I have a site which is primarily an affiliate site, in that its main function is to link to the site of which I am an affiliate. Can you tell me whether I stand a decent chance of getting listed in directories like Yahoo! and the Open Directory?

Cyril Perkins


Answer:

Hi Cyril,

Getting listed in the Open Directory and Yahoo! is going to be very difficult for you. In order to ensure that you have a good chance of getting listed in these two directories, you need to add lots of quality content to the site. My advice would be to add many articles on the same topic as the site of which you are an affiliate. You need to de-emphasize the importance of the link to the affiliate program and emphasize more on the content. This means that when a human editor comes to the site, she should feel that your site is primarily focused on providing information on that topic, and that the link to the affiliate program is just a small aspect of your site. The link to the affiliate program should be context-sensitive, i.e. you should link to the other site in context of something that you have written, rather than making it appear as if the main purpose of the site is to get people to click on the affiliate link.

This is important not only from the point of view of getting listed in the directories, it is also important from the point of view of boosting your affiliate commissions. By creating an information rich site, you get the opportunity to project your expertise in that topic. Hence, when a visitor comes to your site, and reads the articles, she knows that you are an expert on that topic. Then, when you recommend that the visitor check out the site of which you are an affiliate, she is likely to do it with an open-to-buy mind, because she has been recommended to this site by an expert. All human beings like doing business with a company who has been recommended to them by a person whose opinion they have come to respect.

To learn more about how to promote affiliate programs by creating great content, I highly recommend that you subscribe to the Affiliate Masters Course, written by Dr. Ken Evoy. This is a free, 5 day email course on how you can boost your affiliate commissions by creating a content rich site. In order to subscribe to the course, send a blank email to:

tams1stSearchRanking@sitesell.net


QUESTION 2:

I have a question regarding submitting my site to the NBCi search engine. Do you think it is worthwhile to spend the $199 required to have them evaluate my site? Or, do you recommend that I use their free submission? In the latter case, what's the best way to submit my site?

Jonathan Parker


Answer:

Hi Jonathan,

Firstly, NBCi - previously called Snap - is a directory, not a search engine. Before answering your questions, here's a brief overview of how NBCi lists sites.

NBCi has a "Top Sites" section which contains sites that have been evaluated by an editor. It also contains a "Live Directory" section which contains sites that have been submitted by the site owners themselves, but haven't been evaluated by an editor of NBCi.

Now, when someone searches for something in NBCi, it first lists sites from the Top Sites section which match the query. Then come the sites from the Live Directory section. If NBCi doesn't find any sites from the Top Sites and Live Directory sections which match the search query, it takes the results from Inktomi.

Getting a site listed in the Live Directory is free - anyone can submit a site to the Live Directory, and it is usually added to it within a few hours of the site being submitted. However, getting the site into the Top Sites section is an altogether different matter. Officially, NBCi's policy is that sites that are in the Live Directory for at least 3 months and are popular among users and which are rich in content can be reviewed for promotion to the Top Sites section for free. However, after NBCi started its paid submission program, you have to be very, very lucky to get an editor to evaluate your site for free. For promotion to the Top Sites category, you would generally need to pay $199 to NBCi.

Now, the question arises as to whether paying NBCi $199 to get into the Top Sites category is worth it. The main benefit of getting listed in the Top Sites section is that your site comes up before the sites which are present in the Live Directory. Is that worth paying $199? In my opinion, it is not. NBCi is nowhere near as popular a portal as Yahoo! and doesn't have the kind of reach that LookSmart has (LookSmart provides the directory listings for many popular search engines like MSN, Excite, and AltaVista).

Hence, my advice is to only submit your site to the Live Directory. Let's analyze how to get the best possible results with NBCi's Live Directory. As with any directory, NBCi mainly ranks sites based on the Title and Description of the site's listing in its directory. Now, as I mentioned earlier, for any search query, NBCi first displays sites from the Top Sites section and then from the Live Directory section. If there are sufficient sites in the Top Sites section which match a particular keyword, then the sites from the Live Directory cannot hope to get good rankings in NBCi for that keyword, even if they include the keyword in the Title and Description. Hence, your aim should be to get good rankings for the keywords for which there aren't too many sites in the Top Sites section even though these keywords will probably not be as popular as the keywords for which sites already exist in the Top Sites section.

First, you need to develop a list of keywords which are applicable for your site. You can do that by reading my article on this topic at http://www.1stsearchranking.net/keywords.htm.

Then, type each of these keywords in NBCi, and look at the results. If there are more than 2 pages of results from the Top Sites section for this keyword, ignore this keyword and go on to the next one. In this way, develop a list of keywords for which there are 2 or less than 2 pages of results from the Top Sites section.

Then, you need to select the category which is applicable for your site. In order to do that, you can type in one of the keywords you selected, look at the sites which come up, and then go to the categories to which these sites belong, and select the most appropriate category for your site. Then scroll down to the bottom of this category, click on the "Submit a site to this category" link. If you are a registered member of NBCi, you need to log in. If not, you have to become a registered member. After this, NBCi will show the site submission form.

In the Site Title field, enter an attractive Title which contains the keywords you have developed (i.e. those for which there are 2 or less than 2 pages of results from the Top Sites section). The Title is limited to 128 characters. In the Site URL field, enter the address of your site. In the Site Description field, write an attractive description which also contains these keywords. The Description is limited to 255 characters. In the Keywords field, enter those keywords which you could not include in the Title and Description fields because of the limit on the number of characters. Click on the "I Am the Site Owner" option, type in the 4 character verification code, and click on the Submit button at the bottom. Within a few hours, your site will be added to the Live Directory.

One of the good things about NBCi is that it allows you to easily update your site's listing whenever you want to. In order to do that, you need to type in the address of your site, and then click on the "Site Details" link, and then on the "Update This Site" link. The site's listing is generally updated within a few hours after you make the changes. However, this option only allows you to change the site's description and title. If you want to change the category where the site is listed, you need to fill up the Comments field in this form asking for the change in the category, and then hope that someone at NBCi will get to your category change request.

Now, one of the problems with NBCi is that anyone can add any site to the Live Directory (even if the person doesn't own the site). Also, even if you yourself have added the site, someone else may change the Title and Description of your site and thus destroy whatever rankings you got. Luckily, NBCi has provided a solution for this. At the top of the form meant for updating a site's listing is an option to take the Title, Description and Keywords of the site's listing in NBCi from the corresponding Meta Tags present in the site. If you turn on this option and click on the Submit button, NBCi will soon update your site's listing with what is present in the Meta Tags of your site. Also, once this option is turned on, no one will be able to modify the site's listing in NBCi by filling up the Update form. The site's listing can be modified only by changing the Meta Tags of your site. This option allows you and only you to modify your site's listing.

Hence, what I recommend is that you temporarily change the Title, Meta Description, and the Meta Keywords of the home page of your site to what you want the site's listing in NBCi to be. Then, turn on the Meta Tag option at the top of the Update form, click on Submit, and wait a few hours until the site's listing is updated. Once that is done, you can change the Meta Tags of the home page of your site to what it was previously.


QUESTION 3:

I have a few questions regarding positioning in Yahoo!. As I understand, there is no point in submitting the site regularly to Yahoo! (without any changes). Do you have any suggestions regarding what I can do to improve a website's ranking in Yahoo? I have a good description of the site, a good Title, keywords in meta tags and alt tags etc. My client paid already $199 US to be listed there, but it's not enough to be listed at the end...

Svetlana Dudin


Answer:

Hi Svetlana,

I have mentioned this earlier in this newsletter, but it bears repetition. Yahoo! is a human edited directory, not a search engine. The ranking of your site in Yahoo! does not depend on your meta tags or alt tags or the body content of your site. It depends mainly on whether the Title and Description of the site's listing in Yahoo! (which is not the same as the Title tag and the Meta Description tag of the home page of your site) contains the keyword, on whether the name of the category in which your site is listed contains the keyword, and on the click popularity of your site. For a more detailed description of the different factors that influences the ranking of a site in Yahoo!, see my article at http://www.1stsearchranking.net/yahoo-submission.htm

As I have noted in that article, when a site has just been added to Yahoo!, it will be ranked right at the bottom of the search results for the keywords which have been included in the description of the site's listing in Yahoo!. The reason is that Yahoo! uses a factor called click-popularity to rank sites. (You can read more about click-popularity in the article.) Since, initially, Yahoo! does not have any click-popularity data on a new site, it ranks those sites right at the bottom. However, with time, as Yahoo! gathers more information regarding the click-popularity of new sites, the ranking of these sites improve.

Once a site has been listed in Yahoo!, there is almost nothing that you can do to improve the ranking of your site in it - it is simply a waiting game during which you have to keep your fingers crossed and hope that your site gets good click-popularity. If it does, the ranking of your site will gradually improve.

Of course, if you have not been able to include some targeted keywords in the description, you can try and get Yahoo! to change the description of your site's listing. In this case, you have to give some valid reasons as to why your site's description is not appropriate and how the new description is more appropriate - if a Yahoo! editor figures out that you are simply trying to include some keywords in the Description, the change request will be rejected. You can find out more about submitting a change request by reading the article. However, getting someone at Yahoo! to look at your change request and act on it is an extremely difficult task.

Hence, when it comes to Yahoo!, what you have to ensure is that you do everything correctly the first time.