When I do a Google search on the web, I've noticed that sometimes some of the hits seem to be on text buried deep within the article, while other times it is limited to the search word appearing in just the title. Is this something a creative webmaster can influence when designing a web page (i.e., set the site up to get more "hits")? Would different search engines (like Yahoo, Altavista, etc.) get different results depending on what the webmaster had set up in his page design?

Take a look at this article:

Search Engine Placement Tips

Harish, that article was helpful (thanks), but the question I have concerns text deep within the article. To use the author's example of a page on stamp collecting--If I searched for "Queen Victoria" (a common subject of stamp designs), might I find that page on stamp collecting depending on what the web designer did? Is that what the author means by:

"...Finally, consider "expanding" your text references, where appropriate. For example, a stamp collecting page might have references to "collectors" and "collecting." Expanding these references to "stamp collectors" and "stamp collecting" reinforces your strategic keywords in a legitimate and natural manner. Your page really is about stamp collecting, but edits may have reduced its relevancy unintentionally."

In other words, should the designer strive to compile a lengthy list of possible "hit" words?

I write and maintain a website with about 700 pages as part of my work and haven't bothered with adding keywords between meta tags. From time to time I might try a Google search on a page and can be pleasantly surprised at how high the page rates, I just tried one just now, I picked a subject at random and my page was halfway down the second page of Google (UK).

I then tried a 'vanity search' by typing in my own name and it was the very top item and the next was 8th from the top (actually me and not someone of the same name) - not bad out 3,920 items returned, that was the UK, when I tried the whole of Google I dropped to 2nd place and a couple of entries on the 4th page - out of 38,100!

I have seen adverts (or been spammed by them) offering to ensure our website is well placed in the search engines, I am not sure that it is worthwhile and plenty of people find us when they don't actually want us at all.

The website I write is all text, that must make a difference, if I had mostly text then I would be inclined to put some keywords between meta tags.

Ah, I just did a worldwide Google for our very own Tellywellies (using his real name) and he is at the very top, in fact he is the top three at least (then they go 'foreign')!

META tags = A way of hiding text that search engines can make use of for ranking purposes.
Ranking = How high in search engine’s listing a web site is.
Keywords = Words that might be typed into a search engine when looking for information on a subject.

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In other words, should the designer strive to compile a lengthy list of possible "hit" words?

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The first paragraph here doesn’t really answer your original question about buried text (read on) but just for information purposes:

It does help to have a good number of keywords within the META tags of a web page. It may influence how high a site is ranked in a search engine’s listings. Not all search engines support all META tags but it’s best to include them in web page design. Search engines compare the words within the tags to page content. The more the page content relates to the words within the META tags, the higher some search engines will rank it. However, it is the page title along with the body text that mostly determines ranking.

It’s reckoned that Google has billions (about 2) of fully indexed pages. The entire text of these can be searched for words matching your search terms. It has millions of others that are not fully indexed as regards full text searches. These are retrieved if your search terms match their titles or other pages linked to them. All pretty amazing stuff! Other search engines, although not so large, all operate in about the same way.

Perhaps these facts more answer the original question. Search engines will find a page for you no matter how deeply the words of your search are buried within the body text. It probably doesn’t take into account whether it matches any title or META tags. The chances are that a relevant title will accompany the search results but, because of the way search engines work, it isn’t necessarily going to.

When the search keywords are buried in the page somewhere, they can usually be found using the ‘Find in this page’ facility of the browser. I have occasionally found there is a downfall though. Perhaps it happens when the keywords are in a page that is linked to the page being displayed. The search engine doesn’t follow the link and open that page since the contents probably aren’t fully indexed. Then, when you use the ‘Find in this page’ search, the keywords can’t be found anywhere. Oh well, can't have everything I suppose

This has been very helpful. I chose some phrases from my own site, and they either popped up at the top, or not at all. Interestingly, the title raised nothing on all, but buried text, if unusual, worked on Google and Yahoo every time but nothing on Ask or Altavista. I wonder if you need to register with some before they can see your site?

Try typing 'torpedo summer spent in lidos' , if you get a hit, then it's me! (obscure song lyrics, in case anybody wondered).

Thanks very much to all who responded. My knowledge on this subject has taken a giant step forward.

Take a look at the source for FunTrivia's homepage to see how I have optimized the trivia keyword. We're ranked #1 in google and lots of other search engines under 'trivia'

Terry

Terry, only fitting the #1 site for trivia should be listed as such!

I went to the main Funtrivia page and checked the source code, I see how you have it well covered!

For those who don't know how to check source code, go to View, then Page Source. You will see how the page is coded. This was how I taught myself html about eight years ago, I would find a page with features I wanted to use then checked the source code to find out how it was done, easy.

I made a bit of a science of how to get highly ranked in search engines. Firstly, the secret is to think of the most likely keywords someone would type when they are looking for your category of site.

Then try and include the keywords within the title tag of the Home Page. Also include them in the 'description' META tags. In the 'keywords' META tags, include the same words along with any others you think people might type. Then, most importantly, try to include all (or as many as possible) keywords and title words in the body text as often as possible. Preferably, get some in the top paragraph.

Finally, don't just wait for the site to get spidered at sometime. Register it with a number of search engines.

I'm going to use my TV and Video recorder repairs site as an example, not only because I never miss a trick to get it noticed but also because the above strategy has worked well. I thought that the most likely things people might type when they had faults would be: TV faults - video faults - TV & video faults - TV & video faults advice (the title).

Type TV & video faults advice into Google and my site comes up number one. Type in any of the other phrases and it will be on the first two pages.

The reason it that, even though the text on the Home Page can't be termed 'voluminous', words like: television - video - faults - repairs are mentioned frequently. This makes the site highly relevant to the subject, which is just what search engines like. Hence the high ranked listing.

Just for the heck of it I tried a Google search for root17 (my ID) and several FunTrivia sites were found (including my bio and entire quiz list as #1)! How did that happen?

There are web robots crawling the Net all the time indexing pages. This is what will have happened here. The pages with your ID in them will have been visited.

Typing your ID is a very specialised search, so it is likely only to bring up the pages that contain it. These are the pages that are here.

Thanks for the explanation, Tellywellies. If a webmaster puts up a new web page today and it had the exact same Meta tags as an old established web page that had been around for years, would a search engine be equally likely to find both in a search tomorrow?

If both pages had been indexed by a wandering robot, or had been submitted using different URLs, then both might be listed near each other. There are points to consider though. Firstly, although some search engines might take notice of META tags in a web page, they don't just look at those alone. More important is the relevance of the title and entire text of a page to your search keywords (or how many times your keywords are mentioned within the page). So a site just relying on meta tags alone would not be listed as highly, if at all.

Some sites or web pages get a high ranking without any META tags at all (like Sue's). I suspect this will be for two reasons:

1. The subject is very relevant to any keywords typed to find such a site.
2. The way search engines work has changed as time has gone by (even since I read up on it a couple of years ago).

META tags were once the thing to get right. However, opinions vary as to how useful the 'Keywords' tag is now. This article suggests that there isn't alot of point in using it at all. Other articles and forums say that the Keywords META tag should still be included. I think I would always include it in a web page but not rely on it too heavily for gaining a presence on the web.

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Would different search engines (like Yahoo, Altavista, etc.) get different results depending on what the webmaster had set up in his page design?

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It would vary. I tried searching for "Andy713" on Google and Altavista. Altavista does get a lot of results, but it only got 2 results and Google got atleast 10 because I'm known as Andy713 in other places.