The Six Dirty Secrets to Fooling the Search Engines

by Michael Declan Dunn (dunn@writething.com)

Copyright © 1996 Michael Declan Dunn. All rights reserved.

Search engines look for one thing: words. They count words to determine relevance of a Web site. The following are some tricks that will fool some search engines. They all have different approaches, but the bottom line is that they count words. These tricks work and may help your site get found. Remember that search engines are adapting their approach to some of these tricks, but many are foolproof. The bottom line is, do they help your site generate traffic and help your audience find what they are looking for? The most unique sites are those easy to find.

The drawback is that these tricks may not help your site if you are confusing people when they search. Some people are abusing them; some are using them right. I don't guarantee these will all work, since the search engines keep changing. But the truth is the search engines just count words; if you can hide them and use enough keywords, you may get your page to register on a search. You are on your own with this one, but some of these tricks have worked for me.

Secret 1: Use the <META> Commands

Take a deep breath; this isn't about code, it's about keywords. At the top of every Web page is the following code:

<HEAD>

<TITLE>The Title of Your Web Site, Appearing at the Top of the Page</TITLE>

</HEAD>

You need to add to this; add the <META> statements. There are several types, but only two that really help. They are <META NAME="Description"> and <META NAME="Keywords">

<HEAD>

<TITLE>The Title of Your Web Site, Appearing at the Top of the Page</TITLE>

<META NAME="Description" Content="This is where you can really describe your site. Otherwise, the search engine will just print what's on your front page, which really looks garbled. Go to a search engine and see what I mean. With this statement, you'll get about two sentences to describe your Web site, which many search engines will show .">

<META NAME ="Keywords" Content="Marketing online Michael Declan Dunn Web Letter publishing content development expert marketing marketing marketing marketing marketing marketing publishing publishing publishing publishing publishing Web Web Web Web">

</HEAD>

Warning: notice how I repeated keywords only seven times; InfoSeek has decided more than this will indicate that a site is faking them out. Also, just worry about the first few sentences or series of words; your visitor will never see more than 25-30 words anyway, so go for it and request that the search engine revisit your site once this has been added. If you have someone else put up your page, just send them the words and this description; they'll know what to do with it. If they don't, they should learn. It's easy and this is the most important tool to use.

Secret 2. Repeat Words Throughout Your Web Page and Site

Search engines can only read words and count them. The search engines are dumb computer programs that do what their programmers tell them to. There are no smart search engines that judge content, except for Yahoo which has people personally look through sites that are submitted. Use this to your advantage; be sure to repeat appropriate phrases enough to elicit a count of being rated as relevant, based on the number of times a specific word appears on your physical page. But there are ways to put in words that don't "appear." Read on to learn about the dirty tricks.

Secret 3. The Dirty Tricks: Images and Comments

Images give a great place to insert key words. The code is as follows:

<IMG SRC="whatever.gif" HEIGHT=59 WIDTH=60 ALT="Describe the graphic, then stick in your keywords like crazy. The search engines will read them and all the viewer will see, if the graphic doesn't appear, are the first few words.">

This trick is a great one, because it hides words and never puts them on the physical page.

Comments are another great way to insert words; I learned this one from the Discovery Channel page, which used the following (I actually edited this a bit for reading):

<nature nature nature nature nature>

This code is called a comment, which never appears on the Web page. You can see it in the code, but how many of your audience are looking at the code? Comments are used on the Web to separate sections of code.

So why not be a hacker-like user of keywords and stick in those empty spaces the keywords that will make the search engines think your page is more relevant? No one will send you to jail for it because it's not illegal, and it might help you avoid getting lost like a needle in the haystack of competitive Web sites.

Secret 4: Another Dirty Trick: The Tried and True Way to Use <PRE> to Really Fool the Search Engines

The <PRE></PRE> command allows you to format and set up text on the Web, exactly as it appears in your word processor. The only problem is that it gives a weird computer font that isn't worth using. That is, unless you want to fool the search engines.

Some people use the <PRE> command to set up hundreds of key words on their page. They do this by simply going into a word processor and typing two pages of carriage returns (hit the return key over and over), then inserting their keywords, as many as they want. They then put the <PRE> command before the beginning of the page and a </PRE> command at the end. For the Web, this translates into empty space at the bottom of the page, which if scrolled to will lead to all the keywords. If you indicate to the audience the page has ended, it is unlikely that they will scroll and discover all those keywords. This is better than putting them in plain view on your Web Page, which really looks weird.

Secret 5: Submit Individual Pages in Your Web Site

This is an old trick; you submit individual pages at your site to the search engines. For many search engines such as Lycos, InfoSeek, AltaVista, Excite, and others this is not needed. They send out their "bots" to your site to count words and will look through each page. But for some search engines, it doesn't hurt to submit individual pages so that people can find specific information. That way they don't have to just find you through your home page, the whole enchilada, but can come in the back door for a specific article, product, or service. That way you make the most out of your site.

Secret 6: Get Links to Your Web Site

Lycos does an interesting thing; it considers a site good if it has lots of links to it. Be sure to get your links out there. The real search engine is the mind of a prospective visitor. And this trick shows that fooling the search engines often doesn't have anything to do with them; work on building your Web site, and building up links to your site. This is better advice than adapting to any search engine's rules. Build your Web site by building links, and words, that lead search engines to you.

P.S. With Netscape, you can also use the <FONT COLOR=> Command to change the color of your keywords to match the background, like white print on a white background. Be warned, though: if the viewer doesn't have Netscape or Internet Explorer, you could look stupid.

Michael Declan Dunn is a Web publisher/trainer/designer online with a newsletter called The Web Letter. He can be reached at The Web Letter by The Write Thing. Stop by his other Web site, A Cybrary of the Holocaust.