Put Zeus the Web Crawler to Work for You

Put Zeus the Web Crawler to Work for You

============================= In This Issue: 1) Zeus - my new best friend ============================= 1) Zeus - my new best friend ============================= You probably realise that any "themed" site can benefit from a good links directory in a number of ways ... >Create keyword focused pages. >Establish reciprocal links with related sites. >Provide a useful - and sticky - visitor resource. ... all good targeted traffic builders. Unfortunately, it isn't easy to get all these benefits. I know - some time ago I created "The Circus Directory" for my www.circustuff.com site and have spent a lot of time finding suitable sites, inviting them to get listed, approving them, managing the directory, and so on. Then a few days ago I found a powerful new tool that makes it incredibly easy to build a very attractive and functional directory for any subject. >Find the sites >Score them for relevance >Establish email contacts >Request reciprocal links >Create and structure a directory >Even upload it to your web site =:> The really powerful core of Zeus (for that's my new best friend's name) is that it puts you in charge of your very own web-crawler. Just like the "Maginificent Seven" search engines, Zeus follows links and locates sites for you - for as long as you want him to. The difference is - you can train Zeus to find only the "theme" sites you are interested in. Let me give you an example: A while ago I registered waporama.co.uk as a domain name - hey, I was getting a deal on 10 names and had run out of ideas. And WAP was going to be really big. And, anyway ... I never had got round to doing anything with it, so I decided to try out the free version of Zeus on it. In Training mode, I started Zeus off at a likely looking site (wap.com) and he started finding keywords, descriptions email addresses and hyperlinks. When he found a new keyword, he asked me to rank it as "ignore", "common", "slightly unique", "unique" or "very unique". So - I told him that words like "WAP" and "WML" were very unique to my subject, "mobile" and "wireless" were unique, "developer" was slightly unique - and so on, until he had learned 100 suitable keywords. By the way - all this happens in the background while I'm working on something else - Zeus just pops up when he needs an answer. Then in Auto mode, he started following the hyperlinks. Every time he found a site he thought might be suitable, he added it to his database. When I had a couple of minutes, I used the Themesite Viewer to check out the sites and put them in a category. Or - if Zeus had made a poor choice, I just deleted the site, which also helps train him further. Once I had a reasonable number of sites categorised, all I had to do was make a few configuration choices, edit page header and footer, click the button, and all the pages were uploaded to the site. Another few clicks and I have sent emails to every webmaster telling them they are in the directory and asking for a reciprocal link. ... and it just trundles on in the background. As I write this, Zeus has found 7052 sites that he plans to visit. He'll keep trawling through them, and I will spend a few minutes each day checking his work. Zeus learns from his mistakes, so he'll keep getting better at what he does. You can probably tell I'm impressed - maybe you need to have done it the hard way to really know how powerful this is, but I hope you see from this how Zeus might help you create a really useful core feature for your site. Did I mention that each of the category pages is optimised for search engine positioning? Or that it was written by real enthusiasts who provide great technical support? Or that you can run it multi-instance to build directories for more than one subject? Or that the free version is really, really functional? I have registered my version, but I've left the HTML the same as it was with the free version so you can see what it looks like. The Zeus pages use my header and footer info to keep them in tune with the rest of the site, but the central part of the pages is fixed format in the free version. The registered version gives you complete control over the page layout, removes the banner, unlocks some extra functions, and gives access to the add-ons that can make your directory even more powerful. You can see my sample site at: http://www.WAPorama.co.uk It's using a cheap URL redirection service, so if you want to see it without the top banner: http://www.vepoware.co.uk/vp/waporama BTW - I haven't fine tuned the HTML, so apologies if it isn't universally browser friendly. I really did just put it together to give Zeus a workout =:> And you can download Zeus at: http://www.practicalselling.com/pdcb/0000/to.cgi?zeus It's a fairly hefty download, and I do recommend you work your way through the instructions step by step (just like they recommend) rather than assuming too much and jumping in with both feet. Zeus is a very powerful ally - and you need to invest a bit of effort into getting the most out of him, but it's effort I hope you will find worthwhile. I look forward to seeing some "PDCB" sites in the "Zeus Collective". May the Gods be with you =:> Stewart PS - Even if you don't use Zeus to build a directory, he's a great research tool to find sites according to your keywords and weighting, no matter what you plan to do with the information. Competitors, content, whatever ... =============================