If JavaScript code makes up the first several hundred characters on your page, you should use <META> tags to provide a description for your page. An indexing agent’s search logic is programmed to place more emphasis on the text located at the top of your page than the content it combs through towards the bottom. D. Use ALT tags especially if your site contains multiple photos or graphic-image maps at the top of your home page. Some search engines will take into account the text within an ALT tag when creating your site’s description and keywords. In addition, you will be greatly appreciated by all people who visit your site with their Auto Load Images option turned off or by those who prefer to use character browsers. ALT tags are placed after an image file and generally look like the following: <img src=”/images/submits.gif” alt=”Submit It! : Web site marketing services and tools.”> E. If your site utilizes frames, you should be aware that search engines treat frames as if they are links within your main page. As a result the engines will review and index your main page and, at a later date, return to index each individual frame just as it will return to index all other internal links within your web site. Therefore, in order to have your main page (typically titled index.htm or ) indexed accurately and efficiently, we recommend that you add some descriptive text between the tags of the HTML source coding of your main page. The noframes tags are usually placed below your frame set information. The frame set information is designated by and . This text should include your most important keywords and keyword phrases. Adding this text will provide the search engines with content from which to derive keywords for indexing. After this change has been made to your Web site, the page itself will appear exactly the same to anyone using a browser that supports frames. However, users of browsers that do not support frames (i.e. Netscape 1.0 or lower) will now be able to successfully view your home page.
At the present time, Excite does not make use of <META> tags. Since keywords and summaries are automatically generated by Excite, you have less control over their creation. However, there are still a few things you can do. Excite’s software looks for common words or themes within a page. It then selects sentences for the summary that either contain these words or convey the overall theme. The words within these sentences are also used as keywords for which the site can be searched.
InfoSeek Ultra will make use of <META> tags allowing you to control the description that appears in a search result as well as guide its web indexing in the selection of your site’s keywords. If you do not make use of <META> tags, Ultra will simply use the first few words it comes across as your Web site summary.
WebCrawler relies on the statement within the <TITLE> tag to use for the name of your page. While other search engines will derive a summary from the <BODY> text of the document, Web Crawler will default to the URL if you fail to include a title. In conclusion, do not make it your goal to appear in the top ten list of every search engine. This would not only be a very difficult task, but would most likely end in disappointment. You are virtually guaranteed to have varying success rates with different search engines due to the collection of variables that play a role in every search result. These variables include size of database, method used for determining relevancy, policy on spamming, use of <META> tags and more. Hence, optimize your listings by capitalizing on the indexing criteria shared by search engines. If you have a favorite or preferred search engine that you feel strongly about being yielded as high as possible in a search, customize your Web pages accordingly. Just keep in mind that this might lessen your perceived relevancy on another.