Altavista: Link Pop, Meta, and content

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Not sure if or where this has been specifically posted. It's been talked about a lot over time but just for those who might have missed it.

Page Content and Link Popularity [help.altavista.com]

These static factors are recomputed about once a week, and new good pages slowly percolate upward in the rankings. Note that there are advantages to having a simple address and sticking to it so others can build links to it, and so you know that it's in the index

METAtags, which are treated as ordinary words in the text that appear early in the page (unless the METAtags are patently unrelated to the content on the page itself, in which case the page will be penalized).

Keep in mind that in any query, rare words count more than common words. If someone searches for fruit and pomegranates, pages with the word pomegranates will appear at the top of the list (a technique known as "inverse document frequency"). Hence you should use specific terms on your pages, in your anchors, and in your METAtags, not general ones that won't give you any advantage. Be specific whenever you can.

Their help section changes fairly frequently so be sure to check up on it from time to time.