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Ask’s share of the search market is just 4.3% so it is obvious that optimizing for Ask is not of crucial importance for most webmasters. In spite of the company’s more or less mediocre advertising ventures, Ask has some excellent as well as dynamic one-of-a-kind properties that is believed to slowly but surely dominate the search market and claim the places of its more famous counterparts. Hence the necessity to optimize for Ask.
Below are a few tips on how to optimize for Ask without rankings on the other search engines having to suffer.

Overview

Ask is different from the other search engines as it has a completely rolled-out ‘universal search’. For individuals who are not familiar with the term, ‘universal search’ is the collection of results from a number of sources, be it images, news, blogs, video, local information, etc. into a single page of results. Despite Google’s implementation of the universal search to a certain extent, Ask remains the 1st search engine to jump into these dicey arenas and perform a good job of it so far. As universal search is gradually being distributed across Google, MSN and Yahoo, Ask proves to be an appropriate place to start preparation for the world of universal search which is becoming increasingly competitive. The segments that will be covered are images, blogs and feeds, local search and mobile.

Image Optimization

The trick to get an image to appear within Ask.com’s universal search results is to neglect any doubt of the relevance of the image to the keyword you are aiming to achieve rankings for.

• The keyword should be used in the file name of the image.
• Alt tags must be created and need to clearly represent the subject of the image while using the target keyword.
• The content that is near the picture must be related to it and for superlative results should compose of the keyword utilized to describe the image in the Alt tag.



Askcity : Ask’s Local Search Engine

AskCity is the local domain of Ask where numerous maps and content that is locally themed namely event news, theater tickets, etc can be easily acquired. In December 2006, Askcity was born. It was a much superior upgrade of Ask Local and it continues to be a sturdy leader in the flourishing and competition rich local search market. It is a fortune that possessing a presence at AskCity requires only that your business is added to their database in case it is not there already.


The Process Of Submitting Your Business To Askcity

The business information is to be submitted to Askcitybusiness@help.ask.com with the subject line as ‘Ask City Feedback – Business’. Make sure the following data is added to the email:

• Name of the business along with its complete address and phone number.
• The category which suits the business the best.
• The URL of the website.
• The email address of a contact person.
• As per Ask, the turnaround period is not more than 28 days.

One may reckon that once your business profile is online, it will have a five star rating system attached to it. If you desire to influence your rating then consider sending your happy customers to CitySearch, Yelp.com, Insiderpages, etc where these results are taken from. Once they’re there, drive them towards locating your listing and providing a good review of your business.




Providing Optimum Visibility For Blogs And Feeds

Ask boasts of Bloglines that is one of the foremost news aggregation tools on the internet. It turns out that it is the database behind Ask Blogs and Feeds. To confirm whether your blogs and feeds are part of this system, we recommend the creation of an account at Bloglines and do not forget to include your feed in the profile.

In order to strengthen your position within Ask Blogs and Feeds you should be aware of the following. Firstly, the order of results within Ask’s Blogs and Feeds is decided by a confluence of Ask’s ExpertRank algorithm which is their intensive search engine algorithm and the vast twelve million plus blog database of blogline. Ask makes use of this combination to create the first order of results that are positioned by relevance and not by date which is the most common first viewing at competitors of Ask. It is also essential that close attention be paid to the relevance of the keyword density in your title, body and links within each post you write on your blog. Keeping your ideal keyword ranking in mind while writing posts, will fetch you a greater chance of gaining a ranking based on relevance.
Sorting by popularity is something that is also offered by Ask. It seems appropriate that a ranking by popularity is obtained from the time period users spent on an article prior to returning and the number of times a feed or post is viewed within the large number of customer accounts at Bloglines. Bearing in mind these factors it stands to explanation that preparing a sticky blog post is the most palpable prime requisite. The second necessity is to acquire lively in the Bloglines society and aim at spreading the news regarding your eminent blog or blogs all through your community. The more the public add your blog feed to their Bloglines profile and interrelate with it, the greater chance you hold of attaining a pinnacle spot when results are structured by fame.

Ask Mobile

Ask Mobile makes use of ExpertRank and emerges to be based on Ask’s custom website database. But one may ask, how can Ask supply cell phone users with complete range websites? The ploy lies in their application of Skweezer expertise that compresses usually awkward websites into more palatable one column sites for cellular phone users. It may appear that there is not anything that can be done then to power mobile rankings at Ask. This is not to be believed as the fact is that Ask Mobile is devoted to presenting local results to cell users as they are on the move. With that said, it seems sensible that you perk up your website’s chances of being found by guaranteeing it has a complete listing in AskCity.

If locally based results are exceedingly striking to you then I recommend the inclusion of your physical address details inside the footer of each page so that Ask and other search engines that are locally focused get a superior opportunity of linking your website with a region.


Sitemaps

Ask’s spider is the most inactive of the big four search without a doubt. When evaluating client spider reports, I notice Ask visiting sites fifty percent lesser or greater than MSN, Yahoo and Google. As a matter of fact, on several websites that have not yet included a sitemap or have less than perfect site configuration Ask frequently avoids indexing pages deep inside their websites. Thus, the submission of a sitemap to Ask is important if you would like your deep content to be accurately indexed.

• First fashion a sitemap. On StepForth’s suggested SEO tools page we highlighted our preferred tool at present. It’s Vigos Google Sitemap Generator. Download this utility at no cost absolutely and it will spider your website. Once it is done, set whatsoever customary information you desire and then create the sitemap.xml file. Position this file in the source of your website. Also note that data is added within the program.
• To put forward your sitemap to Ask you can either insert a link to the sitemap into your Robots.txt file or just add your sitemap.xml address into the subsequent URL and then visit it:http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml

  Of the 2 choices, I suggest adding the sitemap auto detection link to your robots.txt file since this is at the moment a settled technique of submitting a sitemap between the main search engines. Simply put this code on its own line in your robots.txt file:

  Sitemap: http://www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml

  Ask As A Research Tool

  Ask possesses a useful resource incorporated in its widespread search design called ‘narrow your search’. Attempt typing in your keyphrase in Ask and after that take a glance at the narrow your search segment of the page. There you will witness popular searches that are related to your keyphrase. Trace this data when undertaking keyword research as it is a precious peep into what Ask’s ExpertRank algorithm believes to be intimately significant and it may also give you an idea about what users are really probing for.

  Extra

  There are a small number of character traits that you ought to be conscious of when operating with Ask that are rather exclusive:

• Ask does not presently a supporter of the ‘nofollow’ tag which might signify that any link exiting your website is taken to be a vote of self-assurance for the target site.
• Ask uses a site/content preview window for every listing it prepares, symbolized by a binocular icon. Because users may employ this tool to obtain a peek of your site ahead of visiting, it is more imperative than ever to make sure the content on top of the fold that comes into view foremost with no scrolling is alluring to users and related to their search.

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