TIPS and TRICKS
Google vs. Inktomi - How to Optimize Your Pages
With Yahoo! about to switch their search results to Inktomi results in the very near future, many webmasters are wondering what to do - as it is generally known, a page can rank well in Google or Inktomi, but rarely both.
We will show you in this article how to construct your page and how to understand the methodology behind ranking well in both engines.
Search Result Models: While it is generally known that Google is a free include, many people mistakenly assume that Inktomi is a paid inclusion model only. This is not true. Inktomi does offer a paid inclusion, but their spider also crawls the web and adds pages to its index. Paid inclusion guarantees your page(s) will be spidered every 48 hours. Essentially, both engines are free. However, if you do not use paid inclusion with Inktomi, you risk your pages being dropped for no reason.
With that in mind, we will show how to get the most pages included in each index.
First, your site must include a Site Map. A Site Map is a virtual Table of Contents for your site, containing a link to every indexable page on your site. Both Inktomi and Google love Site Maps. Make sure you have a link on your home page direct to your Site Map. Both Inktomi and Google will hit it and spider every page contained. While not every page will make it into the index, the majority of your pages will.
Note: If you need assistance creating a Site Map, we can create one for your site for as little as $50.00. Contact us for more information.
The second factor is to realize the difference between the engines. Google is more of a "theme-based engine" as they look at more "off page" factors such as Link Popularity, Link Reputation, and Anchor Text than Inktomi does. This is why some pages score well in Google that only have 1 or 2 appearances of the keyword on the page: their off-page factors for the keyword are very strong.
Conversely, Inktomi is more of a pure search engine, in the since that it looks more at the "on page" factors than Google does. You could look at it as Inktomi is more "left-brained" (i.e. structured, fact oriented, etc.) while Google is more "right-brained" (creative, intuitive, etc.).
On-Page Factors:
Title: This is your Title Tag
Description: This is the Meta Description of your site
Keywords: This is the keyword Meta Tag
Keyword Density: This refers to the percentage of your keyword phrase compared to the total number of words on the page. For example, if your site has 100 words and your keyword phrase appears 8 times on the page, your Keyword Density is 8%.
Page Last Modified: How fresh is the page? Is it updated often with new fresh content? The fresher the better.
Alt Tags: Your Graphics should have descriptions
Quality of Outgoing Links: Whom do you link to? If you link to poor quality sites, the search engines will look down upon you. Remember what your mother told you: If you want to be a good person, keep good company. The same is true for your website.
Keyword Placement: Where does your keyword appear? The higher on the page the better
Keyword Proximity: How close are your keyword phrases on the page? You want them close, but not too close.
DTD Statement: This statement occurs before the code of your site begins. As a Bright Builders' customer, this is automatically inserted into every page of your site to ensure not only proper display in the web browser, but the search engines will spider it properly.
Off-Page Factors:
Link Popularity: How many sites link to your site that the search engine recognizes
Link Reputation: Are the sites that link to you quality sites or just a long list of links?
Anchor Text (Inbound Links): If the Anchor Text uses your keyword you will receive a boost.
Text Surrounding Anchor Text: Does the text around the link to your site use your keyword phrase(s)? If so, you will receive a boost.
PageRank (Google only): Your PageRank takes into account many factors. Download the Google Toolbar to discover the PageRank of your website.
Authority Links (Yahoo!, Business.com, DMOZ, etc.): Inclusion in the top directories on the web will give your site a boost.
Third, make sure you have a Robots.txt file and that it is properly created for your site. If you need help creating the file, simply type in "robots.txt" into any search engine and there are plenty of articles to guide you through the process, or you can contact us and we can create you a custom file for a nominal fee.
In closing, remember that if you treat on-page factors equally with off-page factors, you will see that your web pages will score well in both Google and Inktomi. With the switch at Yahoo! coming soon, now is the time to step up your marketing efforts so when the switch happens, you rank above your competitors.
