NBCi, previously known as Snap, is a big portal that was
created
by combining several well known sites together. Among other
things, it offers entertainment and news to its visitors. But
we're not really interested about those things, are we? What
interests us is that NBCi gets lots of visitors and has its own
independent directory which is used every time these visitors
want to do a search. This means that you can use NBCi to boost
the traffic of your site, but first you must understand how the
NBCi directory system works.
The NBCi system is pretty unique when compared to some other
major directories, such as Yahoo and the Open Directory
Project.
The two others have a simple system for reviewing sites - you
submit a site, a human visits it and either includes it in the
directory or rejects the submission. With NBCi, things are
different.
The LiveDirectory - what it is and how it works
When users submit their sites to NBCi, they are placed in the
NBCi LiveDirectory. The LiveDirectory is arranged into
categories, just as the 'regular' NBCi directory, but there are
two major differences. The first difference is that
LiveDirectory results are only shown to users when no matches
in
the regular directory can be found, or when all matches in the
regular directory have already been shown. This means that the
LiveDirectory gets used less than the regular directory, and
sites listed in the LiveDirectory generally get less traffic
than
those in the regular directory.
By now, you're probably asking yourself 'Well, how the heck am
I
going to get to the regular directory if all new submissions
are
placed in the LiveDirectory?'. It's actually pretty simple and
is
connected to the second major difference between the
LiveDirectory and the regular directory. The thing is,
submissions to the LiveDirectory are not really reviewed by
humans. The LiveDirectory is pretty much like a search engine,
the only difference is that it is organized into categories.
There is very little control as to what gets into the
LiveDirectory - just about everything can get in, if it's not
something completely sick or entirely worthless (this lack of
control does not however mean that widespread abuse wouldn't be
noticed). After you're in the LiveDirectory, you get ranked and
are placed in the LiveDirectory results.
What about the part of getting into the regular directory? Hold
on, we're getting there.. You see, the LiveDirectory results
serve as a 'springboard' to the regular directory. Every time a
user clicks at a LiveDirectory site result, the NBCi database
takes note. When a LiveDirectory site has received enough
clicks, it attracts the attention of the NBCi staff who then
send a human to review the site. If the site is deemed good
enough, it is promoted to the regular directory and the owner
is
notified. NBCi figures that this kind of a system eases their
workload - a Yahoo-style outfit has to review all sites
submitted to it, while NBCi lets the users to do the initial
screening by tracking their clicks, and only sends human
reviewers to the best of the LiveDirectory sites.
How to get past LiveDirectory to the regular directory
You have two choices. The first is to pay the $99 review fee
(goes up to $199 in at the end of February, 2001). If you don't
want to pay, you must go through the LiveDirectory.
Unfortunately, the free way has its problems. If your site
doesn't get enough clicks, it will get buried under the
enormous
heap of regular directory & LiveDirectory results and you'll
never get someone to review your site, not to mention getting
any traffic. To avoid these problems, you're going to have to
achieve two things.
The most important thing is to select keywords you can obtain
a decent rank under. There's no sense in trying to go for the
most popular keywords that already produce hundreds of matches
within the main directory. As I said before, the LiveDirectory
listings only come up if no matches are found in the main
directory, all matches that have been found are exhausted or if
the user specifically requests to see LiveDirectory results. If
you target too popular keywords, you'll be buried under the
results from the main directory and will not attract too many
clicks. I recommend that you try to find keywords that are
relevant and used fairly often, but don't result in many main
directory sites turning up.
After finding the right keywords, you'll have to get your site
close to the top of the LiveDirectory results from the
beginning. As the NBCi LiveDirectory does not spider, you'll
have to make sure that the description and title you enter
contain a nice amount of keywords. I recommend placing the
keyword you feel is most important in your title once or twice,
and 2-4 times in your description. You should also attempt to
squeeze a few of your less important keywords into your
description, and if possible, one or two in your title wouldn't
hurt either. By making sure that your title and description
contain several instances of your most important keyword,
you're
increasing your chances of getting a high LiveDirectory ranking
from the get-go.
OK, you just read the above and are thinking "Boy, I'm gonna
make
my NBCi title and description look like a META keywords tag and
grab 'em top rankings easily!".. I'm sorry to say, but that
alone
won't cut it. As I have described above, user clickthroughs
determine whether your site will get into the main directory or
not. Do you think that an unattractive list of keywords as your
description and title will get you many clicks? Didn't think
so.
As you're going to need to attract people to click on your site
when it shows up in the results, you're going to want to make a
compromise between a keyword-stuffed description and a
description that attracts people to click. As clicks count
towards getting your site to the main directory and also boost
your ranking in the LiveDirectory, you should focus on getting
the clicks. If you can add a heavy amount of keywords to your
title and description without sacrificing too much of its
attractiveness, then do it. But always remember to think
'Would I click, if I was searching and this result came up?'.
With these words, I hope that you now have some insight on
how the NBCi system works (some of the more experienced might
have noticed that the system is actually pretty similar to
Direct
Hit's) and are able to get from the LiveDirectory to the
regular directory.
About the Author
Lauri Harpf runs the A Promotion Guide website, where he
offers free information about search engines, directories
and other promotion methods. His site can be found at
http://www.apromotionguide.com/