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Optimization for Major Search EnginesThe Yahoo! Search Crawler
The Yahoo! search crawler is called SLURP, and it will rank your page based first on your keyword
density. The optimum keywords density according to Yahoo! is: Title tag — 15 percent to 20 percent:Yahoo displays the title tag content in its result
page. Therefore, write the title as a readable sentence. A catchy title will attract the reader
to your web site.
Body text — 3 percent:Boldfacing the keywords sometimes boosts the page’s ranking.
But be careful not to overdo it. Too much boldfaced content irritates readers.
Meta tags — 3 percent:The meta description and keyword tags provide important key-
words at the beginning of your web page. Just be careful not to use the keywords repeatedly
in the keyword tag, because Yahoo! may consider that practice spam. Write the description
tag as a readable sentence.Yahoo! also looks at the inbound links to your site. And of course, there are other factors SLURP
looks at while it’s crawling your site.Even when you’re optimizing for three (or 15) different search engines, there are a few basic opti-
mization strategies that are essential and relevant for all of them. Rather than focusing on all of the
differences and stressing yourself out, focus on all of the actions that are similar for each search
engine, and then think of how you could change or improve your site so that it will be the most
relevant, and the most locatable, for your potential visitors.Put customers and visitors first, and your search engine rankings should follow naturally.75002bapp01.qxd:Layout 1 11/7/07 9:21 AM Page 285