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Submitting your site to Yahoo!

Yahoo!
Yahoo is one of the oldest web directories and the the single most visited website on the Internet. Boasting over 12 million daily visitors, Yahoo can send more traffic to your website than all the other search engines combined. Follow the instructions on this page to get your site listed in Yahoo and rank high for your popular keyword phrases.

Paid listing vs. Free Listing
Currently Yahoo is only accepting paid listings for their business and economy categories. They still allow free submission to non-business categories. If you are in a non-business category and decide to try for the free listing please note that it may take 8-10 weeks for your site to be reviewed if the reviewers get around to it at all. If possible we recommend the paid listing option which costs $299 for a one-time review. This does NOT guarantee that you will be listed in Yahoo - it only guarantees that they will review your site within seven (7) business days. It is very important to follow Yahoo's guidelines when submitting your site to insure that you don't waste $299 and have your site rejected. Ready? Let's submit your site!

Getting Started
First you need to go to the main Yahoo site at www.yahoo.com. Once you are there do a little research to find out what category you should be placed in. Type your most popular search term into the box and click 'search'. A list of categories and sites will come up. Find the two categories that most closely fit the theme of your website. If you are not sure look for sites that are similar to yours and choose the same category. When you have chosen your two categories write or copy the second choice down, then click on the first.

Submitting your Site
Now that you have found your main category scroll down to the bottom of the screen. There will be a link there that says 'Suggest a Site'. Click the link and read through the information on the next page. It is a good idea to read through all the guidelines and make sure your site is not listed already before proceeding. Click the button at the bottom of the page to proceed to step one.

Business Express Guidelines
If your site is in a commercial category you will be taken to the business express guidelines page. Read through these guidelines carefully - they are important and if you don't follow the guidelines Yahoo will reject your site and take your $299! Once you have read through all the guidelines and made sure your site is up to Yahoo's standards check all the boxes and click the continue button.

Get a Yahoo Account
If you don't have one already you will have to sign up for a Yahoo! account. This is probably so they can send you advertisements and other things. Anyway just play by the rules and sign up for a free Yahoo account. Once you are signed in with your Yahoo account you will have to check all those little boxes again before you can continue. Now comes the important part:

Title
This is the most important part of the form. In the title box you should enter the official name of your website or company. For example if your site is called the 'Blue Widget Company' then type that in the box. Don't try to cheat by inserting keywords if they are not a part of your company name. Also don't use promotional slogans like 'We're number one!'. Hint: If your company's name includes a keyword phrase it will increase your rankings!

URL
Next you will enter your URL. Using the Blue Widget Company as an example your URL would be http://www.blue-widget-company.com. If you can have keywords in your URL then it may increase your ranking in Yahoo searches and will definitely increase your rankings in the other search engines.

Description
Finally you need to enter your description. The trick here is to make a brief, readable sentence that contains as many keywords as possible. Keep your title to 25 words or less. Here's an example description for the Blue Widget Company:

Supplier of blue widgets and widget manufacturing machinery.

Summary
Here's what we have done so far with keywords highlighted in red:

TITLE: Blue Widget Company

URL: http://www.blue-widget-company.com

DESCRIPTION: Supplier of blue widgets and widget manufacturing machinery.

Notice how the most important keywords - 'blue widgets' appear once in the title, and 1.5 times in the description. Since Yahoo uses the title and description to rank websites you should definitely have your keywords in both the title and description, and the URL. Some webmasters will create an entirely new website based around their popular keywords for the purpose of listing in directories like Yahoo! Click continue to proceed with your submission.

Your second category
Since Yahoo will allow you to suggest an additional category where your site belongs don't leave the next part blank! Now is the time to get out that other category that you copied earlier and paste it into this box. If you forgot or lost the category - no problem - just open a new browser window and go to www.yahoo.com to find the category again. Once you have entered your second category you can finish the rest of the form yourself. Just follow the directions carefully and pay your $299. If you have followed their guidelines, and your site is accepted you should see a large increase in the number of visitors to your site.

Next: Submitting to Looksmart

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