>> At 02:40 PM 5/13/98 -0700, you wrote:
>> >Our client's existing web site has a long list of meta tag
>> keywords, maybe
>> >200 or so. Is that risky? Likely to be interpreted as spamming the
>> >spiders? How many is the recommended max?
Meta tags were a wonderful idea a year or two ago, but most of the major
search engines don't use them. In order to distinguish themselves from the
others, they use different methods of indexing: some index the whole index
page, others index the first 300 words, others index the first page plus the
first level of links, etc. There's no standard. Each one is different.
The top ten are Excite, Lycos, Altavista, etc. You can find a list at
www.100hot.com Remember, what you like may not be what people are using. I
don't care for Excite, but it's the most popular engine (17 million daily
users).
In order to make a site that is findable on each of the top ten, one has to
visit each of the search engines and study their faqs on indexing.
Study your WebTrends (www.webtrends.com) site analysis and see what search
engine people are using to reach your site. Then make sure your site's
keywords are friendly to that search engine's spider.
WebTrends will also tell you the keywords that people are using to find your
site. Be sure to add those to your meta-tag and your site's opening lines.
The general rule: use meta-tags plus a great intro sentence in the index
page (in a sentence of ten words or less, what's the point of this site?),
using descriptive keywords instead of "welcome to our compelling interactive
multimedia blah-blah-blah."
Altavista uses meta-tags if they exist. To quote from their faq (I just
fetched this today):
"AltaVista will index the description and keywords up to a limit of
1,024 characters."
So it's not 300 words. But no fear: 1,024 characters is plenty of words.
You're doing keywords, not sentences. (I suspect commas and spaces count.)
Use all versions of a word: singular, plural, combinations, and
misspellings. One of the major phone companies did a multi-million dollar
campaign to promote their collect calling service 1-800-OPERATOR. Their
rival simply created a collect calling service called 1-800-OPERATER, didn't
spend a cent on advertising, and did very well.
You could enter your competitor's name into your meta-tag, but it's
unethical business.
As for spamming the spiders: don't do it. The search engines won't tell you
what the magic number is; they keep that secret to keep the spammers on
their toes. They may block spammers from their indexes.
Register early, register often. About 25% of the search engines go out of
business every three months and more arise to replace them. So... if you
register today on all 200, in six months, you'll only be on some 100 or so
and another 100 won't know of you.
You don't need to be on all of them. Of the 200 engines, many are
specialized, so look for engines that cover your site's special field, such
as chemical, mining, medical, etc. If your site covers Islamic culture, it
may be far better for you to be registered on a search engine in Cairo than
all of the others.
___________________________________________________
Andreas Ramos [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.andreas.com
____________________________________________________________________
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