Forum Moderators: bakedjake
Directhit, Excite, I would put into the "don't waste time" let your other optimization efforts carry you here.
What I like to do is find the common occurences between various algorithms, and optimize for those. Seems to work okay for a broad based approach.
Directories of course are very important...I would spend my time on those instead of the lessor known engines (for now).
But I started to see referrals on one site and started to check. They updated some time not too long ago. I was buried under all real estate sites in a web design local category, and all of a sudden it changed. I've also seen them in logs a LOT lately.
>What I like to do is find the common occurences between various algorithms
I notice a vast difference in the number of sites returned between the two, as well as relevancy. Google results are far superior in the medium - competitive categories I checked, Excite being full of irrelevancies and pages redirected to unrelated sites. On the less competitive it's cleaner.
But I notice a big correlation between how I do on the two, as long as there aren't a whole lot of irrelevant (the 4-letter s word) sites mixed in. Lots of sites with specific search terms at Excite redirected to Ebay and a couple others, totally unrelated. Like a childrens type page going to pool tables.
My pages are a only few spots lower at Excite than Google, with Excite having about 5 times the number of sites returned on the searches.
I wouldn't pay too much attention to Excite, or bother optimizing, but I've started submitting regularly again.
I get some odd referrals from European sites that come from Fast on some graphics I've got up. I always submit there and Lycos. I wouldn't pass on those two, especially Fast.
for me the vast majority of my SE traffic comes from google or google/yahoo and then lycos.uk which seems to be fed by allthe web
this could be because i score best in those engines though
If you are going to opto, then the one's i think are the most important are Google, Fast and INK.
I do well with all the crawlers, except DH, NL, and excite.
Excite, i've given up with, though if they list then cool, if they don't bollox to them.
DH and NL, i am struggling to get into.
As for opto-ing, content, content, then content, with meta's and alt's to reinforce.
I always target google first, then fast and ink.
What that gives is good listings in AV, Lycos, Wisenut, and many other good traffic generators.
caine...NL? Do they get any traffic anymore? :-)
on google it seems to add several places ... although it could be that i had this rise due to other changes i've made at the same time, i now try to have multiple links IN to doorway pages only from the hunch that it makes it appear like a good content page if theres several links inbound, i have been working half from my observations and experiments and half from lateral thinking trying to think what i would do if i was a search engine algo maker
I'm expert in NL because the biggest portal in Hunagry (where i'm from) using theier engine and database. The online big thing in NL is the Title.
For the 1st question i would say Goggle/Yahoo, lycos, and AV....:)
Horasz
