Good ol' Meta Keywords (or not) - Is there an alternative?

Hello again my trusty web friends.

Let me set the scene. I've been asked to make certain pages within a site appear in the search results despite not specifically containing those words. E.g. An article about asbestos when the word volatile is searched for. Nothing deceptive or shady.

In a dusty part of my brain, Meta Keywords emerged. It seems these are now completely ignored (by Google at least). The most important place for it to appear is in the internal results of my Google Custom Search.

Is there a way around it? It doesn't need to appear very high in the search results but it does need to be there.

Thanks.

Getting an article about asbestos to appear simply when the keyword "volatile" is searched for is going to be difficult - especially if it doesn't contain the word volatile anywhere.

The problem is - a one word search will return such a huge amount of results that yours may feature but it may be 65,000th or whatever - which would be in the listing but pointless.

Yes meta tags won't get your site into the rankings on a single keyword.

Why do you need this? it sounds pointless for it to have to be in the rankings but not in a particularly high position - you may as well concentrate on getting the site up in the rankign son the more important keywords.

If this is a job for a cliernt I'd probably have a chat wiht them and explain what you know about SEO and why they'd be better poff investing their money in getting a more prominent keyuword promoted.

It's needed mainly for visitors searching within the site. I'm using a Google Custom Search function to only look within the site itself. At present, searching for "volatile" brings back only 3 results, so being bottom of that list is still very good.

This feature was specifically requested by the MD of that section so I really have to try to get some form of solution.

Just to add - I know the page is indexed as I added it a few weeks ago (inluding a small link to put it into the site's heirachy) and it appears when I search for asbestos.

Hmm..tricky cos obviously google indexs by what it sees, and you can't tell it otherwise. Can you not tag the articles with keywords, thats a possibility maybe?

PM a mod and ask them to move this into the SEO section where you might get more responses seeing as it is SEO related.

Moved.

Pete.

Oops, just PMd another mod. Thanks Pete.

I wondered about tagging the articles (assuming you mean just hiding some words in there) but then the brief in the search results would look odd if it was out of context.

Personally, I think the most relevant and logical solution would be for the keywords to be decided and then written in as part of the content. Afterall, search engines behave this way for a reason.

yea definitely! that would be the way to go if possible - but from your original post i reaxdd this as not being a possibility. But yea if you can do that then thats the best way. Also include it in the headings aqnd page titles if possible,

Don't hide words from google - you will eventually get caught and blacklisted - don't mess with the big boys!

Sorry to mislead, it's not really a possibility as I'm not writing the content. I was just venting my frustration.

The MD that wants this had secretly had words with another company that claim that they can do this for him. He has a habit of just hearing what he wants to hear and not thinking about the difficulties this would cause me, implementing (and maintaining) this into the rest of the site. That's if they can even do it - they were probably just fishing for business. It's also very much one-way communication with the MD if you know what I mean.

yea...difficult client eh?!

well I can't think of any easy way of doing it. As I mentioned not to hide words from google - this may be the other comapnies way of doing it and if thats the case he will soon come runnign back to you whne he realises hes not ranking in google anymore!!

might be worth waiting to see what comes up on here over a couple of days - Spinal007 is pretty damn hot on all things SEO so he might post you some ideas whne hes next online.