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Portal
Links: Where They Are and How to Get
Them
Teacher: Eric
Ward
By now most of us have grown
accustomed to spending the $199 it takes to get reviewers at
a portal to take a look at our sites. Yahoo!, LookSmart,
and NBCi/SNAP are
requiring fees for the right to have our sites linked. Check
that. For the right to have our sites looked at by editors.
Even bot-only Inktomi wants you to pony up a few bucks in order
to get spidered.
What you probably aren't aware
of -- and will probably find even more confusing -- is which
directories and search engines are providing which listings
and links to what sites, and how to make sure you don't resubmit,
oversubmit, respend, underspend, etc.
Here's a quick overview of what's
up, as of today.
LookSmart presents
links and listings from its own directory of reviewed sites
and from Inktomi's database
of spidered sites. It will cost you $199 to have your submission
looked at within three days. Spend the money. LookSmart distributes
its reviewed listings to MSN, Excite, AltaVista, iWon, CNN,
and more than 200 ISPs, meaning searchers can find your link
on any of those sites, too. Why Yahoo! didn't syndicate I'll
never know, but my hunch is that someone at Yahoo! is getting
an earful right now. LookSmart has quietly become more important
than Yahoo! from a linking standpoint.
- Getting your link: Pay
your money, go to LookSmart.com (not one of its many affiliates),
and make your link submission.
AOL
Search presents
links and listings from AOL's own content as well as from
Netscape Open Directory (DMOZ) and Inktomi. Notice how
Inktomi is showing up more and more? Stay tuned, as Inktomi
is -- to borrow the tag line from Visa -- "everywhere you
want to be."
- Getting your link: Surprise!
The links come from Netscape Open Directory. Since its parent
site is DMOZ, at http://www.dmoz.org,
go to dmoz.org, find your category, and submit from the category
level. All free.
Yahoo! presents
searches from Yahoo!'s own database of reviewed sites and,
currently, from Google's database
of spidered sites.
- Getting your link: You
can get in Google for free, but the Yahoo! link/listing will
cost you $199, and that's just for the right to be reviewed.
Other sites it distributes results to: none. I see Yahoo!'s
directory as a ticking time bomb. Note to Jerry: Syndicate,
or watch LookSmart take the lead.
Netscape
Open Directory presents
results from its own database of reviewed sites. The tricky
thing here is that the Netscape Open Directory has a parent
site, DMOZ, to and from which all listings flow. I know,
because I'm one of the editors there. You submit to dmoz.org,
and, once accepted, your listing will make its way to the
netscape.com site about a month later. You can't get in
any faster by submitting to Netscape because submissions
made via Netscape just end up back at DMOZ.
- Getting your link: Go
to dmoz.org and find the right category, then follow
the "submit
your site" link. There is no cost for this one, and
if I were you, I'd take it, since DMOZ also syndicates
to hundreds
of other sites, such as AOL Search, as described earlier.
NBCi/SNAP presents
searchers with links from NBCi's own directory of reviewed
sites and Inktomi's database of spidered sites. By now you
should realize how important Inktomi is.
- Getting your link: First
you must submit your site to the NBCi LiveDirectory. Once
your site is accepted, you'll receive an email with promotion
instructions. It will cost you $199 here, too.
What does it all mean?
This is just the tip of the iceberg
when it comes to portal links. A year ago this column would
have sounded like heresy. Paid submissions? Distributed listings?
Paid spidering? None of these were around, and none of us thought
they were coming. So recognize that these alliances are not
going away. Pay for links at Yahoo!, LookSmart, and NBCi,
and pay for spidering at Inktomi.
All of them offer better reach
than they did last year, and with syndication of listings and
search results, your LookSmart and Inktomi submissions will
have the potential to be found by millions of users on hundreds
of other sites, too.
And last, and perhaps most important,
go get other links because portals are only a small part of
link building.
About the teacher:
Eric Ward founded
the Web's first
service for announcing
and linking Web sites back in 1994, and he still offers those
services today. His client list is a who's who of online brands.
Ward is best known as the person behind the original linking
campaigns for Amazon.com Books, The Link Exchange, Microsoft,
Rodney Dangerfield, WarnerBros, The Discovery Channel, the AMA,
and The Weather Channel. His services won the 1995 Tenagra
Award For Internet Marketing Excellence, and he was selected
as one of the Web's 100 most influential people by Websight magazine.
Eric also writes columns for ClickZ and Ad Age magazine, and
is the editor of LinkAlert!
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