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- Best keyword usage e.g. in Title, links etc?
- Keyword Density? I tend to go for 5-10%
- Choosing phrases without too much competition in MSN, LS, AV, IWON, EXCITE. I suppose MSN is the best to target for Ink. Any advice?
- How important is it have have multiple pages from the same site in Ink?
With most ink powered engines using some form of click-through-counter system such as Direct Hit, it pays to stay knowledgable on DH. A quality title and description can do more for your referral numbers than all the proper density in the world.
After that, whip out the credit card and pay the advertising fee for spidering.
Looking at the basics, I believe it was tigger who mentioned in this forum a few months back that 8-10 words was about right for title length. I've found that very workable, since I don't do separate pages and they've got to apply to Ink and Google.
While Ink will show longer titles, in looking at a current couple of Ink paid pages I'm watching and "playing with" - they've just been included at Google, where one has 8 words showing and the other 9, with the last long word, which would have brought it to over 60 characters, including spaces, truncated. So for my purposes, it's the first 60 characters and 8-10 words that have to do the job.
That particular index page happens to have no meta tags - no description or keywords tags - so Ink's been using the first paragraph, which Google just happened to pick up intact as their description for one of the two most important keyword phrases.
I'm no expert, and there's certainly no formula - and if one worked it would chnage down the road anyway. But examining SERPs carefully, even to the point of counting characters, can give some parameters within which to work that provide a starting point. Besides, what works for one site may not work for another and what works for small sites may not work for large ones. But the critical difference is that Google looks at the site and Ink looks at the page.
The SERPs don't lie. If all titles are stopping at 60 characters, that's the available real estate to work with, and besides the closer they are to the beginning the better according to some.
Then, with titles and/or descriptions or the combination, it's figuring on the density within the given element(s) and the number of repetitions, as well as varying the word sequences, plus careful choice of keywords that match the page. There again, it's not only spiders, but people will be looking at that title and description, so it's got to make sense and do a 5 second sales job.
It's not really all that complicated or intense, and putting on a big pot of coffee and doing an all-nighter at a search engine occasionally, reading and counting and taking notes, are well worth the effort, because it starts to sink in subconsciously and then a rhythm starts to develop, a "feel for it" so to speak.
These pages just happen to be working for both, so the strategy in this case is to leave the pages themselves alone because of Google, and with the second page, make adjustments with only the title and description for Ink. I just did that, and it edged up at AOL. So I consider the expense of an Ink paid page to be partially as an investment in a tool.
I do have to take minor exception about the relative worth of Ink. Hotbot - what's that? But for certain narrowly defined niches, with what could be called "AOL types" it works to some degree. Since MSN did those rebate programs there are a certain number of AOL-types, though not as many. Not a negative thing at all, just a certain segment of the surfing population a certain number of whom happen to have their interests and buying in a certain direction. To make a choice, I'd have to say that it's AOL I'd seriously look at. To figure what's good part of their demographics I suspect that looking around within their walls at who's paying big $ for advertising consistently, would possibly give a clue. Just a guess, but it could indicate whether they're worth targeting for a certain product or site, since the big bucks advertisers most likely have access to demographic information that we don't.
Big sites are a different story, but for smallish sites that aren't very multi-product oriented, what I personally see as the closest to a formula or strategy is to gear a site toward Google and do an interior page or two for Ink for non-competitive keyword phases, without majorly interfering with the site as a whole, and see where it goes from there.
< non-competitive keyword phases > How do you decice what is non-competitive?
I was only aware of PositionTech as a means of entering Ink. How do you get into BOW? Although it seems that paying PositionTech is the best way.
have a read of these
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
Re. <looksmart description becomes the description in ink> does that mean a Looksmart listing means you're in Ink? Or should the page be submitted to Ink also?
>How do you decide what is non-competitive?
Everyone's got their own conception of competitive. It's a combination of how many sites you're competing against, and who the sites are - whether they're likely to be optimized or not, which you can only tell by examining the sites for the search terms you're looking for.
To me, low to moderately competitive numerically is 500,000 or less, depending on what it is and who it's up against. Basically, the competition is for the first 2-3 pages or 20-30 sites. I've seen search terms with 7-8,000 sites (or less) returned at Google that are fiercely competitive because there's a lot of professional SEO vying for them. Others have 2-300,000 or more and it's no contest, they're all home-grown jobbies.
In assessing competitive specifically for Ink, just as a basic routine I'll look up the numbers at Overture for number of searches and see how many pages are returned at Google to make a comparison with the ratio. In addition, since I'm looking to MSN I'll check out how many directory listings there are. If there are only two or three I've got it made in the shade, but if there are a few pages of LS listings it's not worth even thinking about unless AOL alone would be worth it.
I'll also look at the Overture bids for who's bidding and the amounts. Then ask if they're bidding keywords because they're doing the full routine, or because they're not optimized and can't get it any other way.
That's just getting into choosing which keywords to go for where there's a choice of a few phrases to go after for a given site. For the same site, some of the keyword phrases will be more competitive than others, so a judgment has to be made.
On top of all of that there's the process of looking at the sites that'll be competed against and evaluating those. It's all the factors put together that let me know how much competition there is for a given site, and it gives a pretty good idea of where to start.
The beauty of those paid pages is that you can make changes and see the effects almost right away. I've got a couple I've been having some fun with changing around, and will now leave them alone. They get spidered and in a couple of days I can see what it did. It's like almost "instant gratification" and it's a learning experience, too.
Added:
>How important is it have have multiple pages from the same site in Ink?
kapow, it depends on how many phrases you want to go for. The basic rule is one phrase per page, but in some cases two phrases combine into a lot of variations so you can get a lot more mileage out of the one page.
The index page can sometimes be too general and broad and more competitive than an interior page, so it's choosing which phrase you want to go after and using the appropriate page for that particular phrase.
I'm assuming this wouldn't apply to the paid pages, since it appears to be only the on-page criteria that's looked at. But if a site (assuming it's in the permanent dataase) is one-size-fits-all, how does this relate to it being necessary to stay with on-topic, quality links for Google? How is it reconciled if one needs quality and the other quantity? Does relevancy of links mean anything with Ink? What's the balance there, to stay on the safe side?
With Ink I have got the impression (from what I've read at WMW) that it is only worth going for paid inclusion lately - would you agree? If so, I guess that means I don't need to worry too much about link pop for Ink?
Re. your questions on: The balance between Google and Ink optimisation.
I have been wondering this. Is there such a thing as a happy medium for both Google and Ink. My guess is that it depends on competition for the keyword phrase, and that there will be a level of competition where the optimisation must be separated in order to succeed. However, I, of course am not an expert at this. Anyone have any insight?
- Does relevancy of links mean anything with Ink?
I'd use another domain.
I've just had some experience with free and paid both on the same site. The paid just expired and I didn't renew, so within a week the paid pages were out; actually fell out just this past week.
Something in the logs caught my attention just this morning, but I'm not quite certain, it's too soon. I'll be holding off on renewing and watch for a while.
Would you trust Inktomi not to drop the whole site when they know they can get more cash from you if they do?
I had a site that was already in the database for a while, but it was not a critical issue since it was a hobby type site for me and would not have been a great loss. I had a couple of paid pages for a while and moved them to another domain; the site still stayed.
I put up a new section two months ago and had two paid pages in it - in a /directory/ The old pages not only stayed, but a couple of months prior to the new paid ones being added, two additional unpaid pages were added - both in /directories/ so they may have looked like sub-sites.
None of the free pages were removed; in fact, updated titles and descriptions are now showing, which were updated some time this winter.
The paid were in the *other* Ink database, not the permanent one like the other pages are. During the time the paid pages were up, Slurp/si came daily, looked at the main index page and went no further.
On the 20th of January the paid expired, and the paid pages were removed this past weekend. In the early hours this morning, there was a visit from Slurp/cat - looking for pages that have not been on the server for a while. That's all I caught, I have to download yesterdays logs to view them and see what else was crawled.
I will not be renewing the paid for the time being, and there are now a couple of external links pointing to the /new-directory/ index page, so I will see if they get back in to Ink at all.
Those pages might be moved to a domain because of how they've ranked with Ink and Google, so that they can get an ODP listing. I'll watch the logs, get a couple more links and see what happens in the next few months.
So it's not a critical matter, but truthfully, I'm almost paranoid about posting this. I wouldn't begin to suggest someone else take a chance like this. I've got little to lose, a separate domain would be better anyway. But it'll be interesting to see what happens now that those were in paid and are now out.
>>
Paying PT will not get you into BOW
have a read of these
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
I am trying to figure out how to get my sites into BOW but sadly :(, those two links bring up errors. Anyone have the updated URL's? I'd really like to read those threads.
And if anyone has any recent info on BOW, please do share!!
:) -- blue2
But it only lists 2 pages at the most. Is there any other way to see what pages a site has in just paid Inktomi?
blue2
one thought has been to get a link from a site thats in the BOW to yours
In my case, the urls in question weren't submitted to INK through PositionTech, though; we use the SureList service at Verisign. So maybe that makes a difference...
That also brings me back to kapow's earlier comment, "I was only aware of PositionTech as a means of entering Ink." PositionTech is one of four "partners" that you can use to submit to Inktomi -- something I only found out some months ago by making a search at Google for "inktomi paid inclusion" (which brings up a few thousand pages).
Very interesting info - thanks.
Is there a better service than PositionTech e.g.
- Cost less.
- More time ie. more than a year for same price.
- Better stats
- etc.
Otherwise I am happy with PositionTech for paid inclusion.
