will we pass Yahoo submission

[mlou]

We are newbies. http://mcflorist.com/ We wish to submit to Yahoo, but have heard how hard it is to get in. We had successfully submit to other search engines. Can someone tell if this site might be excepted, or if we should change things. We are a Yahoo store, but are not in the Yahoo directory.
Thanks for your help.

[Mel]

Hi Mlou and welcome to the forums:

First of all a Yahoo search for Mcflorist.com comes up with several web page listings, but it appears that you have two sites, Mcflorist.com and memorialcityflorist.com and at first glance it appears they are identical. This can cause problems for you as the Search Engines and directories do not like mirror sites and may penalize you. You also have some hidden text that could cause you to be penalized or banned from some engines.

These are areas that need immediate attention before you think about submitting to Yahoo.

Looking at your title and description I would guess that you are optimizing for the "Houston florist" keyword phrase, but I do not find you ranking very highly for that phrase, on either Yahoo sites or webpages. I do find a #5 google ranking for "Houston florist" but this is for the memorialcityflorist.com site.

I owuld suggest a rework of your title to make it shorter and more relevant, reduce or eliminate your keywords tag, and add a description tag.

You have very little content on your index page, but while this will be to your detriment with the search engines it will not matter to the directories.

Once these are corrected there seems to be no reason you would not be accepted to the category:

U.S. States > Texas > Houston > Business and Shopping > Shopping and Services > Flowers

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums mlou! :hi:

I agree with what Mel said.

You seem to be promoting both sites when in reality, you only have one site. You will get into big trouble doing this. You need to dump one of them and yes, get rid of the hidden text and anything else the engines do not like or want. It will only serve to penalize the site or get it banned.

Overall, great looking site but you need to take care of all of this first before doing anything else at all. After that, Yahoo will accept you with no problem.

[Blue]

:hi:

[Blue]

Hey Doug & Mel,

I can't for the life of me remember where, but I think I heard that the longer you have a domain name the better off you are concerning SE placements? Is this correct?

If it is, I would think that if mlou decides to scrap one of the domain names, it would be wise to keep the one that has been around longer? Does this sound right?

If I'm way off base, just let me know, and mlou can then ignore this post. :)

[Advisor]

Hi MLou and welcome to the forums!

I don't believe that Yahoo will care that you have two different domain names, unless you already had one listed with Yahoo and were trying to get the other one listed with them. (For 2 listings.)

I also don't believe they care what your meta tags, etc. say, since they are a Directory, and that stuff is usually fairly irrelevant to them. With the quick look at your site that I took (less than 1 minute!) I don't see any reason why as long as you pay their bribe fee, they wouldn't be happy to add you to the directory category that Mel mentioned above.

Getting listed, is not a problem if you pay their fee. Where you may have more problems if you've never done Yahoo submissions, is in getting a favorable listing. That is, one that helps you to rank highly within Yahoo. That's the tricky part! You might want to read my article on submitting to Directories, for some basic tips on structuring your description. You can find it at: http://www.rankwrite.com/directorysubmit.htm

(Unfortunately, my server is having some hardware problems this morning, and last I checked, my site still wasn't available, so you may not be able to get to the link above. The same article is also available in the Guest Experts section at http://www.workz.com/content/1741.asp.)

Good luck!

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Yes Blue, generally you are correct. What mlou will have to decide is how do the engines now react to both domains. They may have already noticed some things about one or both they do not like and penalized for it. Both sites need to be researched before going forward. I do agree that Yahoo probably does not care about things, but I personally would not chance a listing until you decide which Url you will use for all the search engines. The one you go with should be the one you submit to Yahoo.

mlou has to dump one of them.

[Advisor]

I have two domains pointing to the same IP. HighRankings.com and Webwhiz.net and it doesn't appear to be a problem. I did not create these 2 domains for any nefarious purpose, I simply bought highrankings.com after using webwhiz.net for years. Obviously, HighRankings.com is a much better domain, so I have migrated to using that one. However, many of the engines have either or both listed. Doesn't matter to me as I just want to be found. Doesn't seem to make much difference to the engines either. There are many sites that have 2 domains for the same reason as I do. If you're not purposely trying to deceive an engine, they don't punish you or anything (in my opinion). Yes, they may only list one of the domains, but that's not a big deal (to me at least).

And again, since we were talking about a Yahoo submission here, Yahoo will definitely not care. Unless as I said in my previous post, you try and get two listings with them. (Although I have seen many a company that does have 2 or more listings with them using different domain names with the exact same content. Shame on them...usually SEO companies, of course!)

Jill

[ihelpyou]

yep webwhiz. I have Many domains pointing to my main site as well. It is never a problem as long as you do not promote but just the one domain.

Having pointers is very fine. I am not sure that is what mlou is talking about however. I could be very wrong though. :)

[mlou]

Thanks for the review...Yes, we own two names.
We plan to develop a second site, based on more text. We needed time to brand the shorter name with our customers. We are also trying to decide if we want to continue to be a Yahoo store (large price increase starting 10-1-01). It was a quick way to get the site up, since they provided the templets. We get 30% to 40% of our hits thru Yahoo shopping results (we aren't in their main directory) or Google results shown on Yahoo. We have been only promoting one site, but the search engines seem to pick up both names.