What exactly counts as keywords?

Do scripts and styles count?

[itrainu]

I am wondering what exactly counts towards keywords - is it content on page plus the html tags of title, keywords and description?

Or does it include the html behind the scenes such as the content of <style> and <script>? I had read somewhere that it is better to move these two items to a separate page in order to have a cleaner page that you want to have indexed.

Thanks!

itrainu

[Drastic]

>html tags of title, keywords and description?
As far as density, this varies by engine. Some count them, some don't. For optimization they are all important, except for (IMO) the keywords meta.

>Or does it include the html behind the scenes such as the content of <style> and <script>?
Not included in keyword density. Take a look at the Sim Spider [searchengineworld.com] to see how an engine see your content.

>better to move these two items to a separate page
Absolutely. Not necessarily from a keyword density standpoint, but more from a text:code ratio. The less code you have on page, the better off you are.

[itrainu]

Thanks! This is valuable information!

How does one link to an external js page? The script is currently on the index page and I want to cut it and paste it to an external page called scripts.js.

Does the js page start with <script> or with the actual contents of the script?

TIA!

itrainu

[Drastic]

Your link to the external script would look like this:
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript" src="scripts.js"></script>

The external .js file has no <script> tags, just the code.

[ebgreen]

To avoid spam I use style tags and hidden input tags for mispellings or theme based words that are not keywords you are trying to target for optimization.