I was talking to the techs and they told me that Google will look at
and take into consideration the Meta Name keywords, but it doesn't
index them...
Jenn, use the source, in this case, Google itself. Don't rely on techs.
Straight from Matt Cutts, Google Search Quality Team:
"Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see
no need to change that policy."
URL: <
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-
not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html>
You may want to point your techs to that information.
Also, content that is brought in via code like AJAX
boxes IS indexed by google because the content is seen by google
although it's displayed via something like an AJAX box.
Que? It's simple, if the content is generated via javascript, Google
cannot access it - period.
They
evidently feel that the Meta Name keywords is still applicable as far
as google goes, and they also feel that content displayed as I said
above is indexed by google and other search engines just fine.
There may be other SEs that use keywords, but they are not mainstream.
If you were building some sort of application for an Intranet, you could
use keywords. As for Google, see above.
I have done a bit of research and there can be other methods of
*hiding* keywords on site pages so a search engine like google will
index the page even if it isn't indexing the meta name keywords, not
the only method search engines index sites, or the navigation is using
a method google doesn't like, as some have said with javascript navs,
which is of course.
NEVER attempt to hide keywords. Your site will be penalized and removed
from the index. I know. When I first hired by the company I am with to
increase SERPs, their "tech" had hidden the keywords using white on
white. The company was not in the index AT ALL. I had to write a very
apologetic letter to Google, saying that the over sight had been fixed,
and the person responsible would no longer be writing any markup. It
still took two more letters, and four months before the site again
appeared in results.
Don't use doorway pages, pages specially crafted for SEs, duplicate
content, or participate in link schemes.
URL: <
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?
hl=en&answer=35769>
One method I found particularly interesting was inserting text with a
small font and the same color as the background within the page and
insert keywords into that text. At any rate, there are many ways to
get pages indexed and found by search engines.
See above.