Yahoo Buzz; Is it any good for search engine optimisation

Yahoo Buzz is the new user generated news site on the block but can search engine optimisation professionals deliver reasonable levels of traffic through it. In the current climate user generated news sites are all the rage and sites such as Digg can deliver huge amounts of traffic in very short periods of time. Buzz could potentially perform very well in such a cluttered market place as it already has an established news reader base. Regular readers of Yahoo news could switch over to Buzz as they look for more variety in their news. This gives search engine optimisation professionals a whole new market to tap into.

The main drawback (from a seo point of view) of Buzz is that Yahoo will undoubtedly litter the top pages with its own news articles. This means user generated listings will be pushed down the pecking order. You only have to take a look at the beta version of Buzz to see that this is happening already. This could change as the user base grows. The real benefits can be had by creating unique and exciting content which are placed in niche or very specific categories. We presume that sub categories are still to come or searches on Buzz could be long and tedious. For example (at present) if you click on the business category you do not get any options to select a particular area of business. This is far too generic from a search and usability standing.

Buzz like so many other sites uses a voting to system and the higher your vote count the higher your listing appears. The defining highlight of Buzz is the ability to get your story posted on the Yahoo home page if your story gets enough votes. Imagine the traffic levels this could bring. This feature will excite search engine professionals and webmasters around the world and no doubt numerous seo competitions will be had. Although this is an exciting prospect it will take real skill to get there. Users get a very limited amount of space to sell their stories in the listings. Each listing is given a two line excerpt.

As Buzz settles into the market place we will be able to see just how effective it will be for increasing traffic levels to your site. Our guess is that it will perform similarly to Digg and well written and informative articles will drive good levels of traffic to your site. Let the experiments begin!!

Mark Mayne
SEO Programmer

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