How to Improve SEO for flash-based websites
July 23, 2008
After spending a weekend hiring a photographer for our upcoming wedding, we were looking at his website and he asked me “How is flash handled by search engines and is there anything that you can do to improve SEO short of redesigning the website without flash?” Now I know that a lot of companies big and small out there use Flash, Applets and Movies to improve the look, feel and navigation of their site but few realize how much this can impact the SEO on their website. I am going to give away some free information about how you can improve SEO on your website when you use objects like Flash, Movies or Java Applets (Use at your own risk).
Using <NOEMBED> tags
Using <noembed> tags means that you can add written content in a way that search engines can read the page without it being seen as though you are trying to trick the search engine with hidden text.
<embed src=”html.swf” width=”50″ height=”100″ />
<noembed>
<H1>Web Flash Movie</H1>
<p>This is a movie about flash and how to use it.</p>
</noembed>
Because there are a lot of media websites out there optimizing pages, objects and movies for search engines presents a problem and a current possibility for solving this problem is by using the <noembed> tags for multimedia content on your website. Feel free to test out this code in your websites.
Luc
Keyword Density: What is it and how do I measure it?
May 28, 2008
So what is keyword density anyways?
Keyword Density applies to the written content of your page and is the specific density of a certain keyword or phrase on a particular page.
KWD = Number of times a keyword appears in a page/Total number of words on that web page
The sweet spot for developing keyword density is between 5% and 10% for this article (web page) I managed to score the following…
Keyword / phrase: keyword density
KWD = 6/123 = 4.9%
The Google Sandbox Theory Explored
April 28, 2008
Like with all things Google, the Sandbox theory is one of those theories and every online business owner should know about. I’ve read a number of definitions as to what exactly the Google Sandbox is and have come up with the following…
The Google Sandbox is a place where sites with new registered domains are allowed to “play”, this could also be effected by website domains that change owners. The principle is put in place to protect websites and control spamming websites that abuse search engine optimization techniques to gain a higher rank using either grey or black hat SEO tricks.
If your website falls into the sandbox and the majority of your traffic comes from organic search results, if your website is not spamming or abusing the search engines it will rank high again but it will just take some time. Some things that you can do in the meantime are…
- Improve your website’s search engine friendliness including SEO copywriting, Title Tags, Descriptions and Robots.txt file
- Improve your PPC (Pay-Per-Click) marketing efforts
- Improve your community (Social marketing) efforts
Whether you are a business blogger, e-commerce shop or any other kind of web property owner does not mean that you will be in the Sandbox forever if your website.
Luc
Google, Yahoo! And MSN Webmaster Tools
April 18, 2008
I thought I would write a small article about the tools offered by the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo! And MSN) because a lot of times unless you are directly or indirectly involved in SEO you are not going to take the time to know these and these tools are very useful in telling you what is wrong with your website and also what you can do to improve your website for search engine consumption.
- Google Webmaster Tools – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Note: Having an XML sitemap ready to go on your website is a MUST to setting these accounts up and you will need to verify the site when you first submit it to these search engines. All of these are FREE to use but you must register an account to use each of them
Enjoy these tools!
Luc
SEO Analytics - Tracking Search Engine Optimization
April 16, 2008
SEO Analytics is a term that has to first do with the optimization of a website so that search engines can “crawl” the web pages in the website making them “search engine friendly”. Tracking how people come to a website, understanding their behaviours and developing based off of factual results is the main idea behind Analytics.
If you put the two terms together then you get “SEO Analytics” which is the combination of optimizing a website for search engines using both on-page factors and off-page factors combined with reporting of how the optimization is affecting the customers, viewers or whoever makes up your audience that comes to view your website and in turn creating an intelligence about the efforts of SEO and the facts of Analytics.
So what are some ways to track SEO Analytics?
Internal Site Search (aka “Site Search”) – This can show you how your customers search your website once they are on, what they are looking for and how long they spend looking for it. If you’d like to have a look at what kind of metrics are tracked by Internal Site Searches in Google Analytics, feel free to write my article about this.
Referring Sites - Tracking where traffic is being referred from can help you develop new areas of inbound links to your website.
Comparing Natural (Organic) vs. Paid search – This provides you a benchmark to see how your Search Engine Optimization compares to that of your paid efforts.
Keyword Lists – This is helpful because the keywords are provided from search engines like Google or Yahoo! And show you the terms, queries and phrases people use in finding a page on your website.
All of these areas are covered when you install a tool like Google Analytics or Microsoft AdCenter Analytics to track visitors that are coming to your website. They can influence the design, layout and flow of the website and allow you to see opportunities for your business just so long as you are looking for them.
Luc
