One interesting comment they made was that AltaVista counts each unique word only TWICE so as to not reward spamming, or excessive repetition of keywords. This does not mean you're penalized for using a keyword more than twice on the page. However, having additional repetitions may not help you if what this document says is true.

AltaVista also tells us, among other things, that:

• Keywords in the title tag, particularly the start of the title, are very important.
• Keywords in the "first few lines" of text are very important.
• Keywords in the Meta tag "do not take precedence," and therefore are less important than the title tag and first few lines of text.
• Links from pages containing the keyword will boost your ranking.

Therefore, you may want to create pages for AltaVista that use the keyword as the first word of the title tag and then use it again at the top of the page. If AltaVista only counts two instances of the keyword, there may be no point in creating a meta keyword tag at all. One could even argue that if AltaVista were to count the meta keyword repetition that is less important than a repetition counted in the beginning of the body, that your relevance would be less than optimal.

With this in mind, you might try removing your meta keyword tag, altogether, for some of your pages created for AltaVista. Leave the meta description tag on the page if you wish AltaVista's summary description to appear a specific way in the search results. However, avoid use of the keyword in that meta description. That way, Altavista is more likely to count your two "allowed" instances of your keyword in the more important areas (i.e., title tag and first couple lines of the body). If you don't, you risk Altavista counting the keyword in the title tag and then again in the less important meta tag. Altavista might never consider the keyword in the body. Whether AltaVista works exactly this way, I'm not certain yet.

So far, our statistical analysis of top ranking pages reveals that a number of sites rank well with the keyword in the meta keyword tag. However, we may update WebPosition Gold to stop generating the meta keyword tag for AltaVista if I can get confirmation that excluding the tag does in fact improve your ranking. Try removing the tag and resubmitting on some of your existing doorway pages that are ranking well or at least in the top 50.

Reply to this newsletter and let me know if removing the meta keyword tag helps you, hurts you, or if your ranking stays the same. Explain your methodology in as much detail as you can. Also mention your Web site address if you would like me to plug your site to 300,000+ subscribers. A little free advertising can be very good for business, so be among those who submit tips that I use in the newsletter! Note: AltaVista takes about 7 to 10 days to re-index a page, so try it as soon as you can. Check the last modified date on the search results to confirm when AltaVista has re-spidered your modified page.

At this point you might be asking, should I simply repeat the keyword twice in the "all important title tag" to get the greatest relevance? My guess is they will check for that and might even penalize for it. Therefore, I'd not expect this simplistic approach to work.

Additional Tip: I'd put the second keyword in a heading tag at the top of the page to potentially boost relevance even more than simply putting it in the body area. Lastly, the more links you can get to your Web site from related Web sites, the better. (Note: Hopefully I'll have more information next month on easy ways to increase the number of links to your Web site).

For more tips on AltaVista that extends beyond what AltaVista gives, see the WebPosition Page Critic.

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