Preserved Topic: Search Optimization Question

I know this has been broung up before but I just came up with this idea....it might be stupid but oh well...want to see what your input would be.

I have a page that doesn't have much content on it. Now I know some search engines search for content.

I came up with this rather crazy idea. Lets say I would crate a layer 800 by 600 for example, placed it on the left and make it hidden. Now, in the layer I would type in all the keywords making it huge text page I guess..

would this work or do search engines bypass hiden layers somehow?

What do you guys think?

MAX

Um, I think you should just put some content on the page...

Seriously, though, if there's little content on the page, why do you want it to be indexed by the search engines?

I would go for meta tags and the like before I tried tricks like that, though.

Cell 270

but would it work though? I can't really put content on it..

I will do the meta tags and all that....

so would that work?

MAX

Well, the meta tags will work, I can tell you that. And, according to your first post, all you want to do is type in the keywords, right? Well, that's what the meta tags are for. Granted, it does help if they are also on your page. Whether it would work if they were on a hidden layer, well, I don't know. You could give it a shot.

And I'm still very curious as to why you want a page indexed that you can't put content in--I can't imagine what it might be...

its a company website where there is not much content on the index page. Its sort of for "attraction" purposes. I did all the meta tags you could imagine and all that good stuff....

What I am talking about is, since there is not much content on the page (none really) and since search engines crawl thought the page and look for content (from what I read) I wonder if it would make a differance if I would put that layer and just type in bunch of stuff in it and hide it. You know, soft of like typing the keywords on the bottom of the page.. but you wouldn't be able to see it...

MAX

Ducati, it's correct that most of the search engines "read" content and compare it to the meta tags, as for if the spider would see content in a hidden layer, I'd say yes. Remember that a spider is "just" a little program that reads your code, it doesn't look at the page the way you do.

However, it does read normal HTML-tags and know how prioritize according to them, what they can do is to read the metatags, then search for the <h> tags on the page and then use the content in and between them to compare with the metatags to decide if the tags and the content matches (stops use of non relevant metatags).

Basically you need to place "real" content in the hidden div formatted correctly. Remember that all of this will be visible to older, and non-css browsers though.

You can read some more here: http://www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorials/approval/wbtgd/design_8.html
/Dan

{cell 260}
-{ a vibration is a movement that doesn't know which way to go }-

Thanks!

Do you guys think I should be worried about older browsers? I mean...how old can we go? LOL

Thanks for your help!

MAX

Heh. You'd be surprised.

Well I am at the stage (or at least I am slowly getting there) that I dont' care anymore about old (3.0) browsers.. I mean commmmoooonnnn.... we are on what? IE 6.0 now? lol Gezzz.. even when you use AOL they upgrade your browser. Most of the ISPs have automatic updates and things like that...

I am also starting to think twice about the whole 800 by 600 deal...How many people do you think still use this resolution? I know probably a lot...but is it a majority of internet users?

anyways...sorry about the rambling... and thanks for all your help..

I finally understand the whole robots.txt deal hehehe

MAX

Last I heard, 800x600 was used by around 80% of internet users, since it's the default windows resolution (up to XP) and most users don't know how to change it.



Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it - Philip K Dick
Cell number: 698

well, my winXP showed 1024x768 after the installation.

It's only WinXP that sets high-res as default - hence the (up to XP) comment.

:P

Ducati: Just to give you a frame of reference, here are some stats on resolution and browsers. Note that these are not gospel, just the statistics for the 290,701,170 people who visited TheCounter.com in September.

If you're trying to improve your ranking why not create links to targeted pages within you site.
Example, target is Web Design

Your page without much content has text links to other pages within your site so notmuchcontent.html would have a text link to web design

Page name is web_design.html
Page Title is: Web Design by ducati your source for WEB DESIGN, (some engines distinguish between case)
Meta tags have: web, design, Web Design, WEB, DESIGN, etc..
First line of text on the page in H1 "Web Design"( text != color of background, se algorithms will ignore it as spam unless you use a background image that matches the color of your text)
Alt tags on all images have variations on combinations of 'web design'
Images on your page are named web_design.jpg, Web_Design.gif, Web.jpg, etc...

If you really want to optimize for search engines here is a usefull link
http://www.tutormatrix.com/se.html

FYI its geared toward adult webmasters who are competing so fiercely for page rank under those 'magic' terms, definitely a good place to learn how to get listed for any industry.

I guess I didnt really answer your 800x600 layer question but I hope this helps anyway..

Ducati: Yes you can hide a DIV full of keywords on your page and robots will hoover up the words. However, it is also something search engines don't like and human indexing might spot this and penalise you - as I always say about such dubious practices is that the porn industry (and other people on the front line of the battle to fool search enignes) has probably been using similar tricks for a while which means they are more likely to be spotted (the last thing you want is to have to tell your client that their poor search engine ranking is due to your trying to fool the search engines). I'd stick by the rules and make sure there are the right keywords in:

1. TITLE

2. ALT

3. TITLE

4. METATAGS - keyword, description and abstract.

5. Your content and inside important HTML tags - like H1, B/STRONG and I/EM.

You don't need a lot of content on your page for search engines - in fact shorter content is preferrable as long as the content is tightly focused, relevant and contains your keywords. If there is no content (like a splash screen) then it is a waste of your most important page and so it might worth rethinking your ideas if that is the case

That should get you reasonable ranking depending on how fierce the competition is for the keywords you are aiming at. If search engine rankings are really so important then buy keywords from pay-per-click companies (Overture) or even pay a SEO expert.

Also the box will still take up space if you use visibility and display doesn't work in NS4.x and other older browsers.

I don't think now is yet the time to design beyond 800x600 for every day designs - people are still using smaller resolutions and this is a nice compromise. You should think about making the design liquid if making it fit on higher resolutions is important to you.

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor