When a webmaster starts building their site, and considering SEO, they first optimize for google, and other search engines secondary. This strategy though, has some problems. There is one reason why you should optimize first for Inktomi, this is PFI. Knowing that you can optimize your site for Inktomi, and than submit it via PFI (Paid-for-Inclusion) and see it ranked highly within days, than submit to all the directories (DMOZ, Yahoo, etc) and eventually be ranked highly on Google, is better than waiting weeks for Google to initially rank you.

Just like any other search engine, it's not brain science to produce a well ranked page. Content is still king. Inktomi looks for a site which is structured well for the visitors to comprehend. While this practice may seem simple, it works.

First to consider is your <title> tag. Your title tag should be no more than eight characters, and incorporate as many keywords as possible without repeating, or making the title hard to be read by your visitors.

The second consideration, as always, is the Meta Description tag. Out of all the search engines, Inktomi still gives the highest priority to meta tags. While people will continually say that meta tags are dead, Inktomi will not think much of a site without them, and other search engines, such as google, will not be bothered by them.

The meta description tag should be 17-22 words and be the same first sentence used in your body paragraph. You should re-emphasize the keywords used in your <title> tag here.

Next is the meta keywords tag. Do not put a lot of attention into the keywords tag. While many will say it should be left out completely, I typically just stress the main keywords I want to focus on. Per Inktomi standards, you need to use commas, and do not use spaces after the commas, for example:

Webhosting,Linux Web Sites,Affordable Hosting

Now, on to the visible copy, I try to use a header tag (h1,h2,h3) near the top of my site, which focuses on the same keywords as in the title tag, but is not exactly the same. For example:

<h3>Reliable affordable webhosting provided by Your Webhost</h3>

Remember to not simply copy and paste the title tags, mix up the keywords a little. For the copy on the page in the body tags. You should copy your exact first paragraph to the Meta Description. Your copy should be no more than 225 words in the end.

Other considerations to keep in mind are:

• All images should have proper use of anchor text (alt attributes)
• Use a solid conclusion sentence which re-emphasizes the first sentence in your body.

After this, you should submit your site to the proper directories (Yahoo, ODP, etc) and than submit it via PFI to Inktomi. Wait 48-72 hours, and check your rankings, if all is well, you should see yourself on the first page of results, if not, tweak accordingly and resubmit.