My site appears to be penalized or banned from Yahoo (has been for a year) and I can't figure out why. Yahoo tells me "it has been determined your site may not comply with our content guidelines" but they won't give me any reasons. I must have asked Yahoo about this 15 times over the past year.

site:www search shows only homepage as fully indexed with description and cache, other pages URL only, no cache. Most are dead links to pages I deleted last year. I'm not getting any hits from Yahoo. I'm ok with Google and MSN.

There's much speculation and theories about reasons behind Yahoo penalties, such as having any affiliate links, competing with Yahoo, reciprocal links, so I honestly don't know what to believe.

Well, G'day Fred. Welcome to the forum.

I don't pretend to have an answere, but if you don't get any better advice in the next day or two, I'd be looking at the following:

The way you html code is set up there may be room for the spider to misunderstand your site as being nothing more than a link repository.

Why do I say this?

1)  You start with two gifs without alt text.

2)  This is followed by four internal links that don't use the keywords in your title or page heading.

3)  Then you have numerous external links, the anchor text of which isn't your keywords, although they are related words.

4)  Your h1 doesn't occur till after this.

So here's what I'd be doing:

1)  Add keyword rich alt text to the gifs.

2)  Put the h1 page heading in a one cell table of it's own, straight under the second gif, even under the first gif, or better still before the gifs. If you still wish to centre it above the main content, use an empty cell as in other spots.

3)  Add a subheading h2, under the h1, using the keywords from your meta description.

This may even help your position in the SERPs all round.

Let's see what the gurus say. If you follow this line, I'm sure we'd all be pleased to hear the outcome an a few weeks.

Regards,
Laurie.

Laurie,
G-daiye to you too Mayte!

I am working on implementing your recommended changes to my homepage.

I added some alt text to my 2 gifs, but I am being very conservative to avoid over-optimization penalties. I understand having the same keywords in too many different places can do it.

My meta description tag is very similar to my h1, so I wanted to avoid repeating the same keywords too much at the top of the page in another heading tag. I'm not sure how similar or dissimilar the h1 and h2 should be. I would like to see an example of this on a homepage to give me a better idea of how to do this.

I'm not sure how I could better manage my internal page links beginning with "prison inmates" or the links at the bottom of my page. 3 of my links at the bottom are to link partners whom I exchanged homepage links, so I must keep those. I don't know if "Website Marketing" linking to finesearch.com is worth keeping. If I remove it, I will lose this link partner.

googlebot, and msnbot are spidering my site, although I have never done well on Google. Slurp is slowly spidering my site although mostly just my homepage.

Could it be my homepage that's likely behind my Yahoo troubles? I have a similar internal links structure set up on the bottom of my other pages but not do the degree as my homepage.

Thanks,
Fred

Y a know, I am just passing through here, but have you checked lately?

Yahoo updated thier algo a week or so ago. There are some interesting movements on rankings all around.

..also, if the home page is in the index are can't see you being 'banned'. Has YaH told you as much?

Even though the homepage URL is fully indexed and cached, it may not be a total ban in a true sense of the word, but it is nevertheless effectively, a ban, since the website cannot receive any traffic from Yahoo.

Well, G'day again Fred.

The layed back response of thegyspsy indicates to me that he doesn't think the answere lies in the hi-tech.

I think we are dealing with a personality defect here more than an SEO issue. Our strong points are often closely related to our weak points. You are so meticulous, making you an excellent detective type person but then you are so tied up with details in your SEO. There are some details which matter and others that don't. The trick is to tell the difference and free yourself from being tied up so.

Now!

Each page needs to be about something, one thing.

The home page needs to be about what the site is about.

Each page needs to target one main keyword and maybe one or two secondary keywords which are the main keyword for another page.

On a given page, your main keyword needs to appear in your title, description and keywords in the head.

It needs to be in your h1, h2s, h3s, h4s, bold headings, anchor text for your external links, anchor text for inline links to your other pages, anchor text for you internal navigation, alt text and in every paragraph of your text content.

Your main keyword needs to be in the first half a dozen words on the page and the last half a dozen words. If you look at my pages you'll see how I always put the page title, underlined and in bold, as the very last thing on the page.

If the page is really about what you claim in the title it is about, the keyword will inevitably appear as frequently as I have sugested. If your secondary headings and content do not include the keyword, you've probibly lost focus.

So:
1)  Work out what your page is about.

2)  Choose a keyword.

3)  Create your title, about three to seven words, consicely stating what your page is about.

4)  Create your description, about 15 to 25 words, an expansion on the title which reads as a normal centence.

5)  Repeat your title from the head, right near the top, as your h1 page heading. That's what the page is about, isn't it? It should be near the top, both visually on the page and in the code for the SE.

6)  Repeate your description as your h2 subheading. Vary this a bit if you wish. Google do a bit of a repeat in the SERPs entries.

So Fred, they're the details that matter. That's not keyword spamming. It would be keyword spamming if you repeated missing persons six times in a row without any other words in between. See how, in the previous sentance, I deliberately started the sentance with "It would be" in order to avoid repetition of the term keyword spamming.

I see you have a wheelbarrow full of good backlinks. I also see you've been getting some good advice from a variety of good forums over the years, even chatting with Matt Cutts. Matt doesn't chat with me. But you're the second person who has chatted with Matt, who has chatted with me in the past few days. Hey, I'm climbing the SEO social mountain!

Regards,
Laurie.

Laurie,
When the Yahoo editor does a "re-review" of my site to decide whether or not to remove the ban, could poor page optimization or lack thereof, be a violation of Yahoo's quality content guidelines?

Could making these changes get me out of the doghouse with Yahoo?

After making these changes, I will need to figure out whatever it is that Yahoo objects to, and if it's confined to just my homepage or my other pages.

I have chatted with many people in other sites Ie: webmasterworld, seochat, searchenginewatch..., but whenever somebody gets closer to an answer to my yahoo issue, they immediately fall silent, like it's a terrible secret. I get bits & pieces of possible clues, and lots of speculation but no real answers.

My backlinks in Google aren't that great, MSN yes! Probably not bad in Yahoo - if I can ever get their ban removed.

Thanks,
Fred

Like I said at the beginning, Fred, I don't know the answere. However, I reckon it's paranoia to call it a ban. I don't think anyone's going to do a re-review. You're not that high up on the list of important things to do.

Just get your basic SEO right and I would hope it will all come together. Different SEs have slightly different algorithms, each in their own way, trying to contain cheating. I'm sugesting that while you are definately as honest as the day is long, you may have been caught up in Yahoo's cheat trap.

Note this: If you had somehow committed a terrible SEO sin, the other SEs would also have you in Pergitory. It's not that serious Mate!

Now, I'm not real sure of how all this works but try this on for size:

1)  So you make some small alterations to your site as sugested. OK.

2)  You've got a link to your home page in this forum. OK.

3)  This forum, including this page, is regularly updated. OK.

4)  Because the forum is regularly updated, it gets regularly spidered and indexed. OK.

5) Sooner or later, the Yahoo spider, on one of these visits, will follow the link to your site and find it a useful site to that SE's customers and have warm feelings in his belly towards you and your site.

6)  Next time he visits your home page, he may go further into the site, and the next time, further still.

The thing you've got to do is assure the spider that you are giving his customers a good experience, according to the SE's criteria, when he visits. So don't waste the advantage of these good links by procrastination. If you hop to, you'll be up there in a week, assuming that my sugestions are on the ball. And like I said before, if  thegyspsy thought I was trivializing this he'd have said so. He doesn't mind putting me right! Nice chap, you know.

Of the sugestions I've made, the most important is to get your h1 in front of the external links in your code. I would think that this is what Yahoo is referring to when they say you've broken the rules. Next would be to get an h2. Put the external links at the bottom of the main content table. Just keep your internal links up top, but under your h1 and h2 in the code.

Now, how's that for not going silent?

Best wishes,
Laurie.

And Fred, give yourself a signature link so you get a new link with every post. Also, sprinkle your home page keywords around your posts so the spider finds some similarity in content between the post and the home page it links to. But don't spam!

Regards,
Laurie.

Ok Fred, ya got my attention now.. seem to be in need ---- Oh and L… I was just real busy at the time and wanted to at least make a stop in :0}

So, I still wonder about the whole ‘banned’ issue. Have they formally informed you of this? Where did you get “it has been determined your site may not comply with our content guidelines”?

We may have something here; “Most are dead links to pages I deleted last year” It may be these were the offensive ones since the existing site looks penalty free. Getting your non-existing pages removed would be good in such a case.

Of the potential areas for penalization, “affiliate links” is the one to look at. Did you have affiliate programs in place at any time?

Footer Links; “I have a similar internal links structure set up on the bottom of my other pages” – I would remove the outbound links from the footer area and put them elsewhere. It is a favorite location of spammers and may be a ‘slight issue’. That though, would imply that YaH is using some form of Visual-block Page Segmentation algorithm..which I haven’t heard of.

On changes, as I mentioned, YaH updated their algo last week. It will be more in line with Goog and MSN in that tactics that achieve Goog Love (which generally gets MSN love) will now work better in YaH. Good news since I am a Google Guy myself.

Laurie’s great notes will certainly get you there once YaH is loving you again. We just need to figure out why the 2 of you broke up in the first place… I so enjoy relationship counseling.

gyspsy,
To answer your question, Yes Yahoo has formally told me my site is penalized on a couple different occasions when I asked. It's always the standard reply: "It has been determined that your site may not comply with our quality content guidelines..." I asked for specific details and I get no answer, or else "we cannot give you any details as to why your site has been penalized."

The dead links are to Rankingpower pages (a scraper program I was using last year) however my site was never banned while using this program. I was continuing to receive traffic from Yahoo after I deleted all the rankingpower pages. The Yahoo penalty went into effect a couple weeks later. Maybe it's possible they are applying a retro-active penalty for a past violation, but they should lift it since I went whitehat and discontinued the program.

Yes I did have affiliate links at the time of the penalty, but I have very few, just 1 or 2 per page, but if affiliate links are the problem, then removing them would be totally pointless, since the purpose of this site is to make money.

I onced asked Yahoo about getting rid of the dead links and the only answer I got is let the spider automatically remove them. This has partially occurred, since I used to have 4 times as many dead links, but the Yahoo index is still retaining a good number of them.

That is true about footer links. 3 of my footer links are to homepage link partners, so I can't remove them from my homepage. Where would you recommend I move them to on my homepage?

I'm doing terrible on Google and MSN is still too small to produce decent traffic on a small site. It might take me a couple years of continous writing to build enough content pages to do well on MSN. I presently have about 157 pages.

Yes, I had a loving relationship with Yahoo until she divorced me last year.

To start with, for everyone, the algorithms are being ‘tweaked’ all the time. It is only the major ones that get names and coverage. SO ranking can certainly change even if you did NOTHING to your site…

..back to the un-happy couple

Yup..yup..yup. It’s gotta be the affiliate stuff. I have seen a TON of it. Some folks are getting jacked HARD on PPC even for sites that are primarily affiliate outfits. Yahoo (and Goog) have been tough on that market for some time now, (2004 on).

I don’t speak to whether it’s ‘right’ or not, since I figure it’s their business and they can do as they please. I don’t want anyone telling me how to run mine and WHO’s links/content I can index… ya know?

Yahoo has tightened up the algo of late (last week) and MSN is sure to follow suit soon. You would probably need a higher concentration/ratio of quality/original content for each affiliate program to get some LOVE back in your lives together…

..but hey… all us shrinks have our own opinions ..right? So there’s mine :0}

Unlike Google, Yahoo's penalties are not removed automatically after the violations are removed, so this can only be done by human editor at Yahoo. I will have to ask Yahoo again for another review after I clean up my site.

I'm wondering what might happen if I sign up for YPN network publisher.yahoo.com, under my URL in question. It's possible if it's accepted, they might lift the penalty, or else keep it in place and still accept my site. If anything, I figure this might get me some answers. Their content guidelines for YPN are very different than their regular guidelines, and my site doesn't violate any of them.

I won't be able to run Ads by Google on this site if I do this.

I made some changes to my site and got rid of much of the affiliate content off my homepage, then submitted another review request to Yahoo last week. I haven't noticed any Yahoo editors looking at my site yet so far.

I know exactly what's up with your site, but people like you are destroying america with services like this and there's no way I'm helping you.


I have been labeled "unemployable" by background checkers because of my common name.  Rather than admit that background checks can't be accurate - ever - no one will hire me.  Thanks A-Hole!  Do you even know how many people have gone homeless because of people like you?  Do you even care?

What if they were accurate.  What is it doing to society - not letting anyone who has been convicted of a crime have a job?  They have to have money to eat.  They have to pay rent?  We can't even get apartments because of people like you!

You think this might lead to more crime?  More desperate people that can't work or get an apartment.  What do you think they are going to do for money?  Well?

Please stop what you are doing.  It's destroying tens of thousands of lives all over america!

Texxs,

To answer your question, I take it you are you referring to employee background checks. It's not my fault this is happening. I am not a private investigator, nor am in the business of background checks. I am just an affiliate who's selling a popular detective people search program. Many people who are interested in background checks buy it, so I write about this topic a lot. We can blame Radical Islam and Osama Bin Laden, 9-11, also the recent rash of workplace violence for this problem.
Fred

texxs wrote:

I know exactly what's up with your site, but people like you are destroying america with services like this and there's no way I'm helping you.


I have been labeled "unemployable" by background checkers because of my common name.  Rather than admit that background checks can't be accurate - ever - no one will hire me.  Thanks A-Hole!  Do you even know how many people have gone homeless because of people like you?  Do you even care?

What if they were accurate.  What is it doing to society - not letting anyone who has been convicted of a crime have a job?  They have to have money to eat.  They have to pay rent?  We can't even get apartments because of people like you!

You think this might lead to more crime?  More desperate people that can't work or get an apartment.  What do you think they are going to do for money?  Well?

Please stop what you are doing.  It's destroying tens of thousands of lives all over america!

You could try to sue the pants off your prospective employer for discrimination, or even the background-checkers for deformation of character

(just a thought from a brit hoping that his country doesn't turn into the USA)

But texxs has a point - look at the last bullet point on each list
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/b … cs-18.html

Northie wrote:

look at the last bullet point on each list
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/b … cs-18.html

That would have to be:

Pages Yahoo! Wants Included in its Index

Good web design in general

What Yahoo! Considers Unwanted

Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

I am using a very basic page design, no fancy templates, but I don't see that as poor web design.

Maybe I need to work on some of my "Useful Information" pages?

Somebody at Yahoo answers just told me I might have a million things wrong with my site, past or present and I might be on my way to getting banned from Google.

Whatever the problem(s) are, I want to find them and get them fixed.

Fred wrote:

Yes I did have affiliate links at the time of the penalty, but I have very few, just 1 or 2 per page, ....

One or two affiliate links per page = affiliate site

Yahoo does not like affiliate sites

Fred wrote:

...but if affiliate links are the problem, then removing them would be totally pointless, since the purpose of this site is to make money.

Fix your business model???

Things to try:
-cloak affiliate links
-remove the email sign-up at the bottom of each page - that looks like spam / address harvesting / list building / affiliate crap
-replace the email sign up form with code that the SE bots cant/won't read (eg external js script, flash, image)
-refresh your info pages / add fresh, relevant, unique articles about 'the services' (start blogging about it???)

Now Fred.

If you've been persistantly hasslling Yahoo for an explanation, I'm not surprized that someone who got out of the wrong side of the bed would slam an e-mail back at you saying there might be a million things wrong with your site and that you might be on the way to being banned from Google.

You say you're an affiliate. The Yahoo guidelines, linked too in a previous post, say that Yahoo doesn't like affiliates.   Sounds simple enough to me. Read the guidelines, Mate!

It also says Yahoo doesn't like link sites with little value. I see you've got large lists of relevent links but with no information about the sites you are sending your visitors too. I sugest that for every link with a two word anchor text, you add ten to twenty words of explanation. Even five words if you can't mannage ten. Use:

<dl>

<dt></dt>

  <dd></dd>

<dt></dt>

  <dd></dd>

</dl>

On another note, I do feel for Texxs. I don't think it's right for you to push his objection aside as irrelevent to the thread.

I support his right to raise, in this thread, his beliefe that your site is immoral. If it was considered immoral by SR Admin, then you might be banned. However, I doubt that his objection would stand up.

Just a couple of days ago, a member slammed a site that they considered immoral. I had a look at the site and agreed. The thread went on with protestations from the site owner. When I went back for another look, the site was no longer found on the server. Maybe someone reported an immoral site to the host and the host took swift action. So, if you're trying to put Texxs down, look out!

Regards,
Laurie.