Making Flash Search Engine Friendly

With the introduction of Flash, many web designers now have an incredibly flexible tool to integrate sound, motion, and text.  Used correctly, Flash can really elevate the user experience far above what regular text and graphics can provide.

In one of my first posts, How do Search Engines View Your Site?, I spoke about how I removed the Flash from a client's home page to allow the Search Engines (SE) to crawl inside the site and index the content.  One of the readers of the post, Thierry de Baillon, correctly pointed out that that I could have used an HTML tag to link the SE into the site.  (You may want to read through the comments for that post to see what other reasons I had in removing the Flash animation.)

Before I get into the use of this HTML tag, I do want to correct a common misconception.  Search Engines can index a Flash web site.  Macromedia, the developer of Flash, has released a Software Developer's Kit (SDK) that provides all the functions required to make the Flash animation readable to SE.  Google can spider and index Flash sites right now.

So where is the problem? Many Flash implementations, especially web sites developed entirely in Flash, are made up of one single file.  There is no way for the SE to interpret the individual pages of the web site. 

Right now the ideal solution is a mix of Flash and HTML.  By embedding the Flash into a regular HTML web page, you can have the user experience you desire and have the content available to the SE.

For those of you who have a web page made entirely of Flash, like the introductory splash pages, here is how you can get the SE to bypass the animation and get into your site.  Embed the Flash inside an HTML document and include the <noembed> tag.  This <noembed> tag should come immediately after the <embed> tag and can include HTML, so it is ideal to include some text that describes the Flash animation and a link to the real home page of the web site. 

Pro Tip: The <noembed> tag is traditionally used to display a message if the web visitor does not have a suitable player installed. Otherwise it is ignored by the browser.

Top 10 Trends for the Next 10 Years in Internet Marketing

"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."
-Yogi Berra

Since 1995, Larry Chase's Web Digest For Marketers e-mail newsletter has been analyzing and reporting on the meaningful trends in Internet Marketing.  I bring these predictions to your attention today, because they will surely have an impact on small business owners trying to survive on the web.

Here in bullet format are the top 10 trends over the next 10 years:

1. Pay Per Call Rings In
2. Feed Marketing Flourishes
3. Email Marketing Will Survive
4. Agent, Personal Agent
5. Reverb Marketing, In Stereo
6. Blogs Go Multimedia
7. TVIP Adds Interactivity
8. Commercial Content, On Demand
9. Publishing Faces Tectonic Shifts
10. Direct Marketers Will Take Over the Internet

Go to Larry's article for a concise explanation of each of these trends.

MSN Adds Local Search

MSN has just launched its version of Local Search.  Similar to Google and Yahoo, MSN's beta version is available at either their Home page or this direct link.

To use this service, enter what you're looking for (such as a business name or place of interest) in the search box and click the Local link above the search box. Your results are based on your default location setting (see below).  Or, enter both what and where you want to find it (city, state or zip code) and press Enter or click Search.

By default, all local searches are performed based on the city listed in your MSN Search Settings page, which is stored in a cookie. If the default location is incorrect then change this by specifying the city and state or zip code of the correct location in Settings.

Since MSN Search is part of the Big Three search engines, it is well worth your time to become familiar with service and make sure your business is listed.

Here are a couple of links for additional information:

MSN Local Search help

How to add or update your listing

Keyword Placement on Your Web Pages

With your keywords identified and analyzed, the next step is to place those keywords strategically on the web page.  Over the years, this practice has changed dramatically, mostly to defeat the efforts of Search Engine (SE) spammers trying to artificially inflate their rankings.  What I will discuss today is the current best practices of keyword placement.

There are a number of areas on a web page where your keywords should be prominently displayed:

• Page title
• Headings and subheadings
• Main copy of the web page
• Links to other pages

Page title - This is perhaps the most important place to place your keywords.  This is the text that is used by the SE when displaying the results of a search query.  It is appropriate to include your main search keywords and any modifiers that will help explain what the page is about.  Using our previous example of a car dealership in Chicago, one page title may be "Lowest used car prices in Chicago".  Then be sure that this page talks about your low prices on used cars.

Pro Tip: Also include your company name and town if you are targeting an local geographic region.  I would recommend that you place your keywords first, then your company name.  SE do not read past a certain number of characters, so it is important to get your main keywords and modifiers in first.

Headings and subheadings - SE pay particular attention to any text that has special markup applied to it.  In other words, by placing your keywords in headings, bold, or bullet points.  Your main heading on your page is a great place to insert your keyword phrases.  But be careful here, do not simply list them out.  You must write so that the text is readable to a human visitor as well.  I'll talk more about this later in the post.

Web page copy - This should be pretty obvious.  The content for the page you are writing should have many of your main keywords and modifiers sprinkled throughout.  Pay particular attention to getting the main keywords incorporated as high up in the page as possible, like the first paragraph.

Links - There are two sets of links that you need to concern yourself with: the main navigation links and the links that appear in the body of your copy.  SE pay very close attention to the anchor text in a link.  Anchor text is the text that is usually underlined and the words that you click to go to another page (i.e. this is the anchor text).   Using your keywords to link to other pages in your site will help develop a theme and will boost the rankings of both the referring page and receiving page.

DO NOT go crazy and stuff your keywords in every imaginable place in the web page.  This includes all the areas discussed above, plus the alt attribute for an image tags.  SE will consider an overly optimized web page as spam and your rankings can be hurt.

I'll wrap things up with a brief mention of copywriting.  Always write your text for the human visitor.  It makes absolutely no sense to optimize your web page to achieve high rankings only to have a visitor come to your site and turned off by the copy.  There are many ways to get your visitors to visit your site, but once they are on your site, the main focus is to keep them interested and ultimately lead them to your desired action.

Hiring a professional copywriter is probably the last expense most business owners want to spend money on, but that's being penny wise and pound foolish.  A good copywriter will pay for their fee many times over in increased sales.  Please visit my good friend Troy White's blog here at Duct Tape Marketing for all your copywriting needs.  You can read him here.

Will Your Keywords Actually Work?

Selecting your search keywords is only the tip of the iceberg.  The next step is to determine how effective those keywords are going to be in driving targeted visitors to your web site.

In my opinion, performing all of the required analyzes is beyond the scope of most small business owners.  It is a time consuming task that is best left to the professionals.  This blog will touch on the concepts involved and refer you to a resource that is money well spent.

The first question you have to answer is how much competition is there for my keywords?  We can begin to answer that by taking a look at two different metrics on your competition's web sites:

1. Their link building efforts
2. Their web site optimization efforts

Fortunately Google provides us with a convenient way to measure the two metrics.

To get an idea of the competition's link building efforts, go to Google and type in the following inanchor:"your search keywords".  The results will tell you how many pages are being linked to using that exact search text.

Google also offers their PageRank analysis of a site's link popularity.  By installing the Google Toolbar into your Microsoft IE browser, each page that you visit will show its Google PageRank score from 0 to 10.  As a rule of thumb, scores of 4 and lower show very little link building, a score of 5 means some work has been done, and a score of 6 or higher indicates that the site has a lot of incoming links.

Pro Tip: You can use the Google Toolbar to help increase your link building efforts.  Go to the Home page of the top web sites for your main search keywords.  Click on the blue icon next to the PageRank score and select Backward Links.  The results will show you how many links are pointing to the web site and where they come from.  Use this information to contact those sites and ask to be linked to as well.

Google also helps us analyze the competition's efforts in optimizing their web pages for specific search keywords.  As we'll learn in my next post, the first place you want to place your keywords is in the HTML title tag.  By going to Google and typing intitle:"your search keywords", you will see approximately how many pages have your keywords in the page title.

Other factors that you need to analyze include the competition for Pay-Per-Click search terms (already covered in my Search Engines Explained (Part 3) post from last week), measuring keyword relevance, weighted popularity and Keyword Effectiveness Index.

Fortunately there is a resource available to everyone that will significantly help you in finding your search keywords and then analyze them for you.  Dan Thies of SEO Research Labs offers a service that will provide you with 5 valuable keyword reports for just under $100.  Click here to learn more about this service.

In the last part of my keyword series, I'll talk about the best places to put your keywords on your web pages and how to avoid spamming the search engines.

Your Keyword Selection Strategy

Last week I talked about how Search Engines work in Search Engines Explained, now we need to focus our attention on the critical aspect of identifying your business's targeted keywords.  In practical terms, you need to identify the keywords that your target audience uses.

Identifying the keywords your target audience is using to find the products and services you are offering, is the most important part of your web site marketing strategy.  This compilation of keyword phases (two or more keywords) will be used in:

• Web page titles and headings
• Content of the web site
• Linking between web pages
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising

In formulating your keyword strategy, it's generally considered best to take a top-down approach.  That is, identify the two or three major search terms that describe your business.  These terms will be much to general to target individually, but we'll use them to develop your specific keyword phrases.

As an example, let's assume that you own a car dealership in the Chicago area.  The major search keywords will be:

• Cars
• New cars
• Used cars
• Car dealership

Think of each of these major keywords as separate sections of keyword phrases.

The next step is to add what are called modifiers.  These are words that are likely to appear next to your major keywords.  Modifiers come in all sorts of varieties.  Here are a few:

• Local towns or regions
• Using brand names
• Related services

If your business depends on attracting traffic from the surrounding geographic region, then you will definitely want to add the names of towns as modifiers.  In our example, the use of "Chicago used cars dealerships" or "Cook County used cars", would be excellent examples.  For more information on this subject, see my post on Attracting Local Traffic.

Using Brand names as modifiers is an excellent method for attracting visitors.  Modifiers such as "Ford dealerships in Chicago", or "Chevy used cars in Cook county" would work well.  But you need to be careful in this area.  It would be unethical, if not outright illegal, to use the brand names of competitors to attract traffic to your site.

Adding related services to your list of major keywords will also help generate a lot of traffic.  When people shop for a car, they also would be interested other services as well such as: servicing, financing, indoor showroom, or no hassle negotiations.

By following these steps, you should easily come up with hundreds of keyword phrases to use in your marketing efforts.

Pro Tip: There are two excellent web sites that will help you find all sorts of keywords:

• Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool
• WordTracker.com

Now that you have a good idea of what your targeted keywords are, we need to analyze them to make sure that these are the terms that your audience are using.  More on this in my next post.

Search Engines Explained (Part 3)

In Part 1 of Search Engines Explained, I talked about how the Search Engines (SE) find and index your web site and Part 2 talked about the basics of how SE process the search query.  Today we'll wrap things up with a discussion of the final result, the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

Regardless of the SE used, the SERPs will display two main search listings: the free crawler-based listings and the sponsored listings.  Depending on the SE you currently use, there may be more listings available, such as directory listings, image listings, and shopping listings.

Crawler-based listings, sometimes referred to as free, natural, or organic, are the staple of most SE.  For our purposes, I will refer to these listings as organic.  These listings are the direct result of all the work the SE has performed finding, indexing, and ranking.  Most SE will tell you approximately how many web pages were found using the given search query.  For example, the Google search query "public golf courses in new jersey" displays this: Results 1 - 10 of about 880,000.

Pro Tip:  The 880,000 figure represents the approximate amount of web pages that may be relevant to your search query.  In reality, only about 1,000 results are actually available to be clicked on.

Keep in mind that not all SE have their own spiders and do their own indexing and ranking.  Currently there are only a handful of SE that do this themselves, with Google, Yahoo and MSN being the major players.  For the other SE, they purchase the results from one of these major players and return those results to their searchers.  For an up-to-date look at who provides the search results for which SE, have a look at Bruce Clay's Search Engine Relationship Chart.

Operating your own organic SE takes a lot of resources, both hardware and software.  This is a tremendous expense that needs to be paid for.  Enter the sponsored listings, or more commonly referred to as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) listings.  The two biggest players in this game are Google AdWords and Overture (now called Yahoo! Search Marketing).

The model here is very simple.  Advertisers bid on certain search keywords to have their advertisement displayed next to (or on top of) the organic listings for their selected keywords.  Your placement is based on how much money you bid compared to the other advertisers.  When a searcher clicks on your ad, your bid amount will be deducted from your account by the SE.  Bid amounts can range from $.10 to $10 and more for very competitive search keywords.

Pro Tip:  To get an idea of what advertisers are currently paying for your main search terms, go to Overture.com, enter your search keywords and click Search.  On the resulting SERP, click on the link that says View Advertisers' Max Bids (you'll find it near the top right corner).  After entering a security code, each listing will display and the amount of money they are paying Per Click.

If you want the top spot on Overture, you simply have to bid more than the current top bidder.  Google's AdWords program takes the ranking a step further.  In addition to the bid amount on the search keyword, Google also looks at the ad's click through rate.  If the ad doesn't pull enough clicks, the ad is dropped no matter how much you want to bid.

I have only scratched the surface with this series on Search Engines Explained.  Future posts will expand on these basic principles.  If there are specific topics that you would like me to address, please use the comment form and suggest away.

Search Engines Explained (Part 2)

Now that you have a basic understanding of how Search Engines (SE) find and index web content, we'll take a look at what happens when a searcher types in their search keywords.

It's truly amazing that you can type in a few keywords and within seconds be presented with hundreds of relevant web sites.  Imagine going to the library and telling the librarian "used cars".  The librarian will probably look at you for a couple of seconds, then start asking you questions so they can get you the exact information that you are searching for.  SE do not get this chance.  They have to return results (commonly referred to as Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs) with only the information they are given.

Every SE has its own proprietary algorithm (set of rules or formula) for finding and ranking web sites.  This algorithm is a tightly guarded secret, so SE marketers don't get an upper hand in manipulating their web sites for better rankings.  But we can discuss what generally happens when a SE is given a search query.

SE's algorithms use a combination of on-page factors and off-page factors to rank web pages.  On-page factors include having the keywords appear in the title tag, or appearing near the top of the page, or having the keywords in special formatting like bold or bulleted lists.  Webmasters have great control over this aspect and are constantly tweaking their pages in hopes of gaining higher rankings.  Off-page factors, those factors which webmasters don't have much control, include link analysis (determining what a page is about and whether that page is deemed to be "important") and click through analysis (rewarding pages that actually get clicks and dropping pages that do not).  Much more about this topic in future posts.

Pro Tip: A web site that has well research keywords that are placed in strategic areas on the web page AND an abundance of links from other web sites that are topically related will result in better search result rankings.  This will help insulate you from the ever changing SE algorithms.

Finally, let's talk about SE spamming or the attempts by some webmasters to artificially inflate a web page's relevance and gain a higher ranking.  Although it is rare that a SE will target an individual web site and remove it from its index, it does happen.  Instead,  a SE will  look at the tactics that spammers are using and will adjust their algorithms to either penalize or reduce the importance of those tactics.  The classic example of this was the stuffing of keywords into the meta keyword tag.  This was so abused, that the SE have now all but ignored this tag.

Let's face it, SE are in the business of providing quality SERPs to its customers, the searchers.  They are not in the business of promoting your web site.  Stick to the tried and true formula of providing quality content and have lots of topically related links into your site.  You must make your web site relevant to your target audience first, then the SE will reward you with high rankings for your keywords.

Next time we get together we'll discuss the SERP itself and what that means to your business.

Search Engines Explained (Part 1)

We have all heard of them, we use them everyday, but do you really know how a Search Engine (SE) works?  Understanding how a SE finds and processes web pages, what goes on when someone types in a search query, and how those results are displayed is crucial information for your business.

This week I am going to explain each of these important processes and how you can use this information to your advantage.

The Crawling Search Engine

This is the type of SE that we normally think of when we hear the term Search Engine.  Other types include Directories (Yahoo and DMOZ) and Metacrawlers (Dogpile and Momma) which I will discuss in future posts.

The crawling Search Engine has to perform three basic tasks:

1. Finding web pages and storing their content
2. Analyzing the page content
3. Processing searchers queries

1. Finding and Storing Web Page Content

Search Engines are going to find your new web page in one of three ways links from an existing indexed web page, manual submission to the SE, and a relatively new method called XML data feed.

Having a link to your new web page from an existing web page that the SE already knows to exist is the best method for most businesses.  When the SE comes across this link to a new web page, it implies that someone else has found your web page important enough to link to.

Pro Tip: When I create a new web site for a client, I immediately place a link to the web site in my portfolio page.  Since my site is searched often by the SE, this new link will be found and can be scheduled for indexing very quickly.  If you developed your web site yourself, then have someone who is already in the SE link to your new site.

As far as manual submission of your web pages, most SE professionals doubt the reliability of this method.  In the early days of SE, this was a great way for them to find and index new sites.  But as spammers have flooded the SE with free submissions, SE either have ignored this method or have turned to a paid submission process.

The XML data feed method, such as Yahoo! Site Match system, allows web sites to submit new content for crawling and indexing in a special XML-based format.  This is a great method of getting your new content known to the SE, and will be a subject of a future post.

Once a SE's crawler (or spider) has found your web page, a copy is made and stored in their database.  If the page is already in HTML format, then the storage happens immediately.  If the page is in some other format, such as PDF or Microsoft Word, then the SE will convert the page into an HTML equivalent.

2. Analyzing the Page Content

Once your web page has been found and stored, the SE will inspect every word and tag and translate it into a mathematical representation in its database  This process is different for each SE and it is strictly confidential.  If this translation were ever to be released, then SE marketers could change the structure of their web pages in order to artificially inflate the page's relevance and ranking.

The complexity of the analysis, as well as the different processes used by the different SE, make a detailed discussion on this topic difficult.  What is important to know is at this point the SE do not look at the real web pages, they look at these mathematical representations when they match the searchers keywords to the documents in the database.

One more point I'd like to make.  When the SE analyzer comes across a link, the SE will feed that link back into its scheduler program to have its crawler visit that page. 

Pro Tip: To find out which of your pages have been found by Google, type the following into Google's search field: site:YourDomainName.com

3. Processing Searchers Queries

A discussion of Information Retrieval Theory is well beyond the scope of this blog.  But there are some very important issues that you need to be aware of.

Everyone is familiar with the plain text-based search feature of SE.  Here you would type into the search field something like "public golf courses in New Jersey".  But SE are advancing into many different areas of search results.  For example, type in your telephone number and see what comes back.  Even FedEx tracking numbers are interpreted by the SE giving you just the information you are searching for.

This concept, called semantic analysis, which tries to determine the searchers intention when typing in search keywords is an area that all major SE are competing in.  Each SE wants to deliver the best results to its visitors or risk losing that business to a competitor.

But the SE have to be careful.  Some SE track searching habits and use that information to improve their service.  This comes very close to privacy infringement.  Some users won't mind being tracked if their search results improve, but a lot of other people think that it's none of the SE's business to track their search history.  For more information, read this article that was posted June 3rd on CNN.

In the next blog post, we'll look at how the SE return the results in the way that they do.

Local Search - Past, Present, and Future

For those of you still not convinced of the power and reach of Internet local search, Greg Sterling from the Kelsey Group has posted a new article at Search Engine Guide.  In this article he compares the results from a September 2003 survey to one completed earlier this year.  Among his findings:

• The first study found that traditional yellow pages, white pages and newspapers were the dominant sources of local information. The Internet was then in fourth position. The follow-up survey found that, remarkably, the Internet had moved into a tie for first position.
• Most of the Internet’s growth as a local shopping resource has taken place via major search engines, the usage of which increased from 47 percent to 55 percent.
• The reach of the Internet as a source of local information has increased from 60 percent of total households to 70 percent (equal to traditional newspapers).

Greg also has a couple of caveats:

• Traditional yellow pages and newspapers remain powerful local shopping resources but have lost some of their reach. The Internet has emerged as a potent source for local business information. However, “the Internet” is itself a universe of numerous types of Web sites, including Internet yellow pages, online newspapers and search engines.
• One should resist the temptation to see Internet adoption as a zero-sum game vis-à-vis print media. Use of the Internet does not mean that consumers have abandoned traditional media. But it does mean that their local influence has diminished somewhat.

I couldn't agree more with the last bullet point.  The Internet as a medium for marketing should considered a compliment to the many other methods of marketing such as: yellow pages, direct mail, networking, referrals, and speaking engagements.