Page 2 - How to Optimize for Inktomi in 2004

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#16

December 31st, 2003, 04:54 PM

rustybrick

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Thank you both.

#17

January 5th, 2004, 09:46 AM

Stinky

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Today MSN surpassed google for the first time in my traffic - only by 1%, but it was weird. An almost even split between MSN, Google, and Yahoo.

MSN has older pages from my site. I had those little arrows in my titles, but since Google stopped showing them I took them all off, but they still show up in the MSN SERPS, so I know they're old.

I think I'm going to put the arrows back in - any ideas on what I can do to get my newer pages in the MSN results?

#18

January 13th, 2004, 11:40 AM

requiem

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Re: How to Optimize for Inktomi in 2004

Quote:

Originally posted by Phoenix
Hey Yall,

I decided that is was time for someone to put together a comprehensive guide to optimizing for Inktomi. While I have had very good success with Inktomi in the past and continue to make Inktomi a good part of the optimization I do for clients for mine, I realize that in order to succeed in 2004, Inktomi will have to be part of our optimization. Love it or hate it, things will change and I hope that you are prepared for them.

This guide is just part of a longer article that will be published on SEOchat, as soon as I can send the whole thing in :-). It will include further sections on the following: Selecting Keywords, How to Submit to Inktomi for Free and Pay for Inclusion (yall will love this one), and Advanced Inktomi SEO, as well as several other tidbits thrown in.

I hope you enjoy what I have spent a couple days working on, please feel free to post your comments and thoughts, I am looking to actively improve upon this.

Best Regards,

Ben Pfeiffer

How to Optimize for Inktomi in 2004

Optimize Your Pages for Inktomi

The best way to optimize for Inktomi is relatively simple and follows many of the basic SEO principles. Being able to formulate effective relevant meta-tags and on page elements is important to pulling a ranking in Inktomi off well. Always keep in mind the following as you optimize for Inktomi:

- Make each page unique and its meta data different for each page.
- Make your pages meaningful for the visitor and that they contain good relevant content.
- Create search engine listings that communicate to the searcher what the page is about.

Title

The title is vital to identifying the document and should be created to describe the document in a meaningful way. Think about what a searcher might input in, in order to search for a document.

- The title should be a maximum of 10 words total or a maximum of 50-70 characters.
- Make your titles clear and specific to what the page is about. Do not stuff keywords in your title just to put something there.
- Ask you self a question on each page, "What is this page communicating to the searcher?". Format the title to answer that question.

There are several ways to craft a good title, but follow some of the examples below. You will notice the title contains what the pages are about, where the page is from, and possibly a location as well. Note: You may either include or exclude the use of your company name in the title. Inktomi however recommends its use and is advised if you can include your company name then do so.

Example:

Grass Lawnmowers in Texas from John Deer Ranch Equipment
OR
First American Bank - Job Openings

Meta Description Tag

The description tag is the best place to formulate a more detailed explanation of the page that is being optimized. Keep in mind the following when crafting your description.

- The description tag should be a in between 15-20 words and should emphasize the keywords used in the title tag.
- Keep the description concise and specific to the contents of the page.
- DO NOT use the same description for every page, make each one unique.
- Not all descriptions are going to be the same length, some will require more words and others less.
- Use keywords or topics found in the body text of the website to enhance the description.

Example:

Gas powered grass lawn mowers in Sometown, Texas. Check out the lawn movers and lawn tractors from such manufacturers as John Deer, Murray, Black & Decker, MTD, and Yard Man.

Keywords Tag

Use of the keyword tag in Inktomi should be utilized. This tag serves as the location for your key terms and phrases on topics that are covered in the document. The best advice for use when utilizing the keywords meta tag is to highlight QUALITY keywords in your list. Keep in mind the following when creating the keywords tag.

- Use quality keywords that are specific to the page
- Avoid board keyword uses such as, "internet", "news" or "mp3".
- Formulate the keywords tag as if someone would be searching for information contained within. Do not randomly stick in keywords for the sake of filling up the keywords tag.
- Include misspellings and other ways keywords could be used in the keywords tag.
- DO NOT use the same keywords tag for every page of your
- Begin you keywords tag with the primary keywords you are wishing to target. For example if your page is targeting "lawn mowers", being your keywords tag with "lawn mowers, lawn tractors, etc....."
- DO NOT use punctuation in the keywords tag such as "Harry Potter's Wand" instead think of how a search would be performed... "Harry Potter Wand".
- USE COMMAS in the keywords tag, while these are not necessary for other search engines, Inktomi recommends their use in separating keywords or keyphrases.

Robots Tag

While not the most important tag inside the head of the document, its fair to mention its role in guiding the Slurp robot to the correct pages that you wish to be spidered and those that you do not. If you are not using Robots.txt on your website then I would consider inserting the Robots Tag in the page you optimize for Inktomi. The following robots tag will tell the Slurp robot to INDEX the page into the database and FOLLOW all links contained within.

<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">

URL and Page Names

Big points can be scored when the url or domain name has the primary target keyword contained within. Inktomi places good reward for webmasters that correctly structure there website to have a meaningful and effective navigation. One of the best ways I found to explain how to do this correctly is think of your website as a tree with many branches. The trunk of your tree is your URL, such as: www.lawnmowerwebsite.com. Then imagine each page and subdirectory as a unique branch that has its own unique set of leaves. Since each branch is unique, each branch needs to be identified so that other people can bask in its glory and know what its about. So follow some of the example below when creating new pages or subdirectories.

Example:

http://www.lawnmowerwebsite.com/tra.../john-deer.html
OR
http://www.lawnmowerwebsite.com/art...ctor-tires.html

On Page Elements

On page elements that are contained within the document are also of paramount importance to ranking well in Inktomi. By correctly formatting the page to be as specific and accurate as possible in combination with optimized meta-tags will create an awesome formula for ranking high in Inktomi. Keep the following in mind when optimizing your document for Inktomi.

- Keep you target KEYWORDS at the TOP of the page
- BOLD keywords that are important and unique to the page. Inktomi places more importance on words that are bolded.
- Inktomi prefers LONGER KEYPHRASES then short generic terms. If you really want to rank well, then focus on finding the best keyphrases with the most amount of traffic.
- HEADINGS are important as well, and should be used on each page to identify sections of content. Be sure to create heading in a meaningful manner, such as beginning with and H1 tag, and following with H2 and H3 tags that start smaller sections of content.
- LINK TEXT is also very important, and perhaps on of the most important on page elements of a good Inktomi optimization. Again be sure to include keywords in meaningful links to other pages on the site. DO NOT use the keywords in more than 50% of the links however, because this could be identified as spamming.

Good post.

#19

January 15th, 2004, 09:22 AM

piel

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Quote:

Originally posted by Phoenix
Rusty, as for the meta-keywords tag, contrary to urban myths the tag is still used by Inktomi, and they recommend using it still on your pages.

How would you personally go about creating a meta keyword tag for a dynamically driven web site (eg: 3000+ page site using both an ecommerce and a CMS system)? Only thing that has come to mind is perhaps replicating the words in the title tag.

thoughts?

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#20

January 19th, 2004, 02:11 PM

blacksky

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i have three sites submited in inktomi, but any of it had a good position. what can i do?????

#21

January 19th, 2004, 03:59 PM

Phoenix

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Piel,
There are a couple of things that you can do to work with the keyword tag for a CMS website. One use the title tag keywords in the keyword tag. Or two, not include the keyword tag at all, if you are going to be using the same words for each page. It not going to have any benefical side effect ( at least it would appear so) to replicate it across pages that might not even relate to it.

Blacksky, I would work on optimizing your pages for Ink and then importantly looking for links from pages that are very close in content to yours.

Ben

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#22

January 19th, 2004, 04:07 PM

blacksky

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phoenix, my pages have a lot of keywords, with different content, also have different meta tags, and text links, and shorts titles with the most relevant keywords, i'm still waiting the results...

#23

January 19th, 2004, 06:35 PM

Diana

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I'm now seeing Ink results in Yahoo! West Coast, 1/19 3:30 PST.

I'm ranking #10 for my terms and am doing a happy, happy dance.

Now let's see them "counters" go wild. ;)

-Diana

#24

January 19th, 2004, 07:02 PM

Cygnus

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MSN traffic picked up bigtime today...more than Google. Go deathstar!

#25

January 23rd, 2004, 12:58 AM

callback

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My site is suddenly out of Inktomi.

Hi, Phoenix and everyone!

My site bestcallback.net (the homepage) used to be on #1 or similar in Hotbot, which is powered by Inktomi. However, as Google dropped my homepage after its Florida Update, I tried to modified the code in order to get back to Google (I was also on #1 at google). Then it did not prove to be fruitful at all. Now when I go back to check Ink, I found my entire site including the homepage was not found. I don't know what has happened.

Wemasters are getting tired in chasing search engines and every single change can make us exhausted.

#26

January 23rd, 2004, 01:00 AM

callback

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Did you?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diana

I'm now seeing Ink results in Yahoo! West Coast, 1/19 3:30 PST.

I'm ranking #10 for my terms and am doing a happy, happy dance.

Now let's see them "counters" go wild. ;)

-Diana

Diana,

Did you truly see Ink instead of google in Yahoo!? I still see Google there...

#27

January 23rd, 2004, 10:19 AM

blacksky

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Quote:

Originally Posted by callback

callback,the thing is if you rank at inktomi you don't rank in google. that's why i optimized for inktomi the sites that doesn't rank at inktomi

#28

January 25th, 2004, 03:20 AM

seo guy

Modsky

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Actually Blacksky you could not be more wrong (Google, KW SEO Company #1)
Inktomi (Using hotbot MSN or anything else KW SEO Company #1)

Although there are some differences in the ranking criteria it is very easy to have the best of both worlds with the same page.

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#29

February 1st, 2004, 08:44 PM

leedslad73

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Okay, I've spent the last 12 months optimising my website for Google, and in all of the madness have not done the same for Inktomi and other search engines.

I have a few questions and would appreciate it if you could help me;

a) Apart from Google what other search engines would you optimise your website for (the only non inktomi question!)

b) What search engines use Inktomi results

c) Has Yahoo started to use Inktomi results (I can't see it myself!)

d) In Google you can use link: and allinurl: for number of links and pages respectively, can you do the same type of thing on Inktomi search engines?

e) What would you say are the top 3 things to do to initially concentrate on for a good start to optimising your website for Inktomi.

Cheers,
Darren

#30

February 2nd, 2004, 12:24 AM

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Modsky

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Darren,
Good questions as always.

#a Apart from google the only ranking technology I attempt to adhere to is inktomi. The reason why is their combined market share covers Google,MSN,Yahoo,Aol and many more of the main search producing engines.

This leads to #b, most importantly Intomi feeds MSN and soon to be Yahoo, they also however cover other engines that noone uses such as hotbot etc

#c Yahoo has been testing ink results and has anounced the change over to have been fully implemented by the end of the first quarter

#d If you are using www.hotbot.com you can check the links inktomi has registered for you using "linkdomain:" without the quotes and