Hidden Input

Search Engine Tactics
(v. 2.2)

5. Hidden Input

You've probably figured out by now, that it will be hard to include all of your keywords in the first portion of your webpage without looking silly. Especially if you use graphics at the top of your page.

There are many sites out there that simply list keywords at the top of their page. You will be hard pressed to do this in an aesthetic manner.

There are many ways around this, but the most invisible to the web surfer is the "hidden input" tag.

The tags need to go in the body of the web page, (that is, between <body> and </body>) and look like this:

Some search engines will recognize this whereas others will not (you must analyze to find out which ones do and which don't). The nice thing about this is that it's totally invisible to the web surfer, and the search engines that recognize it will weight this information the same as regular text in your document.

This should be the first thing after the <body> tag, before anything else. Some search engines only look at the first 2,000 or so characters in a document, so you need to get this in there before any graphic tags. (For a detailed description of how each engine looks at your page, see the Submission Sniper in 1001 Killer Internet Marketing Tactics.)

Warning: Some search engines will penalize your site for hiding keywords! I wouldn't use this tactic on all of your pages. Try it on one or two and check the results. If it doesn't help, don't do it. Remember, search engines are changing the rules all the time!

The only way to know what works is to test. If you find a formula that works, use it again. Keep close track of what you're doing.

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