Yes, there is a meta tag for keywords. The problem is many spammers and
"pseudo" pages (such as front ends for x-rated sites) would just stick a
bunch of unrelated common search words in this meta tag in the hopes people
would hit on the page by mistake. So most of the search engines now give a
very low priority to keywords in the meta tag and only increase the priority
of that word for searching that page if the word is repeated elsewhere in
"real text" on the page. Almost all the search engines also now only pay
attention to the first 20 or 30 keywords in the meta tag to avoid the people
who tried sticking an entire dictionary of words in there.

The general advise for getting a site indexed well seems to be something
like:

1. Limit the keywords meta tag to 20 or less words.

2. Change the keywords and/or their order on each page.

3. Make sure every keyword is referenced at least once in text on the page.
        a. This even applies to alternative spellings such as "HPe3000,
"e3000", "HP e3000", etc. One way to get the alternate spellings in the page
itself even when you do not want them to appear is to put them in "alt" tags
on images, etc.
        b. Caution: Some of the search engines (Google especially) go to
great lengths now to identify and ignore "hidden" text because the spammers
started putting unrelated words in hidden text too. The most common form of
hidden text is text the same colour as the page background. Last I knew
Google was still indexing Alt tags.

4. Make sure you have text. Real text. Images do not index well. In most
search engines only the "alt" text of an image is indexed since the image
name itself does not usually mean anything. Databases where the content is
only displayed on the page based on keywords or other "non-link" mechanisms
do not get indexed at all.

5. Make sure the text is relevant to the page. Non-relevant text on a page
is the fastest way to get a page kicked off any of the "reviewed"
directories such as Yahoo or any search engine based on the Open Directory
Project.

6. Submit a changing selection of pages on your site to the most important
search engines about once a week. Do not wait for the spiders to crawl to
your page. Even the fastest spiders are now taking around four months to
search the entire web.

7. Make sure you have standard HTML links, not just fancy script menus or
other dynamically generated link methods. Spiders only know how to follow
standard links. They do not follow dynamically generated links very well.
They can not make menu selections. They usually link to only the first
selection in the menu if at all. They can not enter keywords in any way.

8. Have a good textual index page which links to every important page in
your site in no more than one jump. Submit this page to the search engines
at least once a month. This helps the spider index your site. Because of the
extreme need for speed when the spider is trying to crawl the entire web,
most spiders are now set to stop indexing sites at around two links deep.

9. Get linked. The more links entering your site from outside the more
likely the search engines are to crawl to your page. Many search engines now
prioritise sites based on how many links go into them from outside.

Excuse this for being slightly off topic. But I felt it was important since
a lot of this discussion involved how to get the HP3000 / HPe3000 / MPE /
MPE/iX visible on the Internet.

Timothy Atwood
Holtenwood Computing
for Domtar Vancouver Mill
http://www.holtenwood.bc.ca/computing/

 -----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 8:19 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Is the e not catching on?


X-no-Archive:yes
You're both right. On the one hand, the e helps those who are fascinated by
a shiny ball rolling across the floor, among others. On the other, we want
web searchers of all stripes to find our information.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a keywords tag or some such in
HTML? Finding my way to the "hp e3000 business servers" page at
http://www.hp.com/products1/mpeixservers/index.html, I find the following in
their HTML:
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="hp business computing hp e3000 hp 3000
hpe3000 hp3000 mpe/ix mpeix servers business-critical corporate">
It seems that we might all want to consider our choice of keywords rather
carefully, and can at least be glad for what we do have here.

<etc.>

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