~~~Search Engine Optimization~~~
This week, Lycos announced their new InSite Select pay-for-inclusion
program, which they're running in partnership with Fast Search and
Transfer (FAST).
Last week I spoke with Tom Wilde from Lycos and Peter Gorman from
FAST, and they gave me all the gory details. For an annual
subscription fee of $18.00 plus $12.00 per URL, you can have your
pages spidered every 48 hours by the FAST spider, and be guaranteed
inclusion in Lycos. As with all these sorts of programs, you won't
get any special boost in rankings just because you pay. Nor will you
be able to get any kind of trashy spammy pages you want in the index.
In fact, if Lycos wants this program to survive, they'll have to be
even more vigilant about the content they allow in their database.
They won't be checking submissions manually, but Lycos does have some
heavy-duty automated spam detection built into their algorithm.
And speaking of algorithms, it appears that the Lycos algorithm has
tightened up a bit recently, in terms of relevancy. This should help
bring more people to the Lycos search box. Quite frankly, a high
ranking in the U.S. version of Lycos hasn't brought much traffic for a
very long time. Ads disguised as listings, a cluttered main page, and
irrelevant search results have turned many people off of Lycos all
together.
Over the past few weeks, however, there have been some changes afoot.
Their main page still looks pretty cluttered, so nothing new to report
there. However, Lycos' pay-per-click ads through Overture are now
being labeled as "Sponsored Sites." Previously, they were labeled as
"Products and Services," which I found very misleading. This boosts
their credibility a whole lot in my eyes. As to the relevancy thing,
Google has shown us that what people want out of a search engine, are
results that very specifically answer their search queries. If you're
searching for search engine optimization, you want to see sites about
search engine optimization, not car engines. Just a few weeks ago, a
site about car engines was the number one result in Lycos (it was a
site from one of their content partners). Today, the top results are
much more relevant, which is great to see. Although it will be tough
to pry people away from Google, if Lycos can keep their results
relevant, perhaps people will start searching there again.
So should YOU pay to be included? It's a tough call. If your pages
are already in the database, I wouldn't do anything at the moment. If
only some of your pages are listed and you have some specific pages
you want included, you might want to pay for those. Lycos told me
that although they try to index as many pages as possible, they simply
won't get to every page. They shoot for the most important pages, and
what you consider the most important pages may not be the same thing
that the FAST spider considers the most important. These are the
pages you'll want to consider paying for inclusion. You may also want
to consider paying for pages that you plan on changing a lot, or pages
you want to "tweak" for high rankings. With the 48-hour spidering, it
will be easy to see what works and what doesn't as far as your search
engine optimization goes. You might also want to pay if you are in a
hurry to get new pages indexed.
Lycos still has a free submit option, but they hold your page in
purgatory if you use it, and also give you no guarantee that they'll
ever include it. They're also making you jump through some *major*
hoops to submit for free. You have to register as a member, which
means giving them your entire life story such as name, address,
birthday and phone number. Sheesh. Don't forget to UNcheck the boxes
for their tempting special spam offers. Err...umm...I mean email
offers of interest. (g) You'll also have to fill in a special "ransom
note" code, ala AltaVista, when you sign up for the free membership.
My advice would be to either pay for InSite Select, or simply wait for
the FAST spider to find you. FAST has always been a good spider, and
if you have links from other important sites such as Yahoo, Lycos
should eventually include you in their listings.
Over and out!
Jill
~~~Send Us Your Questions~~~
If you have questions about online copywriting or search engine optimization (or both!), just zip us an email to questions@rankwrite.com. We've had some folks ask if their question
was "too basic" to be printed - and you don't have to worry about
that! There are no "stupid" search engine optimization or copywriting
questions, so ask away!
