Hi, anyone have experience with submitting to looksmart listing?
Any results?
Thank you,
Max J.

Helped get our company name listed on different search engines and directories, but i don't think we really got (or will get) alot sales from it.

I think things like that are worth it though, sometimes.

Hope that help alittle

jv

Thanks,
that helped.

Looksmart is probably worth the effort - getting into any directory like Looksmart, DMOZ, and especially Yahoo is going to benefit Google pagerank if nothing else.

They can reject your site & don't refund the $299 if they do. Here's some tips to avoid losing $299

1. Make sure there are no under construction pages in the site
2. Make sure it works on Netscape 4.7
3. make sure every link in your site works
4. If you have any pages that take a long time to load - re-design them
5. In your description try not to use too many fluff words like best, free...
6. Make sure you have terms of use, privacy policies etc in easy view on your home page

Good luck!

Andrew

Excellent round-up there NovaW!

Sounds like you've been there before.


Lats...

Yep, good advice. But, in contrast to Yahoo I wouldn't worry too much about being declined by Looksmart -- those guidelines are great for a Yahoo submission, but LS is much more forgiving.

It's also worth mentioning that if you aren't in a real hurry and want to save some money, you can opt for the "Basic Submission" for $149 instead of the $299 "Express submission."

It's true that there's some benefit as far as Google PageRank if you get in to a major directory, but those directories only have so much PR to offer you! That is, a link from Looksmart, if Looksmart has a PR of 7 (which is what the Google toolbar is currently showing me) is no more valuable than a link from any other site with a PageRank of 7 -- so you might be able to get that same effect elsewhere without spending money.

LS placement will get you listed on a few different ISPs, but their most significant partner is MSN -- which is certainly a place you want to be listed. On the other hand, I've gotten good results on MSN from Inktomi placements. AltaVista runs LS listings, but they seem not to have updated their LookSmart database in quite a while -- so getting into LS might not get you into AV anytime soon.

Bottom line, though -- since you posted this in the "Running a Web Hosting Biz" forum -- for a serious hosting company that expects to be around a while, a Looksmart listing is probably a good value. At least as good a value as Yahoo, and since there's likely a good chance that LS will follow Yahoo's lead and institute an annual fee instead of a one-time fee, it's probably a good idea to submit there rather soon.

Don't expect immidiate results, but it is a good investment in the long run...

Thank you guys.
That really helped me.

JayC makes a really key point in his post

"That LS only has a certain PageRank to share"

PageRank is shared by the links on the page, so getting a link to your site on say a much lower PageRank page but your link being the only link can have a much greater impact than a link amongst many on a high pagerank page, especially if the link text is "web hosting" and the site is well themed to web hosting.

Inktomi is great value at $39 - they will only crawl the page you submit (well only include the page you submit maybe they crawl more) - but it seems that AOL is very Inktomi driven these days & your URL can show up in AOL immediately (48 - 72 hrs) - Inktomi is much more driven by the page content, not linking.

Web hosting is a very competitive search term, but on some off center hosting terms it's not too hard to get a high listing in Inktomi.

Andrew

The real importance of Looksmart is, as JayC says, the partnership with MSN. For truly competitive and worthwhile hosting related phrases, you have to be in Looksmart to get success in MSN as LS listings always appear above the Inktomi (web page) listings.

So here's my quick guide to maximising your Looksmart listing. Ensure that your page is already optimised (this makes no difference to LS, but makes a big difference at MSN).

When writing your description, follow this basic rule:

A two sentence description - the first sentence should be an objective description of your services, concentrating on your main keywords. The second sentence should start with an action verb such as 'download', 'view' , 'signup' or 'find' and should act as a call to arms. If you follow this method, Looksmart are far less likely to change your description. If you do not, Looksmart will change the description to match this style of writing.

An example: Offers dedicated hosting. Choose from Unix and NT servers.

This way if your main keywords are 'dedicated hosting' , 'dedicated nt hosting' , 'unix hosting' - they are all in this description, which is short (more keyword dense) and is unlikely to be changed by the Looksmart editors.

There ya go, hope this helps.