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Chris, I don't know of any problems with that, but it's unnecessary to have it there - it won't do any good. You only need the description, keywords and robots tags.
You are dealing with highly competitve words - all I can suggest is that you dig in and do a lot of studying.
>Any other suggestions.
Just some basic guidelines that I go by (not at all authoritative, just for my use):
Words that appear in the keywords tag should also be appearing in the page text. If they're not in the page text I don't use them.
No more than 3 repetitions of a keyword in the keywords tag (3 words in between repetitions is a good rule of thumb). Keyword used once, maybe twice in the title, twice in the description is OK.
Less is better - using too many keywords on a page dilutes it's importance. Limit the number on a given page.
Keep the keyword density of the page text between 5-9% - make sure and use the keywords in the first paragraph.
If you look at pages in a good sampling of the Google cache, you'll see the keywords highlighted, and notice that they're pretty well sprinkled throughout the page's text. The density is not high - it's the distribution pattern that seems to be important.
IMHO, this is being used to determine content relevance of the total page. If it were subject to human review, I believe they would look at that. In other words, the *context* in which the words are used.
Dig in and keep reading - all the info you need is here to be found.
Neither search engine shows any inbound links for your site. I'd make this the first order of business -- Google states clearly that they will not include pages that have no inbound links.
If there are linking pages which haven't been indexed, submit those URLs to Google and Alta. If there aren't, you need to arrange for some. This will also help in Inktomi.
Good luck, that's a tough field to compete in.
Chris Burgess.
It can happen that keyword density beyond a certain point can set off filters and hinder inclusion. Also, make certain that if a given word is repeated on a page there are a sufficient number of other words in between repetitions. On your site I would not go above 5%. And in your description meta tag, stay with ony one or two repetitions of a word.
Also, you might want to go up to the top of the page here to the search and look up stop words. Having them in your search phrase is a factor to be considered when checking.
David
There is a whole forum dedicated to FAST and Lycos here with a tremendous amount of specific information available. Here's a link to one of the threads there, with some basic information:
[webmasterworld.com...]
>Does FAST and Directhit only index meta tag keywords
There are many factors figured in to indexing, there could not be just one used. I would have to state "No" on this. I've had pages ranking on FAST with no meta keywords tag at all.
(Direct Hit I know absolutely nothing about.)
>Would I be better removing the keywords meta tags completely?
David, if something is working for you to any extent, if it were me I would not change it, particularly by removing something that could be contributing to the results.
Is there anything you can, instead, add to the site to get the other words picked up, such as a glossary of some sort. I think *adding* rather than changing or removing anything could possibly work.
Are you saying that all - each and every one - of those words comes up in other search engines, just not FAST and DirectHit?
Thanks for your advice, I will leave well the tags where they are and consider your suggestion of adding.
Yes, at the moment there are some 245 unique callsigns listed on my site. Entry of any one of these in either Google or AltaVista will produce a result, usually in the top 3. Lycos and FAST produce no result at all in a lot of cases unless of course the callsign is within the text of someone elses site then their site will appear in the results.
Many Thanks
David
