1) Use keywords within the link portion of your href tags. Example: keyword

Include at least two links on the page that includes the keyword you are targeting. HotBot appears to assign greater relevancy to keywords it finds in links.

2) Place keywords within the URL. www.keyword.com is ideal, but www.mydomain.com/keyword.htm will help too. Be sure to separate multiple keywords with a period or dash such as blue-widgets.htm or blue.widgets.htm.

To illustrate this theory, do a search on the word "volcano" on HotBot without the quotes. You should see a large number of pages in the top 10 which include the word volcano in their domain name. Not all of the matching Web sites include this keyword, but many do. Now go and look at the second set of 10 matches. Many of the URLs there include the keyword in their PAGE NAME. Based on this, and other tests, there's sufficient evidence to suggest that using the keyword within your URL will help.

3) The meta Keyword and the meta Description tags are both very important to HotBot. Be sure to include both of them, and list variations and synonyms of your keyword. Do not go overboard in keyword repetition in the meta tags. One to three occurrences of the same keyword is sufficient.

4) Go easy on the total number of keywords you place on the page. Try not to let your keyword count exceed 2% of the total words in the body area for HotBot. This is called "keyword weight." Engines vary on what weight they want to see, but often its in the 1-5% range.

Placing keywords in the URL, link text, and domain name can help with other engines too. Therefore, make it a habit to include these keyword placements in all your pages when you can.

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