This special edition of the SPIDER Bytes newsletter focuses exclusively on the major changes that have occurred within the search engine industry over the course of the past several weeks. This is a must-read for any serious web marketer.
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As you may recall from our past newsletters, we advised that Inktomi, a primary source of web listings for many top search engines, would soon be offering a paid inclusion program. Well, that program was just announced. At the same time, Looksmart and Ask Jeeves have also begun offering a similar service. In addition, GoTo.com, the most popular Paid Positioning search engine, has begun feeding listings to other major web sites, causing a listing in GoTo.com to be extremely important in your ability to expose your web site.
We discuss both situations below, and follow up with a description of our new services designed to help you take advantage of these latest events.
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Paid Inclusion Programs
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Inktomi, Looksmart and Ask Jeeves are all offering a new service to guarantee listings of certain pages on your web site. In the case of Inktomi, which feeds listings to AOL, HotBot, InfoSeek, MSN and others, an annual fee is charged for listing certain pages. The fee starts at $20 for the first page and drops to $10 for the next 99 pages. But, you determine how many pages to list. Furthermore, Inktomi will refresh your listing every 48 hours, virtually ensuring that your site will never be removed from their database. While they do not guarantee what rank your pages will be shown at, it does offer you maximum control over the listings themselves.
Looksmart, a feeder service to Alta Vista, MSN, Excite and iWon, has a new program which entails a customized evaluation to determine where in it’s directory your web site should be listed. There is a set-up fee and then fees are incurred on a per-click basis, starting as low as 5 cents per click. So, you pay only when you receive traffic. Ask Jeeves’ program is very similar to Looksmart’s.
Given the magnitude of the exposure offered by both Looksmart and Inktomi, these two programs must now be considered an essential element of your Internet marketing strategy.
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Paid Positioning Programs
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There are several pay for positioning web sites in existence today, with GoTo.com being the most popular. Web Site owners bid an amount per click to be placed in a certain position when specific phrases are searched on. Fees can start as low as one cent per click for the top position.
GoTo.com is now feeding it’s paid position listings to AOL, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, Lycos and Netscape. This means that your efforts to secure positioning within GoTo.com are extended greatly, and are also a way to ensure top positioning in these other search engines.
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SPIDERtel’s New Search Position Programs
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Taking advantage of these new programs may be a complicated process for many web site owners. Not only do you need to communicate with the search engines in terms that they understand (which is a whole language unto itself), you must also make critical decisions about your listings that will have a direct impact on your success, such as selecting the best categories and crafting the perfect title and descriptions.
SPIDERtel’s new Paid Placement and Inclusion Program relieves you of that responsibility. We will use our extensive knowledge of search engine listings and searching behavior to provide comprehensive analysis, submission and monthly reporting of your listings in Inktomi, Looksmart, Ask Jeeves, GoTo.com and other paid placement engines.
Our monthly reporting includes a breakdown of your listings by both page and category for each of the monitored engines. All recorded traffic to your pages will also be presented. With this kind of reporting, you will be able to make informed and timely decisions about how to maintain and even increase your exposure.
For more information on this program and other search engine optimization programs, please visit our web site at
http://www.spidertel.com/marketing/sem.htm
or email us at inquiries@spidertel.com.
