search engines / subject text on the page

[mat]

I have never liked the term 'search engine optimization' as the subject always seems tacky & competitive. the thing is as i make my first 'real' site for a friend I realize this is actually quite important since no matter how great the site is if people can't find it then what's the point. anyway you already know this so gettng to the point..

meta tags and titles are standard yeh? but occasionally i see a page with a block of text, filled with phrases and keywords sitting at the bottom of the page. I'm guessing this is becuase certain search engines like google actually search the text on web pages right? so i guess it makes sense. But is it sort of frowned upon by search engines? and why don't i see it being done on other pages if it works, i mean in theory you could do this and make the text the same color as the background, just doing it for say the index page or 'enter' page if you have one etc.

what do people think of this?

The index page of the site i am making where i obviously want people to arrive first (partly flash site) actually holds a sniffer script and re-directs so i thought it may be a good idea to put some keywords etc on this index page (same color as background) :confused:

[joh6nn]

it's not just frowned upon by google, it'll get you dropped from their index if they catch you, and if you do it more than once, they may ban you from google. other search engines have similar policies. what works for google ( and in theory, for most of the rest ), is link-exchange. you find people who will link to you, and link to them in exchange. take out an ad in the paper. try entering yourself in a free-banner rotation program, or maybe an in-expensive one. harass the elderly on the street, proclaiming the end of the world, and the benefits of your site. things like that.

but don't use "search-engine-optimization" techniques, like those blocks of text at the bottom of the page. they're tacky, and will only hurt you in the end ( not to mention look really bad on the site )

[MCookie]

There's a difference between optimizing and spamming.

Nothing wrong with putting keywords in your title tag, meta tags, headers and text. Trying to get higher ranked sites to link to you. Making your site easy to spider. No JavaScript links, make a sitemap. You have to. If you don't, no one will find your page at any search engine because it's simply ranked too low. If you want visitors from search engines, you have to be at the first three pages of the search results.

Spamming is using 'illegal' techniques like cloaking (serving different pages for spiders), invisible text, off-screen positioned divs stuffed with keywords, putting all your text between H1 font-size 10px tags, using 1x1 linked pixels with keywords in alt tags and so on. Spamming is bad..

[zoobie]

It's probably a way to get more 'content' on the page. Anyway, if you look here (http://searchengineforums.com/bin/Ultimate.cgi), you'll find the latest legit techniques for several major engines. :D

[mat]

o.k thanks for clearing it up. :)