort and focus in getting listed in other search engines. Doing this will help not only increase your web site traffic but also create safety nets in your “web site traffic portfolio”. Granted, other search engines don’t have as much daily traffic as Google; however, competing search engines are not ghost towns. If they didn’t do well, they wouldn’t stay in business. Yahoo does quite well with advertising and generating a large amount of income. Ask.com is making a huge come back and is causing quite a few heads to turn. So, all in all… the world of search engines are not owned solely by Google Inc. Yes, they do a great job, but No, they are not the only one who can provide search to Internet users.
Submitting your site into Yahoo involves a similar process to submitting your site into Google, Ask.com as well as Microsoft Live.com. The first thing you need to do is create a sitemap.xml file. You can view my sitemap.xml file here. Second thing you need is a robots.txt file. You can view my robots.txt file here. Third thing you need to do, as soon as you create your sitemap.xml file, is to add this line to the top of your robots.txt file:
sitemap: http://www.garryconn.com/sitemap.xml
Add this line to the top of your robots.txt file.
One you have done these things, submitting your site to Google, Ask.com, Yahoo and Live.com are all pretty much the same process.
To submit your site to Yahoo, you need to log into Yahoo! Site Explorer and simply add your site.
Once you have added your site to Yahoo Site Explorer you will have to validate it. This is done by either adding a special <meta tag> to your header file or by uploading a special html file into your home directory on your server.
Once your site is validated, you can then manage your site and add your feed and sitemap.xml file.
You can see in this example that I have added both my site’s feed as well as my site’s sitemap.xml file.
The process of submitting a sitemap.xml file has become an “industry standard” among the major search engines. Even though the search engines are competing businesses, they have all agreed to standardize how they collect information. In April, Yahoo Inc. published an article that talks more about this.
With this new “standardized way” of how search engines find your content, this makes your job of submitting your site into these search engines much easier. Ask.com currently has one of the easiest processes for submitting your site into their index.
Back years ago, you would not believe how difficult it was to even get your site considered for inclusion in Yahoo. Today, getting your site indexed is so much easier. Give it a shot and drop a comment if you have any trouble.
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Date/Time: 7-14-2007 16:57:58 Comment #3879
Thanks for this very useful tip. I submitted my URLs to Yahoo & Ask.com.
Do you know how we can create the navigation tabs in blogger like you have done at the top of this page (Home, Aboutme, advertise, contactme). I can do this as a simple CSS/HTML code, but I would like the active color of the tab displayed too. And that would need javascript help. Not sure how to do this javascript at this point.
Anyways, let me know if you have pointer. THanks again for the tips here.
Nidhi
Date/Time: 7-14-2007 19:39:46 Comment #3882
If you want the top links to be machine readable, you wouldn’t want to do it in Java Script. I don’t think it would be too difficult to do in Blogger.com. It just a matter of using CSS and some div tags. Have you seen this done on other blogger.com sites? If so, view the source code and take a look at what they did to make it happen.
Date/Time: 7-15-2007 00:05:41 Comment #3884
Hi Garry, I have a couple of questions about this. First, if a search on the name of my blog is performed on any search engine and it returns my blog as a result, is there still a point with submitting my xml file? I mean, it knows about my blog, but is there something within the xml file that would make it better for everyone (my blog and the search engine)?
Second, I’ve been meaning to validate my blog. If I don’t correct the errors I’m getting, is that going to affect my xml file in case I want to submit it to a search engine?
(Btw, a friendly reminder to check your email.
)
Date/Time: 7-15-2007 01:50:22 Comment #3887
The sitemap.xml file is just an easy standardized way search engines can quickly find and index your content. Depending on how you generate your site map, you can present certain content in order of importance. I can do a Google search for my name too and this site pulls up. But what is more important is having your articles pull up when a user is searching for it in the search engines.
For example: On July 1st, 2007: I wrote an article titled, “How Do I Submit My Site To Ask.com“. If someone is wanting to learn how to do this, they’re not likely to go to Google and search for Garry Conn ( unless they knew me!
). If someone wants to use Google to discover how to submit their site into ask.com, it is more likely that the user would type in “How Do I Submit My Site To Ask.com“. As you can see, my article pulls up third on the list. The sitemap.xml file is a search engine’s road map towards figuring out what to index. The sitemap.xml file coupled with the Robots.txt file is the root to success with getting your content indexed and seeded into the search engines.
Here, lets look at it this way…
The robots.txt file is like the bouncer at a bar. It controls who is allowed or not allowed to enter. It also controls where you can go. (All being from a robot stand point… all major search engines have built robots to crawl and search the Internet for content).
So, my bar bouncer (mr. robots.txt) tells robots immediately, “Hey… go to the sitemap.xml and search for content there!”
Also, my bar bouncer says, “Hey… visit the home page and look for links to the individual post pages. But do NOT look for content anywhere else. You may notice that the site has some other sections such as ‘Categories’ and ‘Archives’… you are NOT allowed to go there.”
My bar bouncer (robots.txt) is the head man in charge. It’s like the traffic cop controlling traffic.
My robots.txt quickly sends robots to the sitemap.xml file and my sitemap.xml file has been carefully written to display only my home page and post pages…. nothing else! If I allowed access to additional sections, I would be simply duplicating my content… and that is a Google NO NO!!!
Search engine robots look to my home page and to my sitemap.xml file for my articles. My home page and my sitemap.xml file are doorways or entrance ways for people and robots to pass through to get to the treasure and the loot, which is my articles.
Date/Time: 7-15-2007 11:52:51 Comment #3894
Yahoo site explorer is great, at the moment I only tend to use it as an ego-boost (or not!) when I see how many inbound links I have.
Date/Time: 7-16-2007 14:24:38 Comment #3903
Great tip, Garry! I wonder how long has Yahoo had this interface. Looks very similar to Google’s.
Date/Time: 7-17-2007 10:34:13 Comment #3925
Hi Gary,
Thanks for all the great info on this site. I’d be interested in your opinion on the following train of thought to not use sitemaps:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/expert-advice-on-google-sitemaps-verify-but-dont-submit