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Is it worth paying for submission to Inktomi?
Does inclusion in both directories help?
I've been very Googlecentric up to now (I'm 7th in Google for my reasonably competitive keyword), but I'm starting to think about diversifying so that I do better in other search engines.
So, as you might already know, submitting your site to Inktomi won't improve your position in MSN for your main keyword. It might improve your postion for other keywords/key phrases.
You might want to do a MSN search for other possible keywords that you'd like to rank well for. Check to see how many Looksmart directory listings are in the search results. If you find that there are only a few, this is obviously a good sign - assuming that you can optimize your home page (or another page) for that keyword/phrase.
Beth
If your site is in the Looksmart directory, then it will show up in the MSN search results before the Inktomi listings.
Ah, so MSN prioritizes Looksmart sites? That's the kind of thing I was wondering.
So, as you might already know, submitting your site to Inktomi won't improve your position in MSN for your main keyword. It might improve your postion for other keywords/key phrases.
Actually, I didn't know that, but it's exactly the information I was after, so thanks! My other main key phrase is a no-go. I'm number 17 and almost all the top 15 places are taken up by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bizrate pages.
You might want to do a MSN search for other possible keywords that you'd like to rank well for. Check to see how many Looksmart directory listings are in the search results. If you find that there are only a few, this is obviously a good sign - assuming that you can optimize your home page (or another page) for that keyword/phrase.
Well, my only other kinda-commercial key phrase has me placed at #4, so unless there's some optimization I can do on my existing pages to bring me higher in MSN it looks like there's no point submitting to Inktomi at all.
Any suggestions for MSN optimization? Google is all I know as far as optimization goes, and even that's a mystery!
Can anyone help me?
"Looksmart will bleed you white charging monthly for clicks that convert to very few sales."
This is in fact only www.Looksmart.com, not UK. UK submission is still a one off payment.
I too would like to hear about MSN/Looksmart optimization. Having my keyword in the Looksmart title and more than once in the description seems to not have helped my ranking for that keyword at all.
It all depends on the LookSmart listing and then MSN applies a different algo to it. From what I've seen, there are some keywords that seem to be "reserved" so that no matter how many keywords are in your listing, there are other listings that get some kind of preference.
The term "keyword" is one of those. You can have "keyword" as the first word in the title and a few times in the description and be outranked by 50 listings that make no mention of the term "keyword" in the title or desctiption.
There are other terms where the desired keyword must be in the title of the listing in order for it to be returned for the given keyword. These may only be trademarked terms but they do exist to some extent.
I don't know how widespread either situation is, however, I've noticed these things when getting Zeal listings and not getting the MSN ranks that were expected. I suspect they are the same for the paid listings but haven't done any testing there.
MSN lists sites in the following order (not all sections apply to every keyword):
1. Featured Sites (this section seems to be at top of first page only)
2. Sponsored Sites (this section seems to be at top of every page - with different results on each page)
3. Web Directory Sites (Looksmart directory sites)
4. Web Pages (Inktomi results)
See the "About" link next to the section heading in MSN SERPs for more info on each section.
I think there are more sections that I didn't list.
> So, as you might already know, submitting your
> site to Inktomi won't improve your position in
> MSN for your main keyword.
To elaborate on this previous comment of mine - which applies only to your specific situation. Say, for example, your page is ranking #15 for your main keyword phrase in the Web Directory section of MSN Serps (due to your inclusion in Looksmart).
Doing a paid submission (or getting a free spidered page) in Inktomi will add your page in the Web Pages section - which is below the Web Directory section. So probably no point in doing this.
> Any suggestions for MSN optimization?
Not a clue. I do some basic optimization for Google (title, <h1>, include keyword on page, etc.) but no specific optimization for MSN. Between my Looksmart listings and free Inktomi spidering, my MSN traffic is about 50-60% of my Google traffic. (My site has something like 2000 pages and I'm currently getting about 4000 unique visitors/day on weekdays.)
What works for Google seems to work for MSN for me. Oh, except the Inktomi results in MSN (the Web Pages section) do display the meta description tag, so I think it might also be used in ranking the pages.
Beth
