The poll is not intended for exceptions to the rule, but how you would generally expect searches and keywords to function. The day to day norm around which you would feel safe working with keywords and site text. Figured there was no better place for outside review to settle a debate than Digital Point. I put this in the Google section, because although it can refer to other search engines or site design, the debate revolved around GOOGLE. On an arborist site's business forum, an Australian guy who feels good about his SEO knowledge, said I was leading people astray about what I said about keywords. Let me repeat what I shared there about GOOGLE and websites, and you feel free to share which side of the issue that you think functions. 1. I shared that a website must contain at least one occurance of a keyword to be displayed in the search results. There may be ways to circumvent that with Google Ads, a listing on links page, etc., but talking about JUST a website and JUST Google, my expectation is that a site must, or should, have at least ONE occurance of a word to stand a chance to come up in the search results. If I search for "San Francisco" + "tree", I would not expect to see a website displayed - say from the Congo - that lacked A SINGLE occurance of San Francisco or tree. Meaning not a single occurance in the text, code, tags or alt tags. I'd only expect GOOGLE to display sites that had "San Franscisco" or "tree" somewhere in the code for one of it's pages, and most likely if there were mulitple occurances of those words. Was I blinded to something where this other arborist critic is right? Or does Google function the way I'd expect? Would you expect a website to display for a keyword, if that keyword, nor a form of it, were entirely omitted from a website's pages and code?
You could be found for a search term without it being in the page if the words that made up the search term used in the page. Say the page had said lease and also said contract hire many times in the page, although it did not say Lease Hire in the page you would still be listed for it as the words had both been said in the page, you would have a terrible position for it but would be listed somewhere. For best results in the serch term of course you would be better off saying Lease Hire in the page if you want to do well for that search term, but you dont actually have to say the search term in the page to be listed for that search term. So for long tail search terms that are not popular and not been targeted by any websites you will find you sometimes get the odd visitor from something really weird and the search term aint even on your page but the words that make up the search term are on the page alot.
The best example to answer your question is this: A while back a search for "miserable failure" on google returned an official page about George W. Bush.
You can not only appear in the listing but you can rank in number 1 position for a competitive keyword that doesn't feature anywhere on your page at all. Do a search for 'click here' and you'll see what I mean.
So in other words it's possible. But would you approach a general page design that way? Adobe seems to be an exception to the rule, as well as a heavyweight for internet presence. By the way, what happens to be the reason Adobe is in the first spot for Click here? For the other reply, yes, I had seen that one before. But it's one of those oddball examples. So much so, there are articles about it, and Google even had to change it's programming involving it. I'm not sure if that's the main thrust of my question. The Bush miserable failure search, seems like it may not even be a 1 in a 1000 type thing. But if what's getting Adobe in first place is a 1 in 100 thing or better chance, it might be interesting to know how it can be done.
I think I found the answer already about Adobe and click here, as Google or Link Bombing. If that's the case, then what I was discussing with the other arborist was on track, because I said that inbound links or referring sites could be a way to circumvent things.