Keywords on Homepage

[peterinwa]

I read that it is important to have your significant keywords appear in the text on your homepage, but I have no text on my homepage. It consists of gif links to my other pages.

Would it help if I included the keywords in ALT or TITLE in my gif links?

Thanks, Peter

[edited by: Marcia at 6:20 am (utc) on Sep. 15, 2003]
[edit reason] No specifics, please. [/edit]

[mil2k]

but I have no text on my homepage

Try and put some text on your home page. It helps to some extent.

Would it help if I included the keywords in ALT or TITLE in my gif links?

That should help a little but nothing is as good as having 100 to 200 words of Keyword optimized text on your home page. HTH :)

[albert]

I would go for text on your homepage, and for text links with key words in anchor text.

[2_much]

Peter, text on your home page is essential for rankings. Keywords in alt tags are helpful for secondary keyword phrases, but they only kick in when there are very few pages on the web containing those keywords. The home page usually has more power than any of your internal pages, and not have text (especially anchor text), is a serious hindrance for your SE rankings.

[peterinwa]

Thanks everyone for the input. I guess I'll add a perfect little paragraph describing my site -- full of keywords. I never had one because it is obvious what my site is about from the links, and I've loved keeping my homepage VERY simple.

Does the text actually have to appear on the page? Or will the spider find it okay if it's within an HTML comment? Just a thought.

What brought this all up was my discovery that more people search for "weight loss" than "calories," so I decided to start emphasizing "weight loss" as a keyword and wanted to know how to do it. So I posted.

Just for everyone's info -- so you know it can happen -- as I say I have had NO text on my homepage and yet for a long time now I come up #1 in the Google search results searching for "calories." An accomplishment which has kept me pretty happy, and one which I guess must be credited to all the links to my page.

Thanks for your help, Peter

P.S.

I presently don't show at all in results if you search for "weight loss!"

[seofreak]

Does the text actually have to appear on the page? Or will the spider find it okay if it's within an HTML comment? Just a thought.

Can the visitor see it? no .. and so can't google

[peterinwa]

I have another question.

Does it matter if my text is in the form of a single paragraph?

I have five gif links. Would it be just as good to spread the text out -- one sentence below each of the five links -- as to have it altogether in one paragraph?

I assume either would be okay.

Thanks.

[pnlla_rav]

The key word Density should not exceed 12% .. as I believe.

[mil2k]

The key word Density should not exceed 12% .. as I believe.

No hard and fast rules. Just don't forget the real visitors and you will arrive on your KW density naturally. :)

[Gus_R]

You can place alt= tags in your gif links, it will be spidered and considered as anchor text for inner pages also.

<a href=...><img src=... alt=...></a>

[hutcheson]

Google doesn't care whether the text is all in one paragraph, or broken up into several small ones.

[peterinwa]

Thanks Hutcheson