Yahoo! Is the largest searchable directory on the Internet, making it a desirable site to obtain a quality listing in. However, getting listed in Yahoo! is much more difficult that the rest of the popular search engines, as all listings are validated by human, not by a web spider. In fact, Yahoo! isn't a search engine at all because it does not index meta tags, or content from the sites that it lists. While this insures accuracy of the directory's content, and virtually eliminates spam, it also hinders a webmaster's chances of successfully promoting the full content of his or her website, and makes it difficult to obtain a listing at all. Fortunately there are several actions that you can take to increase both a chance of a directory listing, and the quality of your listing.

Only a fraction of the sites submitted ever get listed, not just because of Yahoo!'s high standards, but also because of the amount of time it takes to review sites by hand. To improve your chances of a review, and a listing, there are a few things that you can do. First, there is the expensive way. Yahoo! is now offering priority reviews for $199. While the priority review does not guarantee a listing, it does guarantee that Yahoo! will look at your site in a timely fashion, and send out a letter when your site is accepted or rejected. Next, there is the cheap way to improve your chances of getting a Yahoo! listing (In fact it's free!). Yahoo! has certain categories that are submitted to less than others; mostly "regional" categories. Since Yahoo!'s employees are each responsible for their own categories, the maintainers of these "less full" categories can review a larger percent of their submitted sites daily. However, and this vital, before you submit make certain that all of your links are working, the category is appropriate, and the design is attractive and relatively quick loading, or your link will not be added.

So now you've improved your chances of getting a listing in the world's largest searchable directory, but the problem remains on how to improve the quality of your listing, number of keywords in your listing, and the chance of it being found in a search. The order of Yahoo!'s official search ranking will provide you with an outline, and is as follows: keywords found in category, keywords found in title, keywords found in description. So the obvious first step to improving your search ranking is to find a category with keywords that you would like to appear as search words. Next on the list, keywords in title, can be manipulated with a little "odorless deceit". Say for example, you sell lawn-care supplies over the Internet, and your website is called "Green Care". Since Yahoo! will only allow your title to appear exactly as it does on your site, you can change the logo and <title> tag on your site to read "Green Care Landscaping Supplies", and submit to Yahoo! as such; thereby adding keywords. Finally we look at your Yahoo! description. The add form that Yahoo! provides states that you may use one or two sentences equaling no more than twenty five words. In reality, if your description was this long, it would be cut down to only a few words of Yahoo!'s choosing. To prevent this, you should choose a simple sentence of no more than ten words without any punctuation or conjunctions, Yahoo! loves to cut off a long sentence at a conjunction. Although Yahoo! provides a form to modify your site's listing, it is important to get it right the first time, as this form has been known to be a red herring; it doesn't really work for anything more than altering a URL.