When you search on Yahoo!, our search engine instantly searches and sorts billions of web documents, makes a decision on each one's comparative relevancy to your search query, and offers these web pages as ranked results. Search engines don't have the ability to ask questions, so they rely on the search terms you enter to interpret and determine the intent of your search.
Yahoo! Search ranks results according to their relevance to a particular query by analyzing the web page text, title and description accuracy as well as its source, associated links, and other unique document characteristics.
Yahoo also offers the following tips on site to aid website owners in better search results.
Think carefully of the key terms that your users will search on to find content like yours. Use those terms to guide the text and construction of your page.
Users are more likely to click a link if the title matches their search. Choose terms for the title that match the concept of your document.
Use a "description" meta-tag and write your description accurately and carefully. After the title, the description is the most important draw for users. Make sure the document title and description attract the interest of the user but also fit the content on your site.
Use a "keyword" meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page.
Keep relevant text and links in HTML. Placing them in graphics or image maps means search engines can't always search for the text, and the crawler can't follow links to your site's other pages. An HTML site map, with a link from your welcome page, can help make sure all your pages are crawled.
Use ALT text for graphics. It's good page design to accommodate text browsers or visually impaired visitors, and it helps improve the text content of your page for search purposes.
Correspond with webmasters and other content providers and build rich linkages between related pages.
Note: "Link farms" create links between unrelated pages for no reason except to increase page link counts. Using link farms violates Yahoo!'s Site Guidelines and will not improve your page ranking.
