[thelist] meta keywords

[Paola Kathuria]

sfmalo wrote:
> Ranking aside, I think [meta tags] count a lot for users trying to find sites based
> on their typing in keywords/keyword phrases. How else are they going to find
> you on a search engine?

It's a (documented) combination of:

  + page TITLE
  + H1 and other Hn contents
  + META keywords & description
  + ALT text
  + link text
  + page contents (especially if the first part of the page
    duplicates some/all of the other indexing terms)
  + domain (I wouldn't be surpised if URL directory and
    filenames were also indexed)
  + link popularity (how many sites link to yours)

How these affect ranking depends on the individual search
engine.

> As for number of keywords/keyword phrases, I was told a long time ago by a
> person at Submit It that 20 words was the max for this meta tag.

AltaVista used to have a limit of 1024 for the *combined* contents
of meta description and keywords (includes spaces after commas - so,
have "colour,color,etc..." rather than have "colour, color, etc...").
However, this 1024 limit is no longer mentioned on the AltaVista FAQ
for webmasters (see below).

Finally, here are some good sources of info & tutorials:

"FAQ For Webmasters" - info and tips on how to optimise for AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com/sites/help/search/faq_web

"Being Well Indexed" - what AltaVista does and doesn't index
http://help.altavista.com/adv_search/ast_haw_wellindexed

"Designing Page Content for Search Engines"
http://www.stars.com/Location/Promotion/Search/Body.html
part of "How To Be #1 On Search Engines (almost..)"
http://www.stars.com/Location/Promotion/Search/

A site with information available to the public (but with more
info available to subscribers is) http://searchenginewatch.com/
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/features.html

I was once a paid subscriber to PlanetOcean's online "Search
Engine News" newsletter - http://www.searchengine-news.com/ (see
http://www.searchenginehelp.com/senewspeek/ for a contents list
- don't be put off by their tacky selling approach).  It
includes a regularly-updated chart of features of all the search
engine spiders and crawlers, industry news (e.g., when a search
engine changes its ranking policy) and articles.

I'm a bit surprised to now read that many search engines don't
index "tiny text" (because keyword spammers tried to trick
spiders by including tiny text of keywords).  I wonder how they
define "tiny text".


Paola