It's generally believed that AltaVista gives some weight to keywords in filenames and URL names . If you're creating a file, try to name it with keywords. ALT tags should contain more than the image's description. They should include keywords, especially if the image is at the top of the page. There's been some debate about how long doorway pages for AltaVista should be.
Some webmasters say short pages rank higher, while others argue that long pages are the way to go.
According to AltaVista's help section, it prefers long and informative pages. We've found that pages with 600-900 words are most likely to rank well. Frame support AltaVista has the ability to index frames, but it sometimes indexes and links to pages intended only as navigation. To keep this from happening to you, submit a frame-free site map containing the pages that you want indexed. AltaVista is one of the few search engines to index ASP and other dynamic pages, including CFML, CGI generated and URLs with question marks.