Optimizing
for Yahoo – And
how it can help on Other
SEs!
By Barry
Lloyd – CEO www.makemetop.co.uk
...
Everyone is aware that Inktomi
is soon likely to grow in importance
due to it having been being
bought recently by Yahoo! Although
no firm date has been given
as to when Inktomi results
will be integrated in to Yahoo’s
search listings, it is pretty
much accepted that the time
is drawing close. In addition,
MSN are likely (despite the
recent launch of their own
MSNBOT spider) to be at least
18 months away from being in
a position to launch their
own search engine’s results,
which seems to tie-in to the
surprise announcement earlier
this year of a lengthy extension
to MSN’s contract with
Inktomi. Over the past few
weeks, Inktomi has also been
gaining new partners – most
notable being the prestigious
contract for the supply of
results to the BBC
web site.
Although the future now looks
quite bright for Inktomi, they
have spent the last few years
fighting off (and losing to)
the ever growing Star of Search,
Google. People tend to forget
that in 2000 (a mere 3 years
ago), Inktomi seemed to rule
the roost in terms of search.
Their results were used by
many leading search destinations,
from AOL to Yahoo! For a webmaster,
if you couldn’t get listed
on Inktomi – you were
condemned to almost total invisibility
on the web.
Most SEOs had to cut their
teeth on preparing client sites
for Inktomi’s spiders
(Slurp – in its’ various
forms), as well as those of
AltaVista (Scooter) and other
engines. Googlebot (Google’s
spider) was an interesting
new spider and Google a search
engine with “potential” – but
was largely ignored for day
to day SEO purposes.
Now the situation is reversed!
The majority of webmasters
are focussed on optimisation
for Google and many are bemoaning
the fact that optimisation
for Google doesn’t seem
to work on Inktomi (or other
engines).
Fortunately, those of us who
knew how to design pages for
Inktomi had learnt early on,
that those pages worked very
well for Google (and other
engines) provided the off-page
factors that Google use in
their algorithm were taken
in to account.
In all my years of doing search
engine optimisation across
the widest spectrum of site
themes imaginable, I have never
had to prepare a different
page for Google (or any other
engine) to the one I prepared
for Inktomi first. This rather
cuts across the argument put
by Ammon Johns in a recent
article (sorry, Ammon) – but
is my experience after the
production of many thousands
of pages and hundreds of sites.
So, people have asked me,
why optimise for Inktomi first?
Why not chase the ultimate
goal of Google before turning
to the others? The simple answer
is PFI. By optimising a page
for Inktomi and using PFI,
I can adjust the page to get
a decent ranking on Inktomi
within a matter of days. I
then know that provided I can
get decent links to the site
on which that page resides
(Yahoo, DMOZ, and Joeant etc.) – I
can be fairly certain that
I am going to get a first page
listing on Google without having
to adjust anything for Googlebot!
The rankings on Inktomi give
an indication of the ultimate
positions on other engines.
This is far better than having
to wait weeks or months to
see what the results are going
to be like on Google first.
Due to this, Inktomi has been
my “secret weapon” for
SEO for all the years that
people have been ignoring it!
Like any SEO procedure, optimising
for Inktomi is not rocket-science.
Inktomi looks for on-page content
laid out in a manner which
allows it to understand the
page content comprehensively.
The facts laid out below are “back-to-basics” SEO,
but they work – pretty
much every time! A page should
consist of:
a)<title> tag – I
normally use around 10 words
incorporating as many keyword
variants for that page as I
can, while making it a compelling
title.
An example for a car hire
site could be: “Car Hire
Las Vegas, Rental Cars from
Auto Rentals Specialists”
The above is focussed on all
forms of ways that someone
is going to search for looking
for car rentals Las Vegas and
should appear for:
Car hire las vegas, rental
cars las vegas, auto rentals
las vegas, hire cars las vegas
etc., etc.
b) meta description tag – I
use around 15-20 words re-emphasising
the keywords used in the title
tag.
Example:
Great rates on car hire in
Las Vegas. Check our rental
cars and choose your auto rentals
from the specialists at MMT
Rental!
c) meta keyword tag – Inktomi
still recognises this – just!
If in doubt, leave it out – but
I (usually as the last thing
I do) add the tag for the core
phrases I want the page to
rank for.
Example:
Car hire las vegas,rental
cars las vegas,auto rentals
las vegas,hire cars las vegas
Note the use of commas and
no spaces after the commas.
I was always a strong proponent
of not using commas in a keyword
meta tag – but Inktomi
guidelines state this is the
way to do it – so who
am I to disagree!
Now we move on to the visible
body text. I usually design
a page so that there is a visible
page heading appearing close
to the top of the HTML in an <h3> tag.
This is a repeat of my <title> tag.
Example:
<h3>Car Hire Las Vegas,
Rental Cars from Auto Rentals
Specialists</h3>
The first sentence of the
first paragraph is an edited
repeat of my description in <bold>
Example:
<bold>We have great
rates on car hire in Las Vegas.
Use the information below to
check our rental cars and choose
the auto rentals for you from
the specialists at MMT Rental! </bold>
Then the page should have
around 200 words of text describing
your services. If you are mentioning
models e.g. car types, I put
these in list elements <li>,
with a possible link to the
appropriate site section relating
to descriptions of the model.
This would re-emphasis that
the site was about a specific
type of car hire in a specific
location with words in the
list element getting a boost
along with the use of the phrase
in anchor text.
All images on the page should
use alt tags with a single
phrase in the tag e.g. the
first image may have “car
hire las vegas”, the
second “hire cars las
vegas” etc.
At the end of the text, I
add a final sentence in bold
which a rehash of the first
sentence I wrote at the beginning
of the body text.
The page is done – well
almost!
Make sure that the page is
user friendly and makes sense.
It is pointless obsessing about
the absolutely perfect page
if it becomes meaningless to
the surfer in the meantime!
The idea is to incorporate
the rules of optimisation in
to the overall design of the
site. Make sure the page is
linked to by the appropriate
index page.
Do not be tempted to create
doorway pages using garbage
content as “filler” around
your key phrases. It won’t
work in the long term for two
reasons:
1. Inktomi has the most sophisticated
grammatical parser I have seen
for detecting auto-generated
content. I know, years ago
I tested ways to get around
it – and couldn’t.
2. Inktomi checks for incoming links –even on PFI pages. If a page is
deemed to be an orphaned doorway page with no incoming links, it will drop
like a stone!
My next step is to put the
page in to PFI and 48 hours
later it should appear on sites
like MSN. 9 out of 10 times – there
it is, on the first page of
the search results. If it isn’t,
I adjust slightly and wait
another 48 hours. When satisfied,
I leave it alone.
I then concentrate on ensuring
the site I am working on gains
the off-page factors necessary
to help it in other SEs like
Google. Submissions are made
(if the site is not already
included) to Yahoo, ODP and
other directories including
those which are specific to
the industry being targeted.
I do not look for “un-natural” links
like guest books or link farms.
I never, never ever crosslink – tempting
as it may be! I also don’t
submit to Google. In fact I
haven’t used the Google
submit button for years. The
site will be found (provided
you are successful with your
directory submission) by all
the major crawlers – and
in 6-8 weeks time will start
to appear on other SEs, with
the full strength of the off-page
factors kicking in about a
month after that.
I have been successfully using
this method for the past 3
years and it has worked consistently.
There should be no surprises
really, it is just laying out
content in a manner which search
engines like. It is just that
on Inktomi, you can test the
results of your efforts a little
quicker.
Try it – it should work
for you to!
About the Author:
Barry Lloyd founded the MakeMeTop
brand of SEO services in 1999
although he began search engine
optimisation in 1997. Barry
posts on several forums as
a Senior or Veteran Member
under the name MakeMeTop, is
a Moderator on the IHelpYouServices
Forums, has spoken at leading
conferences on various aspects
of search engine marketing
and has written articles on
specific aspects of the industry
for webmasters world-wide.
MakeMeTop now has offices in
Northern Ireland, mainland
UK and Singapore and does search
engine marketing for over 200
clients throughout the World.
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