Looksmart

Founded in 1995, Looksmart has since then become one of the three largest website directories, the two others being ODP and Yahoo. While the Looksmart site does not draw as many visitors as Yahoo, nor does its data have as many users as ODP's, the directory has several powerful partners that make being listed in it very beneficial to any site. To mention a few of them, MSN, Excite, Altavista and Iwon all use Looksmart's data somewhere on their pages or search results. Also, it appears that at least Altavista gives a ranking boost to sites that are present in Looksmart's database.

Most webmasters can appreciate Looksmart's partnerships with Excite, AV and Iwon, but the reason why they are really drawn to submit to the directory is MSN. Microsoft's portal displays sites that are listed at Looksmart very prominently in its search results. Because the MSN site is very popular and because it is the default search engine of Internet Explorer, being well-ranked in it for the right keywords has in some cases turned out to be a real goldmine.

Two possibilities

If you go to Looksmart's submission page, you will notice that the only way you're going to get your site reviewed for possible inclusion in the directory is to pay some cash. Express Submit (review within two days) is currently $299, while Basic Submit (review within eight weeks) will cost you $149. For the record, Yahoo charges exactly the same, $299 ($600 for adult sites) for its Business Express submission. Three hundred dollars for getting into Looksmart is an awful lot of money, so is there any other way?

Purely commercial sites that sell merchandise or services but have very little unique content must choose between two options. Either they pay to be reviewed, or then they aren't included at all. Later we'll discuss which of these two choices would be the better one, but for now, let's forget that issue. Instead, let's tackle another difficult question first.

There are many sites out there that provide excellent, valuable content to Internet surfers. Some of them might have a banner ad or two so that the webmaster doesn't have to worry about how to be able to pay the hosting fees, while others are completely ad free. What about these sites? Are their owners expected to simply pay $299 or $149, even while investing such a sum might be out of their reach?

Officially, yes. Unofficially, there is a back door you can use and if you're lucky, you'll get in for free and be listed in the directory exactly the same way as everyone who paid for the review are. It is not a secret, but for obvious reasons, Looksmart does not want to promote the possibility too much. The service is called…

Zeal

Looksmart acquired Zeal in October 2000 and integrated it into the Looksmart directory in August of 2001. The reason why Looksmart bought Zeal was that because of its high submission fees, most sites that submit to Looksmart are very commercial and focused on selling products instead of providing information. Zeal ensures that the Looksmart directory remains a source for useful information instead of turning into the yellow pages of the Internet.

Interestingly enough, Zeal is quite similar to the non-commercial Open Directory Project. Both use volunteers to review submitted sites and neither of the two charges a fee for submissions made to them. However, there are a few obvious differences which we shall now investigate.

First, Zeal does not allow purely commercial sites to be submitted into it. Zeal's definition of what is commercial and what is not is somewhat vague, so rather than explaining it to you in my own words, here's what their own guidelines have to say about the subject. In a nutshell, "If the primary purpose of a site is to generate revenue or promote the sale of goods or services online or offline, then it is considered commercial (and thus can't be submitted to Zeal)".

The reason behind this rule is that if commercial sites were allowed to submit for free via Zeal, after a while nobody would be interested in paying a submission fee to Looksmart. Thus, if your site is 100% commercial, you can forget about entering Looksmart via Zeal.

The second difference is that while ODP accepts a wide variety of sites, Zeal (and Looksmart) refuse sites that contain adult material. Persons running such sites should submit their sites to ODP and perhaps Yahoo instead of wasting their time with Looksmart.

Submitting to Zeal

Provided that your site is in compliance with Zeal's rules, you should submit to it instead of spending your money on Looksmart. While the information in the "Directories" article will give you most of the information you need in order to properly submit to Zeal, here's a brief overview on what exactly you need to do to get accepted:

First, you will have to register yourself as a Zealot. A slightly annoying step, but at least it doesn't cost anything. After you've done that, you'll also need to pass the "Member Quiz" before you can start the actual submitting process.

The MQ is a multiple choice test, but it isn't too easy. To pass it, open up Zeal's guidelines in another window and search the correct answers to the questions from there. Don't rush or try to guess, just accept that it is going to take a while and be patient.

Having achieved a MQ of 90 or more, which means that you answered at least 18 of the 20 questions correctly, you can finally move on. Find a suitable category for your site, but remember to check that the category is "open". Some parts of the Zeal directory are "sealed off" and you can't submit to them even if your site would fit in perfectly. If you encounter a situation where the best category of your site is labeled "commercial" and thus unavailable, simply find the most relevant category that is not commercial and submit to it.

The actual submission process is fairly simple, but if you need help, check out this series of screenshots I took while preparing this article. They are quite large and might take a (long) while to load on a slow connection, but will make submitting a piece of cake.

The MSN connection

As I mentioned in the beginning, Looksmart's partnership with MSN is the main reason the directory is so important. That is why before you submit to Zeal/Looksmart, you must ensure that you will get the maximum amount of visibility at MSN.

First, choose some keywords that are related to your site, popular and only turn up a relatively small amount of returns at MSN. Then create a description that contains these keywords, but is readable, fairly short and accurately describes your site. In the best possible case, your title should also contain a keyword or two. However, this is often impossible, because Looksmart's guidelines instruct that the title should be the official name of the site. If your site's name does not contain any keywords, don't try to fool the editors by adding them. They'll simply cut them from your title which might cause them to be tempted to edit your description as well.

Other than your title and description, there definitely are other things MSN uses to determine your ranking. Unfortunately, I must admit that I currently don't have a clue on what these things might be. Among other things, click popularity and how good editors consider your site to be have been claimed to have effect, but whether these theories hold water or not is unknown to me. For now, just optimize your description and title. I'll update this part of the article if and when I get more information about MSN's algorithm.

Paying for Looksmart?

Those who can't submit to Zeal are probably wondering whether to spend the $299/$149 on a Looksmart submission or not. The answer to this question largely depends on how much money you can make from an average visitor to your site and how well your site is able to rank at MSN. In addition to your skill in creating a good description and title, your success will also be determined by luck. If your keyword-rich description stays intact, your rankings will be high and you'll get more than your money's worth of traffic.

However, if the Looksmart editor who reviews your submission decides to rewrite your description, you might be unable to get even a single top 50 ranking and never get more than one or two visitors a day. It's always a gamble, so in my opinion sites that make a profit of less than 50 cents per visitor seriously consider before paying $299 for a listing. At 10-25 cents per visitor you'll at best need to wait a long time before you make enough profit to cover the review fee, and in some cases it will never happen.