How to Optimize for Inktomi in 2004 - Advanced Inktomi SEO and What to Avoid

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While optimizing for Inktomi is pretty straight forward for most, there are several little strategies that can be implemented for the most daring of search engine optimizers and webmasters. Most these days look at Inktomi as a singular database of documents that are feed to its many partners around the web. The common philosophy follows that "if I can create a well optimized document it shall rank well in all of Inktomi's partner websites."

Wrong!

This is shortsighted because many of Inktomi Web Search Partners use proprietary algorithms to further enhance the ability for users to find a particular result based on which web search partner they are using. This makes it even harder to rank across the board for a targeted search phrase. If you are daring, setup a goal to rank in the top 10 for whatever search phrase you are targeting, but make it a priority to rank high in each of Inktomi partners sites. While this may be work intensive, it will surely teach you a lot on how to optimize for Inktomi better than most can. You will not only be able to differentiate between the different search partners, but also their particular likes and dislikes regarding what metas and on-page characteristics they prefer. This is surely the stuff the best SEOs will most likely keep to themselves.

What to Avoid

There are several things that can affect your ranking without you really even knowing about them. They are sometimes design related and have to do with issues that are caused when the Inktomi robot, Slurp can not get the information it needs from the page. Locate and find these problem areas in your pages.

1. DO not use image or javascript navigation to link together pages of the site. The robot may not be about to follow these links or gather information that is contained within text links.
   
   
2. Cascading Style Sheets can present a problem for Inktomi. While this is generally neither good or bad news, you should consider how you use CSS and what the robot will read once it spiders your site.
   
   
3. Affiliate links can also present a problem for robots, in that they might not be able to follow them and penalize the page for such use.
   
   
4. Dynamic URL's are also a problem of Inktomi, the robots do not favor these and adding session id's, affiliate id's, and the link can be cause for a penalty.

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