How to Optimize Your Website for Both Google & InktomiWritten by Jim Hedger
The search engine environment continues to evolve rapidly, easily outpacing ability of consumers and SEO practitioners to quickly adapt to new landscape. With ascension of Inktomi to level of importance that until recently was held solely by Google, SEO practitioners need to rethink several strategies, tactics and, perhaps even ethics of technique. Assuming this debate will unfold over coming months, how does an "ethical SEO firm" work to optimize websites for two remarkably unique search engines without falling back on old-fashioned spammy tactics of leader-pages or portal-sites? Recently, another SEO unrelated to StepForth told me that he was starting to re-optimize his websites to meet what he thought were Inktomi's standards as a way of beating his competition to what looks to be new main driver. That shouldn't be necessary if you are careful and follow all "best practices" developed over years. The answer to our puzzle is less than obvious but it lies in typical behaviors of two search tools. While there are a number of similarities between two engines, most notably in behaviors of their spiders, there are also significant differences in way each engine treats websites. For most part, Google and Inktomi place greatest weight on radically different site elements when determining eventual site placement. For Google, strong and relevant link-popularity is still one of most important factors in achieving strong placements. For Inktomi, titles, meta tags and text are most important factors in getting good rankings. Both engines consider number and arrangement of keywords, incoming links, and anchor text used in links (though Google puts far more weight on anchor text than Inktomi tends to). That seems to be where similarities end and, point where SEO tactics need revision. Once Inktomi is adopted as Yahoo's main listing provider, both Google and Inktomi will drive relativity similar levels of search engine traffic. Each will be as important as other with caveat that Inktomi powers two of big three while Google will only power itself. 2004 - The Year of Spider-Monkey The first important factor to think about is how does each spider work? Entry to Inktomi Does Not Mean Full-Indexing Getting your site spidered by Inktomi's bot "Slurp" is essential. Like "Google-bot", "Slurp" will follow every link it comes across, reading and recording all information. A major difference between Google and Inktomi is that, when Google spiders a new site, there is a good chance of getting placements for an internal page without paying for that specific page to appear in index. As far as we can tell, that inexpensive rule of thumb does not apply to Inktomi. While it is entirely possible to get entire sites indexed by Inktomi, we have yet to determine if Inktomi will allow all pages within a site to achieve placements without paying for these sites to appear in search engine returns pages, (SERPs). Remember, Inktomi is a paid-inclusion service which charges webmasters an admission fee based on number of pages in a site they wish to have spidered. From information we have gathered, Slurp will follow each link in a site and, if provided a clear path, will spider every page in site but, pages within that site that are paid-for during submission will be spidered far more frequently and will appear in indexes months before non-paid pages. We noted this when examining how many pages Inktomi lists from newer clients versus how many from old clients. We have noticed older site, more pages appear in Inktomi's database and on SERPs on search engines using Inktomi database. (This is assuming webmaster only paid for inclusion of their INDEX page) Based on Inktomi's pricing, an average sized site of 50 pages could cost up to $1289 per year to have each page added to paid-inclusion database so it is safer then not to assume that most small-business webmasters won't want to pay that much.
| | Google AdWords Tips & TricksWritten by Nakul Goyal
Synopsis: Google Ad Words are a wonderful and cost effective way to advertise has great flexibility on part of advertiser, he/she can make it running in minutes and can change ads whenever feels doing it after tracking response of visitors and conversion rate. However testing keywords and ads to improve conversion rate is a never ending process and one has to be very selective and alert in choosing right keywords. You can be running an ad campaign at Google in minutes! Well to make your ad word campaign successful and worth spending I present some keen facts and suggestions to be considered while developing ad word advertisements.Always be very specific: You should be very specific while choosing your keywords in ads because being general in advertisements will bring traffic to your site but not many actual buyers in other words conversion rate will be very less or your return on investment will be less. Use square brackets: Use square brackets [ ] around your keywords that you want to target most because by doing this your ads will be shown only when searches are made that match your keywords or phrases bracketed exactly. For example : [search engine optimization], [SEO Masters] Now in this case ad will be displayed only if searches are made of exact words "search engine optimization" or "seo pages" and you will get only desired traffic to your site. Link to exact pages: Always link to correct pages for example if you are advertising a particular product then link to page in particular that is selling that product and not to site's homepage. User will never like much browsing and will ultimately leave for your competitor if isn't able to find desired information. So link to particular pages. Offer immediate benefits: Offer benefits that your product will give consumer because many times users are looking for those benefits and will be induced to your site. For example learn free, earn at home, become an expert, lose weight etc. Try to include such benefits in ads and see results soar. Make multiple ads: Always make two or more copies of ads as you might not know what might click up, constantly monitor your ads and see which one is gaining pace and remove or change lesser responsive ad. This is an ever going process to reach maximum potential customers and will go on and on. Record ROI: Record return on investment of each ad to keep your expenses in your pre decided budget and update or change low ROT ads simultaneously. ROI is base for which you are planning ads and it should not be under looked. Google offers stats free for ad words, hence you can use it and calculate ROI and act accordingly.
|
