Keywords

By far the most important factor in search engine rankings is the keywords that are used in the body of a page, especially those that appear as headings or as hyperlinks. It's also a good idea to include your most important keywords in TITLE and META tags. To learn more about using keywords to boost your rankings, see my article The ABCs of Web Site Promotion. Some misguided souls make their TITLE and META tags endless lists of keywords. This is pointless. Spiders only read these tags to a certain point (perhaps the first 50 words at most), so anything after this is a waste of your time. It's probably harmless since they don't read all those endless tags, they couldn't care less how much time you waste creating them.

Including inappropriate keywords, however, may well land you in the doghouse. You can bet that the searchies are on the lookout for hot keywords such as "sex", "MP3", "Viagra", etc. and they will definitely bar your site if you have keywords in tags that aren't related to the page content. A good rule to follow is never to include any word in a tag that isn't included in the body text of the page.

In the early days of the Web, some smart alecks loaded their pages with hidden keywords, by making them the same color as the background, by including them in the ALT attributes of IMG tags, and so on. This is an old trick, and one that is guaranteed to get your site barred. One popular search engine states clearly that any site that has text that's anywhere close to the same color as the background will be barred. Don't use hidden keywords in any form. This includes tiny text at the bottom of a page, or any other way of including spurious keywords in a page.

This is one area where you must be careful, because if a search site detects text that's the same color as the background, they may assume that you're indulging in keyword stuffing, even if it was done for a different reason. For example, if you have a page with a white background which contains a table with a tan background and white text, a search site's automated spam-killing script may think that it's invisible text, even though it is visible.

Bait and Switch Schemes

Some losers create pages that are specially tailored to rank high in search engines, but that actually redirect the user to another page, perhaps one that would not be listed on its own merits, such as a porno site. This can be done either by setting up a redirect on the Web server, by using a META REFRESH tag, or by simply waiting until the page gets listed, then replacing the legitimate page with another one. Any of these techniques is guaranteed to get your site barred. Even using a REFRESH tag for a legitimate purpose, such as a splash page, may land you on the doo-doo list. Most search engines simply won't list any page that triggers a redirect, so don't use them for any page that you want listed.

What about doorway pages? Many people have theorized that, since each search engine uses a slightly different method for ranking pages, if you create a separate entry page for each search engine, you'll get more traffic. After considering all the information on the subject that I've read over several years of doing Web site promotion, I've come to the conclusion that doorway pages aren't worth the effort. The ranking algorithms of the major search engines just aren't that different all look for keywords in the same places, they just place different amounts of emphasis on keywords in body text as opposed to in tags, etc. And doing something that helps you with one search engine is not particularly likely to hurt you with another. Many folks out there will disagree, especially those who make money by creating doorway pages. Search engines don't seem to object to doorway pages in moderation, so use them if you choose. Doorway pages are designed to be submitted to crawlers only. Never submit them, or any type of page with duplicate content and different URLs, to directories such as Yahoo.

Submitting to Crawler-based Search Engines
Keeping the Search Engines Happy
Conclusion