This begs the question: If DirectHit sites only rank well when visitors click on them and stay awhile, how do sites at the bottom ever find their way to the top?

On more popular searches, DirectHit claims to give newly submitted sites a boost so they have a chance to appear at the top. Obviously, there must be content on your page that corresponds to what is being searched on in order for DirectHit to boost your site to the top for that keyword or phrase. Therefore, page content is still important here. Once your site is near the top, DirectHit will watch to see how many people click on it, and how many people stay on the site.

For keywords and phrases that are not searched much, DirectHit does not maintain any score for them. In those cases, DirectHit "popularity" is not a factor.

If you do a search on www.directhit.com for a keyword or phrase, you'll find that some matches have 1 to 5 little "people icons" displayed next to each match. If no score exists for any of the results, then we can assume DirectHit does not have enough data for that search to influence rankings based on its unique popularity algorithm.

Drawing upon my programming background, I believe DirectHit can only gauge the length of stay on a site based on whether the user visiting your site hits the back button and clicks on another site in the DirectHit results or conducts another search within a reasonable period of time. If they never return to DirectHit, DirectHit assumes that the visitor must have liked that site and found it relevant to their search. It then adds some extra points to your score. You also may score some additional points if they returned to DirectHit but stayed a reasonable amount of time there before leaving.

Does this mean you can influence DirectHit rankings by clicking over and over on the same listing? Not really. They say they filter out such attempts to influence popularity by ignoring subsequent click-thrus from the same user session. Clicking on it once each time you find your listing won't hurt. In fact, the farther down your listing appears, yet still gets clicked on, the more weight DirectHit will give to that click-through.

For sites that are already indexed, DirectHit claims they re-spider them every 30 days or so. This implies that you get a new chance every month or so to get bumped up the DirectHit list. The question then arises, how do I do that? First, you need to make sure your content is optimized for the keywords on which you want to be found.

After analyzing hundreds of pages on DirectHit that were not yet ranked by their special popularity formula, I've determined that right now you want to shoot for a total word count in your body area of 200 to 400 words. A keyword frequency of about 3 to 6 words in the body area is the average for top ranking pages. One instance of the keyword should be in the title area. Include another instance of the targeted keyword in the heading area, the alt tag, and the meta tags should help.

Include at least 3 instances of the keyword in the hyperlink TEXT area (i.e., the underlined "clickable" links you see when viewing a page). In fact, DirectHit seems to favor having far more keyword repetitions on the page than most other engines. Note: If you don't understand some of the above terminology, load up a copy of WebPosition Gold, run the Page Critic, and see the links on the reports that define various terms. The Page Critic help will provide various HTML examples for the novice.

DirectHit's formula for ranking pages based on popularity is sophisticated, but their formula to rank based on content seems to be more simplistic. The most notable statistic I saw was that for searches on multi-word phrases, some pages had 200 or more keywords in the Hyperlink URL areas! (i.e., the actual link to a page such as to www.widgets.com/blue-widgets.htm should have keywords in the URL whenever possible). The average was six keywords total in the various URLs referenced on the page. However, if you don't rank well on DirectHit for content after your first try, you might add even more keywords to the page, particularly in the URL area may improve your odds.

You can check your rankings at www.directhit.com. If you come up without the little 1 to 5 little "people icons" next to your listing, then your page was ranked based on content only and is less likely to appear in the top 10 at HotBot, Lycos, or another DirectHit supplemented engine. If a listing has 1 or more little "people icons" next to it, then its click-through popularity and how long they stayed on the site has been factored into its ranking. Your goal should be to come up as close to the top as you can based on content (even if you're not in the top 10 or 20). That way you have a chance to get a popularity rating when they give your page that extra boost after re-spidering the page.

It's important to note that DirectHit does NOT support exact searches where you search for a specific phrase within quotes. Instead, all words in the phrase do NOT have to appear on the page, and certainly don't have to appear together. DirectHit simply tries to find pages that contain instances of either some or all of the words. Not a very good method if you ask me, but that's the way it works.

In addition to your page content, you should submit your pages at:

http://ask.ineedhits.com/sitesubmit.asp?id=30270http://ask.ineedhits.com/sitesubmit.asp?id=30270

Popular thinking is that submitting directly to DirectHit (versus submitting to HotBot) gives you a boost in DirectHit powered engines like HotBot and Lycos. Submitting directly may encourage the spider to put a priority on re-visiting your site, or evaluating doorway pages it had not spidered before.

In addition, the submission screen allows you to list out keywords you want to be found on. Fill out the entire 60 characters allowed, separating each individual word by a comma. DirectHit will boost your score for keywords found in this list, particularly if the words are also found on the page itself.

The next step is to make sure your page gets clicked on when it does get the opportunity to be seen near the top. This should always be a significant goal regardless of whether you are optimizing for DirectHit or not. What good does it do to be listed in the top 10 if nobody clicks on your site?

After ensuring that you will have a "clickable", compelling listing, make sure the content of your site really "sells" your visitors on what you offer. This is important so that the visitor sticks around which is what DirectHit wants to see. It's also your ultimate goal regardless of where the visitor arrives from. Your site must offer great content, products, and/or services. To help you in that goal, check out these excellent articles:

"Website 101" by Jennifer Steward at:

http://www.write101.com/101web.htm

This article covers all the basics of great Web site design. Even if you are an HTML pro, you should read this article and commit it to memory!

On the other side of the coin, read Bob Weinstein's "The Six Mistakes You Should Never Make on Your Website:"

http://www.pathfinder.com/fortunesb/articles/0,2227,454,00.html

Also check out Cory Rudl's comprehensive Web marketing book which I reviewed in October.

Knowledge is the true key to being successful on the Web, combined with acting on that knowledge! Take the time to do your homework and do it right. This makes all the difference between a successful Web site, and one that fails miserably.

Note: WebPosition Gold currently does not support the DirectHit engine, but we plan to add full support in a future version. Sorry, but I don't have anymore details at this time.

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