Re: new website draft 8: almost giving up

[Graham Percival]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 08:14:25AM +0200, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> Op woensdag 12-08-2009 om 17:59 uur [tijdzone -0700], schreef Graham
> Percival:
> 
> > It's not that; Jan thought you were objecting to having:
> >   LilyPond is Free Software and part of the GNU project.
> > on the home page.
> 
> We need "free" (ie: gratis) "music" and "software" to work
> as search terms.  We are at position #223 when you search for 
> "music software", where our most direct opponents are on
> google's front page.

Well, we don't _know_ that google ignores meta keywords.  If it
doesn't, then what about putting

@divClass{hide}
free software free sheet music free open pdf kyon-kun denwa free
music notation quality engraving computational aesthetics making
great music for free linux music osx music windows music hey maybe
Han-Wen can hack google to make our page to show up higher
classical engraving modern sheet music contemporary sheet music
typography 
@divEnd

on the page?

> Why is this so hard to see?

As far as I'm concerned, there's two separate questions:
1) what makes the most sense for first-time and returning viewers
on the home page?
2) how can we improve our search rankings?

If possible, I'd like to find answers that don't conflict with
each other.  I think that hidden text -- either hidden through
meta keywords, or hidden with CSS -- is a way of doing this.
Granted, the CSS option doesn't work with all web browsers (I'm
thinking of lynx here), so if we go that route, we'd still need to
take some care to form meaningful sentences.

Cheers,
- Graham