How do you optimize for Ink?

[hightraffic10]

Now that Yahoo and Ink have now partnered it is going to be necassary to optimze for Ink. Could some share the steps of optimzing for Ink. The page setup, are title tage the most important, meta tags and so on......?

[agerhart]

There is some information regarding Inktomi optimization in the following threads:

Need help optimizing for MSN! [webmasterworld.com]

Any one else noticed a change in the INK algo? [webmasterworld.com]

<added>

Aside from that, these variables will come into play:

- Title
- Content
- Keyword density
- Link popularity
- Meta description (not important)
- Domain name, file names

[Marcia]

I watch the meta description pretty well with Ink, I think a good one helps a lot. It's the first place I look if a page needs to be nudged up a little. Also the meta keywords, very conservatively. And an ODP listing isn't a very noticeable factor, but it sure can't hurt to have one.

[martinibuster]

Ink has a web page with exactly this information [inktomi.com].

[ulstrup]

Inktomi's Web search....uses a sophisticated algorithm to match search terms to relevant pages

Quote from Ink antispam page mentioned by martinibuster

Guess thats what you want to know all about ;)

As for now (Ink on MSN) a good way to both learn about the Ink algo AND get good traffic is to go for "smaller" keyword phrases, with no or very few featured or sponsored site listings.

Google optimized pages do well as long as they have both <meta> keywords and description.

[agerhart]

I watch the meta description pretty well with Ink, I think a good one helps a lot

Google optimized pages do well as long as they have both <meta> keywords and description.

I don't believe that the META tags are necessary anymore. A recent site that I paid to have included is doing extremely well, and the site has NO Meta tags.

INK will use the body text for the description, just as Google does.

[2_much]

For competitive categories, it seems that Ink relies heavily on BOW.
Also, do people think that Age is a factor (how long a page has been in the database)?
I have sites ranking and I have no idea how. And others I tried to optimize for, have never been picked up.
Those 2 threads don't have too much info - I'll try to dig up some older ones.

[korkus2000]

I have sites that do well in ink and some that don't. The sites that do well are large and have good links from theme authorities. They also don't have meta tags. I have not seen meta tags change ranking with the new ink algo.

The sites that don't do so well are smaller sites that may do just as well in Google as the big sites, but don't have strong links from authority sites. I agree with the BOW observation.

[martinibuster]

For competitive categories, it seems that Ink relies heavily on BOW.

I don't believe that is correct. Inktomi Guy had this [webmasterworld.com] to say about the BOW:

The Best of the Web index has gone away as a separate database. Now that we've rearchitected, we don't need a separate database of frequently-crawled content. Everything is frequently-crawled content.

[stcrim]

I doubt Yahoo is going to keep things the way they are now. I for one am not going to do anything until I see the roll out...

-s-

[mayor]

2_much >> do people think that Age is a factor

I've been trying to get new sites indexed since last August. Slurp did recently index new sites from Aug/Sept and maybe Oct time frames but they haven't shown up in the MSN serps yet. More recent new sites did not even get indexed.

So right now, I do think age is a factor for new sites at least. I think they're trying to force people to pay but it appears they're letting their index get extremely stale in regard to new sites. Now that they're finding their way into Yahoo's pockets via the acquisition route maybe it doesn't matter.

[angiolo]

I don't think that age is a factor.

A website launched about 4 months ago is getting excellent results in Inktomi.

I didn't use PFI.

I think that you need a good page optimization and a decent linkpopularity: not too much links but good links (Yahoo, DMOZ or sites having good linkpopularity).