"1. AltaVista will not 'deep crawl' your site automatically (only 'important' sites have this done automatically), however you can directly submit each page of your web site via their online form. This method takes about 2-3 months to appear in the index."

When they refer to "Important sites," most likely that translates to the Web site's link popularity. Link popularity is one of the most common ways to determine how important a site is. This is just another reason to do everything you can to improve your link popularity.

Most experts recommend submitting five or fewer URLs per day to AltaVista, with one URL per day being the favored strategy.

"2. The most important criteria for ranking is to include keywords in:
     a. The domain name.
     b. The file name of a given page.
     c. The first line of text on the page.
     d. The title of the page."

According to people in the know, AltaVista may place special emphasis on the "first line of text" on the page. Therefore, be sure to include your most important keywords in the first sentence or two of the page to improve your odds of achieving a top ranking.