SiteProNews

Webmasters are always in the lookout for newer link building opportunities. And thus when Social Bookmarking came into existence, they wasted no time to understand and utilize its possibilities for search engine optimization and marketing.

They even started creating different groups to bookmark different pages on give and take basis. Things were getting worst and service providers like Digg became serious about this sort of unethical manipulation. But as usual, webmasters are always looking out for some other manipulation method.

Among all these techniques, linkbaiting became the most popular choice to get a great number of incoming links very fast (may be within an hour of publishing the content).

Here we would like to define the term ‘linkbait’. To put it simply, a linkbait is a piece of content (content may include text, image, video, tool or anything) that people would love to visit again or store for repetitive use in future or may love to share with his or her friends. The focus of a linkbait is to create a talkable product so that people would love to link to it or bookmark it for future reference. More reference to this piece may bring you more number of links.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: linkbaiting

Peter Morville is widely recognized as a founding father of information architecture. He co-authored the best-selling book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web and has consulted with such organizations as Harvard, IBM, the International Monetary Fund, Microsoft, the National Cancer Institute and Yahoo! Peter is president of Semantic Studios, co-founder and past president of the Information Architecture Institute and a faculty member at the University of Michigan. Peter’s latest book, Ambient Findability, was published in 2005.

In his presentation for Webstock 2008, Peter called himself a crazy librarian who fell in love with the web. Peter designs sites so that people can find what they’re looking for. It’s not just about findability, Peter says. The structural design of shared information environments is important. The vast majority of Internet architects don’t even know the term Internet architects. Content authors, bloggers etc. have a responsibility for shared information. One lesson Peter says he constantly needs to give clients is that it’s not enough to provide a single taxonomy. You can bring multiple ideas and formats to a single document to a wide audience with different needs. The Stanford University site is a good example of a usable site. When you design for the web, you should provide usable navigation and a site search facility at the very minimum.

The Consumer Reports site is another good example. It doesn’t stop with global navigation but gives a couple of information sub-sets to tell the user what the site database consists of. One size does not fit all in taxonomy. The Mayo Clinic use a more user-friendly design by listing all diseases by their most common name rather than the formal medical terminology. The site was re-designed with users in mind and has positively flourished as a result. It demonstrates that you need to design site taxonomies for specific audiences and users.

The elements of the user experience are multilayered. Peter is sick of the word “usability” as it means different things to different people. Depending on who you talk to, usability could mean:

• useful
• usable
• valuable
• findable
• credible
• accessible
• desirable

All these elements are important. Peter recommends asking these three questions when designing a site layout:

1. can users find your web site?
2. can users navigate your web site?
3. can users find your products and services despite your web site?

He also claims that not enough attention is paid to accessibility these days. Your web site needs to advance your business goals and inspire trust. Peter mentioned Google search as an example. People tend to trust results that are listed high in Google. Findability and credibility are therefore increasingly connected.

Peter has provided site usability services for the National Cancer Institute. When he began working with the site, 90 percent of traffic was from the general public who had been diagnosed with cancer and were seeking specific information. Peter helped re-design the site to make sure these people found the information they were seeking about specific cancer types. At the time Peter worked on the site, an amazing 70 percent of searches on the major search engines were for specific types of cancer so the Cancer Institute used this information to improve the findability of their specific cancer pages.

We can talk about findability at the level of the object and the system, says Peter. What are the ways the object/data can be found? How do we make it easier to be found? How does the environment support the navigation and retrieval of the object/data? What he calls ambient findability is the ability to find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime. The destination is never quite reached because perfect findability is impossible.

We’re now drowning in information and suffering from information anxiety in the information age. “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” says Herbert Simon (Nobel Laureate Economist) or the Dilbert version of this is: “Information is gushing toward your brain like a firehouse aimed at a teacup”. We are creating alternate ways to receive information via our digital networks, Google Earth being a good example. Another example is the “kid tracker” which is a GPS wristwatch your kids wear so you can know the location of your kids 24/7. Soon, people will be able to track other people every second of every day. This raises privacy concerns.

Peter showed a couple of examples of findability technology available now. Within a wireless network area, you can now use the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance to add electronic tags to items so you can locate them at any time. Hospitals use the technology to tag wheelchairs so they can be found instantly and save staff time and money searching for them. It’s claimed this saves one hospital $28K per month. Another example was the keen couple who had tagging devices embedded in their hands so they could open each other’s apartment doors and access each other’s computers. How romantic!

So in a world where the information haystacks are getting larger, how do we create information needles? How do we solve the findability question? We need to think about business intelligence, visualizing patterns etc. Back in the 1980’s Peter wrote an article claiming that the Internet will turn everyone into a librarian and now it’s happened. We can’t stop talking about meta data, social media labels, bookmarks and Flickr tags! In 5-10 years, Peter thinks that many sites will become like Amazon in terms of findability.

Search is one of the most important ways we learn. “Search has become the new interface of commerce” says John Battelle. Search startups such as Endeca and Trexy are pioneering new ways to search. Everyzing is a search engine that allows you to search audio files by individual words within the transcript. Buzzillions is an example of a site using both structured meta data and tag search. Hybrid search solutions are launching all the time. Google is struggling with how to provide data the way people categorize it. Google Book Search is an example of a site with usability issues. Flickr solved this issue by using clusters to sort photo tags, with huge success.

Peter says that we need to focus on usability in the future. Everyone working on your site needs to have the same goals in mind. He completes his presentation with the story of the three stone cutters. There is a guy wandering in the wilderness and he comes upon a quarry and asks the workers there what they’re doing. The first stone cutter is working at a slow pace and says “I’m making a living”. The second guy is working really hard and fast. He says “I’m doing my very best”. The third guy is working at a pace somewhere in the middle but with a smile on his face. He says “I’m building a cathedral”.

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Tags: search engines, seo positions

The title tag has to be, in my humble opinion, the most important on-page factor when it comes to high rankings in the search engine results pages. Found in the head tag of a standard html page, the title is the first place that you can start placing your keywords. Surprisingly some pages don’t define this tag. Worse yet, some overlook it and omit it altogether. Here is a basic example of where the title tag fits into an average HTML page.

Web page content goes here.

Here are five points I always consider when constructing a title.

Limit the length of the title.

Google currently displays approximately 63 characters of a title. The total number of characters displayed varies from engine to engine. While it is not the end of the world to exceed this by a slight margin, (I don’t believe there are any penalties for having a long title) remember that the search engines will cut off anything that goes beyond that which they display. This would leave you with a “…” instead of a complete title.

The title tag can be useful for branding your traffic.

By adding your website or company name to the title tag you can build brand awareness and increase returning direct traffic. While many suggest doing this I would only recommend adding your company or website name to the end of your title tag. While I don’t think it makes much difference to the order, your keywords are placed in the title tag, I suggest that you ensure your keywords are towards the beginning of the tag as it reads easier. Once again don’t forget that the title tag is the first thing that is displayed from each site by the search engines.

Divide your title tag.

When branding your site, break the title tag so that it becomes obvious which is the page title and which is the site name/title. I find that by using the pipe break “|” (that’s the funny symbol above the “\” key) I am able to do this quite neatly. This is also a great way keep your titles consistent. For example:

Instead of:

As you can see it makes it a lot clearer when considering which part of the title labels the page and which part labels the website.

NEVER, I repeat never, repeat your title.

Each page should have a unique title. By giving each page a unique title you are telling the search engines that each page is indeed unique. For exactly the same reason that you don’t name every file the same, (Well, apart from the most obvious reason which is that you just can’t!) as it is easy to distinguish the contents of a file by simply scanning the title. The same principal applies to web pages. This also goes a long way to indexing the priority of each page. If every page had the same title, which page would be ranked more relevant than the next?

Keywords in the title.

I have spent a lot of time optimising websites for real estate agents. While their stock standard pages have targeted keywords in the title, headings and content, it becomes a little more challenging to do the same for each listing. This is usually where the developers come into play. With a little effort the Title can be dynamically created. In my case, it drastically changed the titles I could offer from something such as:

To a far more specific title that really does describe the listing perfectly:

Okay, so I usually go a little further than that, but as you can see the title not only makes perfect sense and describes the page but also is keyword rich for the search phrase “house for sale in suburb” or even area in this case. While this works well for this kind of website, the principles can be applied to any other dynamically created web page.

I have noticed that time and time again the search engines return results with the search phrase in the title. I think we can all agree that if a web page has been titled correctly then the page will be accurately described. However search engines will discount a title that is no more than a list of spammed keywords. I think we’ve all heard the mantra, “create pages for real people not robots,” too many times. I would prefer to change that statement:

“Make well structured, informative web pages that are relevant to what you are doing.”

When you apply the above, search engines have little option but to regard each page highly and rank it accordingly. While there are so many other factors to consider when optimising a page I believe the title to be a crucial element.

Robert Cerff is a search engine analyst and marketing consultant for Prop Data Internet Solutions. He has ten years experience in e-commerce, online marketing and web development. http://www.propdata.co.za

Tags: title tags, Website Traffic

Domain Registration giants are making a fortune from your parked domain names and their AdSense accounts. It was happening to me until a few months ago. Now I earn over $100 per month per domain name! Best of all, it’s all on auto pilot.

It’s easy to do and takes very little time or effort. Basically it involves using your spare domain names to let AdSense generate extra paychecks for you. I’ll walk you through it step by step.

The most important part will be getting great content. But don’t worry, we have that covered too. After some digging, I went with an inexpensive service called “Why Park?” that automatically builds fully search engine optimized sites in minutes with a few lines of really simple input. They even host the sites for you. Of course I admit I became a little biased toward their service after my first auto generated site got ranked #5 on Google just one week after it went live.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: adsense, Google, marking, web masters

“I rarely encourage clients to sell via one-step, because leads; people who’ve raised their hands can have so much value worked well over time.” - Dan Kennedy.

There’s an absolute wealth of marketing wisdom in Dan’s statement. It’s impossible to do justice to all of it in this short space. So lets get into it and give you some important food for thought…

You’ll decide to either market to a list, or not. And I know that some marketers just don’t want to be bothered with list generation, for a variety of reasons. That’s fine. So if you’re sitting on the fence about it… just understand that you can be walking away from a LOT of money if you don’t have a list.

If you take your business seriously, then you already know the life-time value of your customers. How much revenue the average customer will bring to you over the time they’re doing business with you.

Armed with that knowledge, you’re able to know exactly how much you can spend to acquire new leads. The smartest marketers know how to break-even to build their lists. And they also know how much that new lead will be worth over time.

Notice how Dan worded his statement; ’so much value worked well over time.’

The key phrase there is, ‘worked well.’ I’ll tell you something. Many businesses flat out do not get it in that area. When their lists either die from attrition, or become unresponsive, it becomes the business kiss of death. And then they wonder what happened.

Simply no excuse for it because it’s SO easy to prevent. You just need to know how to do that.

I’m sure many of you know about the Law of Reciprocity. Simply stated, giving someone something… or doing something for another person, will compel them to feel obligated to do something for you. Of course, that ’something’ for you is giving you business.

But stop and think about this for a moment…

People online have come to expect the freebie. The free report, white paper, short ebook… whatever, in exchange for contact information and your continued marketing efforts. It has become a standard for doing business online. Unfortunately this expectation has only served to dilute, if not eliminate, the power of reciprocity. And if your freebie is poor, then you can almost forget any compelling feelings to give you something in return. You’ll immediately become bland and boring because you’ll be lumped in that vague group of online businesses that all look the same. Or worse…

People will label you as a scam, or just someone who wants to make a fast buck. But…

All is certainly not lost… IF you provide good quality information. And you can still harness reciprocity’s power in your marketing. How?

By continuing to provide information of high perceived value in your follow-up emails. But do it with a twist and some common sense. Just think about human nature and it’ll become clear.

First… spark intrigue. Create some suspense and the desire for more. One way to do that is by NOT revealing everything. Don’t give the farm away in your free reports and ebooks. Now this isn’t anything new. But I’ll tell you something I’ve seen a lot.

I’ve seen free reports and ebooks that offered lots of good information. But they failed to create any burning desire. There was no sense of intrigue. No sense of, “I gotta know more about this NOW!”

Let me ask you… when you see a newspaper ad selling whatever, and there’s a picture of an attractive woman wearing a bikini… does that picture make you want to buy?

NO! Probably doesn’t. You see that so much people become blind to it… for the most part. It has no selling value. Or, for lots of guys maybe it might catch their attention. They might check out the hot girl and then move on.

You can be regarded as a respectful, professional marketer simply by treating your list with respect. That means NOT bombarding with a constant stream of, “You Gotta Check This Out NOW!” Don’t beat them up with constant, hard selling.

Keep a continuous rapport with them. Talk to them. Give them substance and good information while sparking an intense desire to know more. Share your self with them and they’ll come to think of you as something more than a marketer.

I’ve been marketing to lists for many years. And I’ve had subscribers stay with me for almost as long. It’s a skill you can learn and develop. And done right, with the right backend offers… you’ll take your bottom line to whole new levels.

A former college dropout, Dan “The Man” Lok transformed himself from a grocery bagger in a local supermarket to an internet multi-millionaire. Discover how you can maximize your website profits in minimum time. For a limited time, you can test-drive Dan’s Insiders Club for 30-days Risk-Free and get $1,165 dollars worth of bonus gifts. Rush cover to:

http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com/testdrive.html

Since no two people think or search alike it pays to think unique. For those unfamiliar with the terms “exact match” or “unique” in contention to search engines, one (exact match) is like a laser beam, precise and concentrated, while the other (unique) is like a flash light, nebulous and all encompassing.

In a nutshell, exact match is when you are targeting a very specific or narrow group of keywords or phrases and unique phrases or unique search modifiers are when people type in something that has (a) never been searched for before or (b) has some of the keywords along with other contextually descriptive terms.

So essentially you have two facets of keyword optimization:

1) “Exact match” – targets a very specific (two three or four word) key phrase.
2) Optimization for “Unique keywords”, a combination of phrases containing optimized words fall into the category of the long-tail.

If our client were a bank (for example), we would research and optimize all phrases that could be used to reference banking, finance as well as local references to augment positioning (local and national positioning), as well as focus on words with high usage as descriptors or modifiers in context to a search query.

“FREE Checking” is exact match, however a unique search with the same root phrases may look something like “I need an account with free checking” which would require that the words “account” in addition to “free checking” are optimized in order to return this as a relevant search result.

Based on (a) the content and proximity or the keywords and phrases and (2) the links used to reference the content, you can essentially increase saturation across a wide array of supporting modifiers and appear consistently as a high ranking, relevant search result.

Long-tail optimization is when the site or pages has amassed enough authority (as a by-product of content, links and popularity) that it ranks frequently in search engines anytime two or more overlapping phrases are combined in a search query.

This can be particularly useful if you have a high percentage of topical pages in your site. Instead of 3 keywords per page (using the laser beam approach), you can rank for hundreds of search results per page (as each word can potentially become a keyword) like a flashlight using the same amount of energy. The only distinction is the optimization method and the link building tactic employed.

Understanding this, it is more important to have an increasing amount of traffic to your pages. So, even though you may use a keyword research tool that states that a search term receives 2000 searches per month. Even if you have a #1 position for the term, you may only see 10-20 searches per day that actually land on your pages as a result of that phrase.

In reference to keyword research, we have found that dividing the number or estimated searches by 100 is a fair assessment when attempting to gauge traffic. This is due to the fact that you are only extrapolating US based traffic from those numbers (not global search volume across every Google in every country, Yahoo or MSN respectively) which is a default for most keyword research tools.

So in conclusion, is it better to (1) receive 1000 searches per month from exact match keywords or (2) receive 10,000 searches per month from a variety of keywords? It depends on your positioning strategy. We prefer to target both with our optimization methods and then check the stats to see which has the highest user engagement and conversion.

For example, not everyone is looking for the same thing, ranking above the fold (in the top 5 positions) in search engines has an intrinsically higher click through rate than those below the fold, but click behavior is changing and truly depends on the individual.

The point is, you may receive 100 visits per month from the exact match two or three word combination, but you may receive 10 times the search volume from secondary keywords that contain modifiers that yield a high percentage of relevant traffic to your pages.

So, just because the searcher did not use the exact phrase and used additional modifiers (like “SEO Services” vs. “SEO Services Company”) doesn’t mean they were any less interested in your content or value proposition, it just goes to show that we all function differently, in the way our cognitive skills formulate and communicate data.

However, this should not limit you in your scope of targeting keywords, only enhance your range. In some instances, you only need a dozen of the right phrases to hone conversion. In addition to unique searches being sparse, the upside is, they are oftentimes wide open for optimization as a void in organic search has often overlooked them which makes them low hanging fruit for the picking.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Tagging used to refer just to the tags that you placed in your web site’s HTML to indicate certain types of formatting or commands. Tagging today often refers to something entirely different. When you hear the terms “tagged” or “tagging” in conversation today, it could very well refer to a phenomenon called social bookmarking.

Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, share, classify, and search Internet bookmarks. There is some debate over how important social bookmarking is in SEO, but the consensus seems to be leaning toward the idea that social bookmarking, along with many other social media optimization (SMO) strategies, is quickly becoming a serious consideration for SEO. So let’s look at social bookmarking.

Social bookmarking is provided by services such as de.icio.us, Digg, Technorati, StumbleUpon, and Furl.net, which are taking the Internet by storm. They’re often referred to as Web 2.0 services, because they involve a high level of social interaction, which is the fastest growing element of the Internet today.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: RSS, social bookmarking, tagging, tags

Forget the Computer Age or the Internet Age, centuries from now our current time will probably be referred to as the Google Age. This assumption is not exactly a great leap of faith; Google has quickly permeated into mainstream culture to become an underlying factor of everyday life, a tightly woven backdrop to our lives. But never make the mistake of trying to define Google as just a search engine or you will miss the true calling of this little “Backrub”, which was the original name used by its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996. Google as we now know it debuted in 1998. The name Google is a twist on the word Googol, a number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros. After everything is said and done, it will more than likely refer to Google’s net worth - monetary or otherwise.

But forget search engine, for regardless of the founders’ intentions or company’s objectives, Google is and has always been the ultimate marketing machine. A massive marketing machine that is just now gearing up and aiming for more and more lofty heights. These heights seem to increase each day as Google quietly rolls out program after program.

All noble ambitions aside, Google is the perfect marketing machine. Google has no equals, and it is very close to getting a stranglehold on the real power behind all marketing, which is information. Marketing is information. Information is marketing. Great marketing is supplying the right information at the right time. Google more than any other entity on the web or in the world, for that matter, fulfills this criterion at its very core. Google is re-writing the book on how products are marketed.

Google now has over 60% of the search traffic in the U.S., with a staggering 7.3 billion monthly searches. In some countries Google’s search share is 80% or more. (Source: comScore) Those webmasters who have number one keyword listings in all three of the major search engines will know Google is the only game worth playing because it delivers by far the most traffic.

While MSN and Yahoo! are still major players and are listed in the top 5 traffic sites on the web, what most people don’t realize is that (unlike the other two) almost all of Google’s traffic is search traffic. >From a marketing perspective this is extremely important since search traffic can deliver the highest conversions (sales) mainly because it lets you capture the potential customer or client when they are in the right mindset to buy or to perform an action. Obviously the key to successful marketing is finding the buyers and clients for your products and services. Google has forged itself as the ultimate “middleman” as more and more of the world’s business is performed in cyberspace. And as everyone knows the “middleman” can reap huge profits and hold enormous power.

Google, within its Adsense program, now offers CPA or Cost Per Action where marketers can now receive larger returns for displaying Google’s links on their webpages. As any professional marketer will tell you, you can get 10 times the revenue by promoting affiliate products rather than the Adsense code on your sites. But by adding CPA and other affiliate products within the Adsense program, Google has made it more attractive to serious online marketers.

Another step in that same direction is Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, which includes the massive online affiliate marketing network Performics. This means Google can now bring any customer full-circle from initial search to checkout.

This may have dire consequences for large, lucrative third-party affiliate networks like Commission Junction and LinkShare. Online marketing and ecommerce is growing at a blistering rate, and the company that controls the majority of these transactions will wield enormous power. Will make the Medici look like paupers.

Those marketers who have managed to acquire number one listings for their targeted keywords in Google’s organic search are smiling all the way to the bank. Mainly because Google commands enormous trust with the surfing/buying public and this is demonstrated through higher conversion rates. Likewise, those who have mastered the Adsense and Adwords programs will know Google is an excellent source of online income.

Most of the complaints against Google stems from its PageRank system, which is supposed to be Google’s version of online democracy in action, a link is a vote for your page or content. The higher the number of links, the higher your page will be ranked in Google’s index or SERPs - Search Engine Results Pages.

So far Google has played fair, giving even the smallest webmaster the opportunity to capture top Google listings if they produce superior or popular content to the surfer. Some would even argue Google’s recent crackdown on sites offering paid-links can be seen as evening the playing field for the small webmaster or marketer who obviously doesn’t have the economic clout or resources to buy their way to the top of Google’s listings.

Keyword rankings may be the ultimate equalizer and determiner of online wealth. Those who can reach the top positions for their chosen profitable niche keywords will have companies and service providers lining up to do business with them. The fallout can prove extremely lucrative for both parties.

However, few marketers or webmasters forget who is really holding the cards; Google controls all steps along this marketing tunnel with its search listings, Adwords and Adsense programs. The only dark spot on the horizon could be monopoly issues, but Google probably has enough reservoirs of public goodwill and deep enough corporate pockets to squash any claims. As Google’s dominance in the search market becomes greater, Google will have control of all segments of the online marketplace. Why should Google stop there, why not go into Radio, TV… as the Internet gradually mutates into a billion+ interactive TV channel universe (as many believe it will) who do you think will be at control central offering you a nice free remote?

Then there is also Google’s planned broadband 700 MHz bid; one can only speculate on Google’s intentions. But Google must find a way to transmit its information at no cost to its users. Could it mean free wireless Internet for everyone on free Google boxes or gadgets of some form, usable and accessible anywhere in the world? Anything is possible because the stakes are so astronomical and the marketing revenue so vast, Google must get its information seamlessly and instantly to the end user at all costs.

One can only guess at the enormity of the marketing power Google will yield in coming years as the Internet slips out of its teen years. But it won’t be just marketing, the influence of Google on all aspects of our lives will probably grow exponentially and that influence will be huge.

For the true power of Google is only just now beginning to be glimpsed; only as more and more of the Google pieces fall into place will we truly fathom what life will be like in the Google Age. Google’s power, reverence and respect will no doubt be so enormous it may lead some to make comparisons to a higher power that has guided most of the life on this planet so far. Which could also lead one to muse, at least they got the first two letters correct.

Author:  The author, a former artist and teacher, is now a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools or Marketing Tool Guide Copyright � 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

When I think of flash I immediately think of Flash Gordon or simply “The Flash” himself.  While growing up these genres of demigods were heroes of mine.  Even now as an adult and I use that term very loosely as all it really means is that I can buy beer and am allowed to vote, I still think back on how cool they were, particularly Flash Gordon* who went on to save the world.

These days when people speak of Flash they are referring mostly to Macromedia and the impressive interactive designs that adorn many of the top websites today.  Initially, Flash was a pet hate of mine, I just couldn’t see it working for an e-commerce website.  The splash pages that so many websites had were for the most part poorly designed, the files were well oversized and they were devoid of any accompanying text.  It succeeded in slowing down entry into the website and leaving the page impossible for the spiders to index.  It would seem that these days many of the splash pages have been replaced (thank goodness), although recently there has been an increase in the number of sites that do have a Flash Intro.

As with so many good things Flash has been brutally abused.  It seems that for such a long time Flash was seen as a massive “cool factor”.  The biggest disadvantage for me has always been the size of the file.  While navigation files may be quite small the splash pages and, often headers were just way too big.  While many people have dedicated digital lines at work they often only have access to dial up connectivity at home.  I am sure that everybody knows how frustrating it can be trying to browse a website that has large images and other multimedia files with a mere dial up connection.  Beyond this frustration there are a number of reasons why Flash is just a bad idea, these include:

1. Flash breaks the back button.  If you navigate within a flash object and you hit the “Back” button it takes you back to a previously viewed page and not back within the flash object itself.
2. The standard link colours do not apply.  This can lead to confusion as to which pages have been viewed and which ones have not.
3. Flash integrates badly with search functions.  More of this will be explained later.
4. The design is set.  Text can not be enlarged for people with limited vision.  The view can’t be changed to suit the end users needs.
5. Flash in general is difficult to access by visitors with disabilities.

Recently Google has announced that it can indeed read .swf files looking for text.  According to Dave Taylor of askdavetaylor.com, “Google can parse through the text contained within a .swf file and present that information in a Google search. But due to the fact that an entire website can be contained in a single .swf file, whereas a traditional HTML site may consist of hundreds of individual pages, the weightings and rankings given to certain pages may not be accurately portrayed in Google’s results.”

This would mean that Flash still comes up short when it comes to ranking favourably in the search engine results.  While I don’t see this hurting major household name brands (such as Coca-Cola or Pepsi), it certainly means that the smaller emerging business with a total Flash website is going to struggle to rank well.

As mentioned earlier, Flash integrates badly with search functions.  This is mostly due to the fact that the flash file itself can’t be indexed in the same manner as plain text.  While Google has managed to index the plain text within an .swf file it has become plain that from a search point of view, the Flash file is treated in much the same way as an image.  The ability to read the text in these files would seem to have little more than benefit than using an “Alt” or “Title” tag.  However this may change in the near future.

Perhaps in time the search engines will be able to index Flash files correctly, perhaps not.  Personally I would prefer it if they don’t.  Some things really should be discouraged from corporate websites.  While Flash is a great way to build a site with all the bells and whistles, it also removes some of the functionality.  I imagine that a website for Ozzy Osbourne could easily include Flash as fans are more than happy to sit and wait for the objects to download.  But what works for Ozzy might not work for your business.  As with all website additions, the main thought should always be, “will it improve the average visitor’s experience?”  If not then it shouldn’t be used.

For now, I’ll just keep thinking of Flash (Gordon) as a hero.  I know my brother does and, believe it or not, even plans to name his child “Flash”.  I think that’s how things should stay.

Author:  Robert Cerff is a search engine analyst and marketing consultant for Prop Data Internet Solutions. He has ten years experience in e-commerce, online marketing and web development. http://www.propdata.co.za

You probably are - and you don’t even know it. Before we get into that, let’s quickly recap what has happened up until this point. It is relevant, I promise.

As the internet grows larger daily, and the number of searches online increase - we see people getting fanatical about getting their sites ranked. And why not? It’s a great, constant source of traffic leading targeted visitors to your door!

If only getting the results was easier! I’m sure some of these statements will ring true for you.

• SEO is simple but not easy.
• SEO is time consuming and requires knowledge that only a small handful of business owners truly have, (since their real focus is and should be running their business) but is needed by everyone, not just a small handful.
• SEO is maddening but EFFECTIVE and NECESSARY.

So, what do you do when you know you need SEO, but you also know it is sometimes frustrating, it’s time consuming and it’s not your area of expertise? The consensus seems to be that you have 2 options:

1. Hire a professional SEO Firm. This frees up your time to run your business, and leaves it to the professionals who are equipped with the proper knowledge and time.
2. Learn SEO yourself, either through a current and up-to-date manual or some consulting.

Both scenarios have pros and cons. Whether you do it yourself or you hire an SEO Firm, you need to be 100% sure that the big picture is taken into consideration, and that you aren’t unintentionally sabotaging your own efforts.

Let’s look at SEO through the years, not in chronological order — just by highlighting a few key events.

Doorway pages were the biggest thing online - everyone used them, and they worked! Until Google caught on that people were just trying to trick them, and they banned the pages. Mouths dropped open in shock, as sites sitting pretty at the top of the SERPs (search engine results page) dropped from sight.

Reciprocal links were all the rage. Emails flew across the internet. You link to me, and I’ll link to you. Everyone was fast becoming friends and creating an information network that was all interlinked. Fabulous!

Until Google caught on that this isn’t a true representation of how popular your site is, people are just creating link farms and mass-generating “faux link popularity”. More mass droppage of sites from the SERPs.

One-way links are definitely the way to go. It’s exactly what Google wants, and if we simply buy a link from another website, Google will see it as a viable one-way link to my site. Who says you can’t buy love. I’ve got Google lovin’ me.

Until Google realizes there are sites with high PageRank out there, making a nice new monthly income for linking to sites that have not earned a link - and therefore the faux link popularity issue is just perpetuated.

With all of the link confusion, it is a constant source for debate: reciprocal is OK, as long as it is relevant and from a high PR site. One way is the only way to go, but only if it is relevant and from a high PR site. What is high PR anyway, is it anything above 3 or 4 or 5?

With all the questions flying, attention seemed to go back to a new and improved type of doorway page. One that includes links to other sites (resources) underneath text for your site.

This is truly great - this technique is actually legit, you are providing a real value to people by having helpful links on your site, and the search engines just happen to view those links with text as keyword rich, so they boost your rankings.

A very legitimate tactic, it made sense to the engines, and it was fairly easy to do. Great - we’ve finally found a way to create some great pages that Google seems to like. Everyone is sitting pretty now.

Until Google sees the internet infiltrated with sites that are nothing but mass-produced pages with no customization. Resource pages spit out by software, with no real content to support it. That ended the “resource page hay day”.

Blogs are “it”. Everyone can create a free blog, and then blog and ping like crazy. It drives the spiders to your blog when you ping, they follow links in your posts to your main site, and next thing you know you can control Googlebot, and Yahoo Slurp. With a few good posts, you can plan on the bots swinging by to pick up more pages in your site. Cool, things are happening now! Until Google realizes people have programs doing auto-posts and auto-pings and it’s not the most relevant or original content. Google wises up, and for those still trying to get away with automated blogging and pinging, you’re wasting your time.

The link debates rage on; content is still king; and people want rankings more than ever. What’s next?

1. RSS Feed - for a long time no one knew what it stood for, but they all love it. You can create content and send it out to the world to read with their preferred viewer. That truly is an opportunity to get your message out there!

You can also pull feeds into your site to bulk up content. Amazing. What an opportunity.

2. Enter the Press Release and Article Syndication. Brand spanking new and dressed to impress. It was fabulous - write informative articles and submit them around the internet - the benefit is two-fold - each article will drive traffic to your site, and the links within the article will count as links for your site!

The Press Release was killer too. Write an informative, keyword rich press release and get it sent out to thousands of media outlets online. You could count on about 30 days worth of traffic enjoyment from one release. Not to mentioned, press releases get picked up in the News engines and the regular engines too.

Great - so what’s the problem?

Too many people don’t look at the big picture, and the actual reason behind algorithm shifts. People don’t learn from them, they simply adjust their methods and move on until the next algo shift.

If you really look at the trends, and realize what Google wants and why they do what they do, I think you’ll find a very common theme.

Google wants to deliver relevant results to people. They have no hidden agenda. They simply want to deliver the best and most relevant results in response to someone’s search query.

That alone tells us all we need to know. In order to get good rankings, we need a popular site with great, informative content that is current.

Any current hot technique is only a fad. We make sure of that. What do I mean by that? Stay tuned for Part 2 of “Are You Sabotaging Your SEO Success?”

Author:  Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing and co-owner of http://www.EcomBuffet.com Since 1998, her expertise in online marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue and achieve their business goals. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on Search Engine Optimization and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications.