How to Get Your Pages Indexed by ASK in Five Simple Steps
August 26, 2008 by Joseph · Leave a Comment
How to Get Your Pages Indexed by ASK in Five Simple Steps
If you have been looking on your statistics lately, one think you will notice is that among the leading search engines, for most webmasters, ASK will not only be the last but also the one search engine that will have the least number of your pages indexed and included on their database.
On my last post, titled “don’t submit your Url to the following search engines” I did tell you that I was going to give you a simple trick that you can use to pump up the number of your pages on ASK. Well here we are. Below are five simple tips that you can use to have more pages on ASK.
- Prepare your sitemap.
First of all start by understanding how to register your site/URL with Ask so that it will be indexed. In summary, according to ASK help section for webmasters and I quote:
We appreciate your interest in having your site listed on Ask.com and the Ask.com search engine. Your best bet is to follow the open-format Sitemaps protocol, which Ask.com supports.
Once you have prepared a sitemap for your site, add the sitemap auto-discovery directive to robots.txt, or submit the sitemap file directly to us via the ping URL. (For more information on this process, see Does Ask.com support sitemaps?) Please note that sitemap submissions do not guarantee the indexing of URLs.
- Second prepare your robots.txt file.
Going by the phrase - robots.txt, the phrase might sound too technical, but it is really not that hard at all. So how do you create your own robot.txt file? Relax, you can do it:
- Third, write useful content.
You will want to search in forums and other online places, identify questions and problems that people are experiencing. Then create a useful post or page that addresses how to or “ask a question” as your title for that page/post and then proceed to create and provide a useful feedback that answers or helps out by solving the problem or issue at hand.
- Fourth, Get links.
Just like on number three above, once you create your page, head back to the forums, yahoo answers, blogs or any other online community place and then briefly provide feedback to those questions and problems that are related to the page you just created. If possible link back to your page using your pages title anchor text. You may also want to internally link to your page from another of your post.
- Last; be patient.
Form it the habit of repeating one through four above by occasionally creating more “how to” and “ask a question” posts. Then wait. Be patient. With time you will sure have ASK indexing more of your pages.
Let me also point out that one interesting thing that I have noticed by watching my site statistics and this is not new; How to and ask questions type of posts tend to attract the most traffic and interest when compared to most of the other regular pages.
Therefore this is going to be a win-win situation, you will not only be creating useful pages on your site that your visitors are going to love and find interesting and useful but also with time, you will have your pages indexed by the search engines - even ASK that seems to take a while before they come knocking.
Don’t Submit Your Url to the Following Search Engines
August 22, 2008 by Joseph · Leave a Comment
Where you need to Submit Your site’s Url instead.
When you build your site you will want to submit your Url to the three leading search engines. Now I do know that some people and some firms will suggest that you do submit to over 1000 search engines.
Probably this is one of the reasons why you will find firms that will charge you a fee to perform this service for you. Do you need to submit your site Url to all the search engines out there?
The simple fact is that you don’t need to submit your site’s Url to most of these other search engines. Of course you are welcome to do what you deem fit for you, but then thinking about the 80/20 rule, below are three reasons why you really don’t need to submit your site’s Url to more than the top four search engines that I’m about to give to you.
- First reason why not to submit your Url to over 1000 search engines.
Because there are only four leading search engines that really do matter and call the shots as far as search engine world is concerned. Over 99% search volume over the Internet combined is conducted on the following four leading search engines.
- Second reason why not to submit your Url to over 1000 search engines.
Because the math actually does add up and it’s as simple and uncomplicated as you may think. It’s all logical and easy to understand. Find out how the search engines stack up on this post.
- Third reason why not to submit your Url to over 1000 search engines.
The final reason to back up my argument why it will be a waste of your time to submit your Url to so many other search engines is because technically speaking, there aren’t as many of those search engines as you may be mislead to think. Here is a list of the top 10 search engines with their respective market share.
Search engines where you need to submit your site’s Url.
(My next post will provide you with a useful tip on how to entice ASK bot to visit and index your site)
