should i go for a paid positiontech listing?

all this inktomi stuff is confusing me........

[Justin]

Hey everybody,
I'm getting ready to do an express submit with ls, and I figured if I'm going to do one paid submit, why not another? It's only thirty dollars, but I'm not sure I understand how this works. First, I enjoy great placement in aol, my #1 referrer, and don't want to ruin that. Second, it seems that the partners of the ls submit are the same as the PT submit, except for hotbot and some unheard of engines. I've tried the free canada.com and hotbot.com submit a few times, and last week received a spider from hotbot, though I haven't yet been included. The only other engine I'd really like to get into, but the free submit hasn't worked, is DirectHit (partners with lycos). Will any of these help with directhit, and if not, what will (does DirectHit have any paid listings)? Sorry for the long post :)

[stcrim]

If you have great of good placement with any of the INK partners that are not paid pages - do not pay for any pages from that domain. If you just half to test the INK program do it on another domain from the one that ranks well. If you are only planning on paying for your home page - don't waste your money (that is, unless your home page is optimized to the max for your keywords. Paying for the HP will not bring the spider to the rest of your pages and the paid spider will not index any other pages...

-s-

[Justin]

First, thanks for the quick reply..I should probably clarify things. The only ink partner I enjoy good placement on is AOL, the rest of them I can't be found in, however, that will change next week after my LS submit. I was only planning on submitting my main page to PT, so that I get listed mainly in Hotbot and ink's other small partners (the $30 price tag made it tempting). If my LS submit will help with hotbot, and PT will hurt my aol ranking, then I won't go for it. Also, how do I get into DirectHit? Thanks again.
Justin

[stcrim]

Again, unless your home page is optimized to the max for your keywords - don't waste your money. Also, I would wait and see what happens with your directory listing. Do you know if your AOL listing is being fed from INK???

There really isn't much benefit to paying for your home page. With ours and the ones we handle, we never put the home page in the inclusion program...

-s-

[Marcia]

Justin, if there is anything that's already working, don't "fix it."

For your particular site, I would concentrate on major Directory listings, as well as check out specialized, topic specific directories.

I would also, in your place, do extensive research into the forums here into reciprocal link topics and internal directory structuring. You'll find a wealth of information that will be useful to you by checking out the "search site" feature at the upper left of the screen.

I'm not sure I'd seriously consider the Ink paid program for your site at this time. Rather, I would try to arrange for as many reciprocal links as possible, and even add a few major, relevant outbound, non-competing links to on topic sites consistent with the theme of your site.

From whatever degree of analysis I've done recently, while MSN can generate some decent traffic, it's nothing that can compare with what a half-way decent Google listing will generate for a site.

For any Inktomi paid pages, even on other sites, decide first on what your targeted keyword phrase will be, and check it out first on MSN search to see how full the category is with Directory entries. There's no sense in even trying for a paid Ink listing when there are a lot of Looksmart listings for a category; in some cases the listings end up too far down to make any impact at all.

Even $30 is not a bargain if it's less than effective, or even possibly counter-productive (which can happen).

[legster]

As to your question of Direct Hit, here is the link to get added:
[directhit.com...]

[skibum]

It seems like the Ink paid program might be best to use as a test. Play around with some pages till they reach the top, and then take those pages, place them somewhere else with a fair amount of link pop, and just let Ink find them.

I've never used the paid Ink submit (on anything I paid much attention to), but have top ranking pages in Ink, and am frankly glad they are not re-spidered every 48 hours because they stay on top.

This does of course assume that the Ink algo changes periodically, and that a page which is re-indexed every 48 hours is not likely to remain at the top for long as the algo changes.

Then again this may be way off the mark.