Keyword lists at bottom of page?

(but should I be doing it?)

[giggle]

In an effort to push up throught the SERPs I made a list of the key words I would like users to find us using, and placed them at the bottom of my page. Not hidden, black bold font on a light blue cell background.

The results were really quite good, althought it looks a bit ugly. We moved up on all the phrases that I listed.

Does Google allow this or will I eventually be penalised?

[The_Hitcher]

Waynet - the penalty was TOTAL removal from Google Index. Trust me, don't do this. Go for a pyramid structure and rich content - much safer

[jackofalltrades]

You know, I did mock the idea of it in my post up there, but I have seen sites use the technique before and I think it is fair enough.

One site I saw was for a Scottish town.

Now, if any of you know your Scottish geography, you will know that a lot of towns are difficult to spell (especially for tourists - those who the site was aimed at).

So, by offering mispellings, the webmaster is in fact making his page available to those who were looking for it.

Therefore relevant search results.

Chances are that 99% of the searches (no matter the spelling) for this guy are looking for his site or his work, so by catering for mis-spellings he is providing them (or enabling SE's to provide them) with what they were looking for.

It's not like it's a highly competitive / generic keyword! :)

On the flip side though - I don't think we (as webmasters) should be catering for that - relevant results are the responsibility of the search engines so they should be catering for mis spellings.

My 2 c! :)

JOAT

[NFFC]

giggle, imho you may be on shakey ground, I'd look for a more elegant solution.

>drop the Axe on old Jakob?

hehe, I think he will be alright. Remember the SE's prime directive, if it contains substantial unique content then don't nuke.

[edited by: NFFC at 12:00 am (utc) on Jan. 14, 2003]

[chiyo]

Dont forget you can put mispellings into your legitimate copy too!

eg. on a page on the Philippines...

"[note] Sometimes people miss-spell The <B>Philippines</B> as <B>Phillipines</B> or even <B>Phillippines</B> and <B>Philipines</B>. Make sure you spell it right!"

[Powdork]

Powdork, because his home page is PR 9 it is actually quite difficult to beat this site when searching for these different spellings. I checked a few of his spellings and some beat other pages with the mispelled name in the title.

Yes, I searched too. Look at Jakob Nilsen. The sites below his with the name in the title do have problems. Their not in english or they have no content. If you search for Jacob Nielsen he gets two pages at the top but neither of these pages has the word Jacob anywhere except meta keywords. That tells us either 1.Google is counting meta keywords (naahh) or 2. People link to him with "Jacob" in the anchor text. In that case he's gonna rank well for those misspellings regardless of the keywords.

[snowfox121]

I used to have a huge list of keywords at the bottom of my pages, but it didn't make a very big difference in the engines and i had trouble sleeping. (It was NOT hidden text.)

So i cleaned it all up and i now have about 4 words on one of my pages. They are legitimate wrong spellings of keywords that exist all over the rest of the same page.

Even with a manual inspection by Google, i doubt i would be penalized for this. It is not hidden, except by being off the usual part of the page, and is clearly intended to help searchers find the sort of information they want.

[lazyz]

Jakob sure has some great page rank! eight?

microtext... good idea... maybe not!

[giggle]

Ok, you have scared me off this approach.

It is a shame as I was getting great results from it, but I can't risk getting the site banned.

When I look in the cache version of the SERPs I see the keyword list already there. Now that I'm removing this list will the new version (without the keyword list) be used for the next rebuild or will it be based on the currently cached (8th Jan) version?

Whimper, whimper

[piskie]

Looking at his meta tags, I noticed he had a "Title=xxx" in 2 <link> tags.

Does this do anything?

[running scared]

Wouldn't Google be seeking to put less emphasis on micro text in the algo rather than seek to ban all individually? But with PR 9 even text getting next to no "points" will still do pretty well on uncompetitive phrases.

[WibbleWobble]

I noticed he had a "Title=xxx" in 2 <link> tags.
Does this do anything?

Only specifies to the browser which stylesheets are preferred, alternate and persistant, and stuff. It shouldn't be counted towards ranking at all.

[Artstart]

Only specifies to the browser which stylesheets are preferred, alternate and persistant, and stuff. It shouldn't be counted towards ranking at all.

You'd be surprised..........
It's also very useful for the page which this link is pointed to.

[Hagstrom]

Ok, you have scared me off this approach.

Scared - why? Because the thread has turned into a I-hate-Jakob-Nielsen filibuster?
I'm surprised Brett hasn't moved the thread to Foo yet.

In the mean time, take a look at the Google Do's and Dont's [google.com]

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
  (Well, maybe you should use a slightly larger font than Jakob :)
  
• Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
  How can wrong spellings be construed as "irrelevant words"?
  

[Brett_Tabke]

I found it all rather amusing.

But what if your name were the same as Jacobs? Just what about all the other Neilsens and Neilsons out there?

Crash has it:

> and no reason to drop it down so far on the page -
> unless of course he didn't want it found.

It *is* search engine spam.

[atadams]

I would be scared off either. As long as it's not stuffing of keywords and it's a normal size, I think your OK. On a couple of my sites I put a "related topics" list and link them to other pages in my site. And they are actually related, so the users do benefit.

and I do hate Jakob Nielsen! :)

[atadams]

and no reason to drop it down so far on the page - unless of course he didn't want it found.

He put it down there because he thinks (actually, "thinking" brings in the possiblity that he may be wrong) - HE KNOWS users don't scroll!

[Dubya_J]

OK...but what if....

what if good ole Jacob, or jakob or yuakob etc etc whatever

what if he linked his bit of micro text to an external stylesheet, preferably not caled 'microtext' {ding ding..alarm bells, might as well call it SMALL CLASS=cheeky_search_engine_spamming )

and located that extrenal style sheet in a remote folder that you'd search engines rather not peruse by way of a strongly suggestive robots.txt.

Surely knowone would ever know right?

[Hagstrom]

But what if your name were the same as Jacobs? Just what about all the other Neilsens and Neilsons out there?

Suppose my name was Bill Clinton? Then I would also have a hard time being found on the Net.

Jakob has placed the alternate spellings at the bottom of his page - which means that all the Jacob Neilsons in the world are welcome to beat him by putting their names in the TITLE and H1-tags, but searches for "Jacob+Neilson+web+design" will still go to Jakob's page.

[vitaplease]

You are right JOAT.

However he is a usability expert, and therefore must more than daily check his logs for changes in usage from unexpected professional sources. Ample room and time for a reaction and discussion in my opinion.

[chris_f]

At risk of answering the original question and NOT have a go at you know who ;).

Why shouldn't you have keywords at the bottom of you pages for all to see. Macromedia do it [macromedia.com], Microsoft do it [support.microsoft.com] etc ...

Chris

[sem4u]

I can see it now; top referrer webmasterworld.com :)

[Brett_Tabke]

It is an interesting topic of where the line is at and the double standard that exists. What the bigger sites can get away with, while the smaller ones get penalized.

[atadams]

Why shouldn't you have keywords at the bottom of you pages for all to see.

Again, as long as you don't enclose it in a

<SMALL CLASS=microtext>

tag, you should be just fine.

You may also want to avoid these: <SMALL CLASS=HeyGoogleLookHere>, <SMALL CLASS=ButJakobNielsenDoesIt>, <SMALL CLASS=blatantSPAM>, and <SMALL CLASS=SureItsReadable...IfYoureAnAnt>

[chris_f]

Atadams,

There was an error in your last post

<SMALL CLASS=SureItsReadable...IfYoureAnAnt>

Ant's can't hold magnifying glasses in their small arms ;).

Chris

[Jon_King]

I agree with JOAT:

>>>Doing something for the search engines and not your users.....spam?

THE test.

[waynet]

The_Hitcher, were you using very tiny text like he is using?
I didn't notice that the text it used was super small, because it looks normal sized when viewed in netscape 4.x. The text I used on my site was normal sized, so google wouldn't care, right?

[Brett_Tabke]

It reminds me of lisa's:

<meta JediMindTrick="you will rank me number one">

[jackofalltrades]

>However he is a usability expert, and therefore must more than daily check his logs for changes in usage from unexpected professional sources. Ample room and time for a reaction and discussion in my opinion.

Oh come on! :)

Just because there's a chance that he may know about the discussion doesn't make it fair!

There is also the possibility that he hasn't checked his logs for the past few hours, or that they aren't updating that regularly or someone else is performing that task or he is on holiday or he is doing other things.

Ample room and time for discussion in my opinion would be a good few days notice and request to join the discussion before it starts.

This is the equivalent of talking about someone and saying - "well, he lives in this area and walks by here every now and again, so there's ample room and time for him to join the discussion"! :)

On the other hand, he has noticed it and is monitoring it now (or will notice it soon and join the discussion).

In which case he will enter a debate 50-odd posts long where many of the participates have already made their mind up about him.

Is that fair?

JOAT

[atadams]

<meta JediMindTrick="you will rank me number one">

I tried this but evidently my midi-chlorian count is really low.

[Ambiorix]

This is surely the best thread I've ever read here... (just my opinion)...

1) I wonder if GoogleGuy will show up in this thread :)

2) Mr Jakob must IMHO indeed have seen an increase of traffic lately. And should he not find an increase in his amount of visitors we could give a hand.
Let us all place a link on our websites (just an example, other suggestions are appreciated :):

<a href="http://www.useit.com/jakob/" target="_blank" title="Jakob at useit: Greetings from Webmasterworld forum.">Jakob at useit: Greetings from Webmasterworld forum.</a>

We as a SEO community could give him a boost? No bad intention, just a new Google test...

3) I fully agree with Jackofalltrades (msg 60). Let's invite Mr Jakob in our discussion and then pro and contra could be spawned. Otherwise these are all kinda speculations.

Just my 2€cts