Keywords are the Key
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.
