There’s been recent renewed interest in the value of getting top search engine placement on the smaller search engine Ask.com.
In optimizing sites, it’s highly recommended to take into consideration getting top rankings for multiple search engines instead of fixating on just one or two of the major ones. Even though the smaller search engines in terms of market share like Ask.com deliver less traffic, it is still important to position a site well for branding and profitability. In terms of branding, a business gains first mover advantage by ranking tops easily before other competitors move in. Profitability increases because more traffic ends up on the site overall.
Optimizing for Ask.com requires a site to have many inbound links from industry relevant sites. The algorithm’s use of relevant sites in ranking determination results in higher quality search results (fewer spammy results) appearing as compared to other engines because of it takes more work to build links from related sites.
Side Tip: If you are looking for highly relevant sites and want to find sites to build links on, Ask.com is a great place to research competing sites. Simply type in the keyword phrase you want to rank for and check out the top 10-30 results. Next, use backlink checker tools like Yahoo Site Explorer and note all their backlinks in an Excel worksheet. This will act as your starting point to building links from these sites.