Advantages of a Looksmart Listing over a Inktomi

Advantage of looksmart listing over a inktomi

[john22]

Hi

Ok well basically i've submitted a site to looksmart and its been more trouble than its been worth.

What I initially thought was that any listings would *only* be shown in the "Web Directory Sites" of MSN results.
However It seems that they can also be shown in the "web pages" section as well...

The search terms I have requested are not showing in these "web directory sites" and therefore in the webpages section are not receiving much traffic and i'm sure would do the same in inktomi (and i paid $30 in the first month and only used about 5 - losing 25)

How can you get your listings in these web directory sites for *relevant* search terms.
I have asked looksmart to change my keywords to what I originally requested, they don't seem to have listened and come up with terms which are not relevant and changed my title to not include the keywords.

I note that whether the keywords are in the title (and not description) seems to be the deciding factor as to whether they are shown in the "web dir sites".

It seems that looksmart don't want me to get any traffic (possibly some from other existing customers) and just pay $15s a month for hardly no traffic...

[jeffb]

Is your official business name the title that you submitted to them? I believe LookSmart checks your WHOIS info to determine your actual business name and then uses that as the title. Without a verifiable, keyword-rich business name, you're sunk on LookSmart.

You might try registering a keyword-rich business name with whatever local governing body handles that where you are, changing your domain registration to that business name and then presenting the name as your official, new business name to LookSmart. Just make sure it sounds like a business name and not just an attempt to get around them. Or discontinue LookSmart, go through the assumed name process and then apply again as a new business. No guarantees on any of this, but it's the best I can do.

I don't know about the keywords you submitted. If your pages are optimized for those keywords, it seems strange that they would change them. But then again, I've never heard anyone ever accuse LookSmart of being overly helpful to its customers.

[martinibuster]

For all those who want to have a productive listing in Looksmart, this is how to do it- but like anything worth doing you'll have to do your homework first:

1. Go to zeal.com, the free area of Looksmart, and read all of their listing information. Read all about how the titles should be composed, how the description should be composed, about all the things they don't want to see, etc. The better you grasp the concepts the less likely one of their editors will come along to "clean up" your listing.
   
2. After you have completed the above, you should be ready for the next step. Are you sure you are ready? There's one very good way to know that you are ready, and that's to take the zeality test and pass it in order to become a contributor. ("But I don't want to be a contributor..." Hey, I'm telling you from experience how to become good at this and make some money.)
   
3. Once you've passed the test you now need to exercise your submission process. You can test it by paying the $19 editing fee to Looksmart and get burned if it's not good enough. Or you can submit some non-profit charity sites to Zeal and see if you get your sites in, and most importantly, you may very well receive some great feedback on your listing ability, and some tips. This is the best way to learn how to submit a quality listing because nothing sinks in better than experience. And it won't cost you anything but your spare time and you'll be doing some non-profit a favor for your troubles. That's double-happiness karma right there.
   
4. After you've honed your skills practising with the non-profit free submissions to zeal, you are now ready to craft a keyword rich title and description. But make no mistake about it, that "keyword,keyword,double-keyword" title tag garbage you see out on the internet will not fly in Looksmart- but you will have already known that by the time you finished the zeal process and become a master at subtle keyword rich submissions.
   

And that's it. That's all there is to it.