Lesson #24 Using Form Tags for Optimization
Written By Cyndalie

As more and more webmasters get "down" thinking that achieving good search engine rankings is impossible unless your site is already extremely popular and successful, I can't help but encourage the concept that all you simply need to play is good page optimization skills and some creative HTML thinking.

Of course, the fad is now to follow the search engine rules to a "T" and not to step out of line for fear of being booted before even having a chance. The truth is, search engines do not want to kick out pages or ban domains, and they rarely do. It takes a lot of ballsy abuse to get the hammer.

I believe in giving the search engines exactly what they are looking for plus something extra other pages do not have. That something extra is an added element in optimization coding. That something extra is what can make a doorway or sub page rank higher than a competitor's home page.

Beyond beating out other pages, the importance of making a page rank for as many keywords as possible so that you get the most traffic you can possibly drive from the search engine with one page, rather than making a separate page for every keyword you want to rank for (not recommended). Now, I'm not just talking about doorway pages, I'm talking about every page you create that can be indexed and viewed from a search engine.

Form tags offer some very viable places to contain keyword friendly content you want the search engine to index, yet do not want glaring all over your page to the user. A few years ago, after optimizing a signup form for a credit card processing company, I realized that all kinds of form tags get indexed in the search engines! You see, the page I optimized for "merchant account" related searches and next thing I knew the page was ranking for every country name plus my primary keyword. The countries were in a drop down box the user selects in the address area. The page started ranking for "Canada merchant account" and other variations like "Germany credit card processing". Needless to say, this was great for their offshore and third party merchant services.

I began to experiment further over the years and here's what I've found: using Dreamweaver and other HTML editors you can very easily insert form elements without needing a form action tag. This includes hidden input fields, drop down menus and list boxes, text form fields you can fill in with keyword friendly content (even disguised in your disclaimer), jump menus, even radio buttons and check boxes.

Drop Menus & List Boxes
Drop menus and list boxes show one line and the list drops down to display all options the user can select. A trick here is to insert your primary keywords in one drop box by taking your list into a text editor and searching and replacing a <option> before each keyword and </option> after each keyword. Then simply copy and paste that into your form between your <select> tags. Doing it this way will save you time having to enter each keyword phrase individually. Recommended length: less than 30 options per tag.

The search engine will spider all of the content in these drop boxes without thinking it is spam (unless you repeat the same words in each option). Do this again for your secondary keyword phrases and you can create a type of "mad lib" that appears as: "Welcome to XXX Site. We feature (Primary list box 1) for adults only.This adult entertainment web site also features (Secondary list box 2) for your viewing pleasure."

Jump Menus
Jump Menus are a little more advanced and time consuming than Menu/List boxes but work in much the same way with an added advantage that each keyword is associated with a link. These links are also spidered by the search engine however I am not sure if the keywords associated with each link are weighed in relevance the same way an actual text link is. However, this is still a good way to cross link all your pages together in a subtle way the user will most likely ignore, especially if this menu field is lower on the page than user associated text and links.

Here your menu options will look like: <option value="test.html" selected>test</option> Note that to jump to a link you need a button to activate the selection for the user.

Even if you do not use this option for optimization purposes only, it is a navigational tool and can be used to help link all the pages of your site together for easy user navigation of your site.

Text Fields
Typically used for comments or areas for people to submit information in forms, text fields can also contain static content designated by the webmaster in the "value" part of the form tag. Some webmasters like to insert their disclaimers in this area as they can limit the length of the box itself so the disclaimer scrolls down in its own box. Text fields can also be places to integrate keyword friendly content into your page.

Hidden Input Fields
Not every form field tag needs to be visible to the user. However since the code for these tags looks like <input type="hidden" content="content"> I am always cautious that some engines may be keyed to look for or ignore the "hidden" in the tag. As of yet, I have not seen a site penalized for using this technique, however the key to any optimization trick is moderation. If you use an input tag like this, the content of your tag should be sentence format not more than 2 sentences long as a guideline.

Other Form Tag Elements
If you are using form tags for optimization rather than function, there are other parts and elements of the tag you can optimize. Every form tag has a name="name". Name the form tag the most relevant keyword of the content you are inserting. If you use a jump box the text that appears should be similar to the page name or keywords on the page you are linking to. For radio buttons and check boxes set the value name a keyword.

Just remember this advice: Consistency, Relevancy, and Moderation is Key. Going overboard in any one aspect can only hurt you. This advice is meant to help and provide webmasters additional optimization elements to experiment with. Keep in mind that search engines want pages with content so the more user friendly content you can integrate to give the page weight, the better.