Google SEO Flash & Flash Tips/Techniques
Google SEO Flash
Google currently DOES index flash, however, I believe it is extremely unreliable. Clients have asked me to do some SEO work on their sites, little did I know, these sites were flash!
Most crawlers seem to have a hard time crawling flash and the #1 tip I can give for Flash SEO is: don't show search engine crawlers flash, show them alternate content!
The reasoning behind this technique:
1) Underlying HTML Content
2) Use javascript to load Flash
3) GoogleBot = No Javascript = Doesn't see flash, sees alternate content
For two of the sites I have worked on, I have used JQuery, JQuery SWFObject Plugin, and a base HTML site to get these sites indexed. Search engine crawlers do not have javascript, so we will use it to load our flash. If our client has flash and javascript, our client will see Flash. If they dont (Googlebot doesn't have Javascript) they will see our underlying HTML content. Let's take a look at this code:
<div id="flash"></div>
<div id="altContent">
<h1>Google SEO Flash Tips and Techniques</h1>
<h2>How To SEO Flash for Google</h2>
</div>
On your main page, write <div id="flash"></div>, then wrap your Search Engine Optimized code in <div id="altContent"></div>.
As you can see, the content in the "altContent" div, is pure html which we can apply the following Basic SEO Techniques to. We have an empty div above with the id "flash". We will use JQuery & the SWFObject to load our flash file into our "flash" div. Since the flash loading is done using javascript, Search Engine Crawlers will not see the flash, but will see our optimized HTML content.
Download a copy of JQuery here: http://docs.jquery.com/Downloading_jQuery
and SWFObject plugin here: http://jquery.thewikies.com/swfobject/downloads
We will put all our files in the same directory for simplicity, you can put them in a seperate 'scripts' directory if you want to keep organized.
On our main page, we will add the script references (order is important! first load jquery, then the swfobject plugin):<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.swfobject.js"></script>
Now, underneath this, we will add the function to load our flash file:
- <script>
- $("document").ready(function(){
- if($.flash.available){
- $("#flash").flash({
- swf: 'main_flash8.swf',
- width:766,
- height:750
- });
- $("#altContent").css("display", "none");
- }
- });
- </script>
This code should be pretty self explanatory, but, let me explain:
Line 2: We are setting up a function to run when our document has been loaded.
Line 3:Check that the user has the flash plugin and it is enabled
Line 4: We are using the .flash() method of SWFObject to load content into the #flash div. (# stands for id . stands for class)
Line 5: We set the swf: parameter to our swf file
Line 6/7: We set the width/height
Line 9: Now that our flash has loaded, we set the display of the altContent div to none, which will hide it.
Since GoogleBot does not have javascript, the code to load the flash and hide the altContent will never run.
If a user has flash, the flash site will load. If not, they will see the html content.
Searching for my clients business name, they could not be found anywhere. Once I applied the technique above, they were #1 within a week (Search engines do take some time 
)
This technique is widely accepted. For some more reading, check out: Google Does Index Flash
Hope this article helps.
Comment if it did!
How to Setup a SEO friendly 301 Redirect
301 redirects are used to tell the browser that the page they are requesting has been moved permanently to another location. However, this is often used in SEO as well to give a domain ALL the credit from incoming links.
Search engines see your domain as 2 domains.
http://www.mydomain.com
and
http://mydomain.com
If 50 sites link to www. and 50 link to mydomain.com, you are losing half the 'votes' for your website (a link to your site is essentially a vote that your website has good content). The best way to get FULL credit for your links is to setup a 301 redirect.
Log into your hosts control panel and look for a Redirects option.
Type of Redirect: 301 (Moved Permanently)
Select the domain from the dropdown list.
WWW Redirection: Look for an option that says Only redirect with www.
Redirect to: Type http://mydomain.com
Click add.
If you visit http://www.mydomain.com, you should now be redirected to http://mydomain.com. Alternatively you can set this up so that any request to http://mydomain.com redirect to http://www.mydomain.com, this is up to you.
One last thing use this: SEO Friendly Redirect Checker to make sure your redirect is setup properly! For Example, i can check this site for a redirect by typing http://www.theinfiniteblog.com, it will tell you there is a search engine friendly redirect setup!
If you do not have a host or they do not support configuring redirects, you may have a little more trouble setting up the redirect, BUT, there is a great resource for setting up 301 redirects with: IIS, HTAccess, PHP, ASP, etc etc.
How to Redirect a Web Page
Happy Redirecting!
Comment if this helped!
SEO Tools – Rank Checker Walkthrough
Rank Checker - Great SEO Tool
A great SEO Tool I bumped into while learning about SEO is Rank Checker.
If you ever wanted to know what your rank is in the Google index, but were just to lazy to sift through the
many many pages of results (admit it you've done this...how many pages did you get through before giving up ? 10? 15?...ive done this too lol)..you really should check it out.
Rank checker is available from SEOBook as a free Firefox extension.
It won't work in IE, but you should have firefox anyways!
You can download Rank Checker by clicking: http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/
After you install, you will see the Rank Checker icon on the bottom right corner of your browser.
Clicking on this will open the main Rank Checker Interface.
Interface
Interface(Click to enlarge)
This is the starting interface, basically there is a box for your domain and then a keyword box. If we type www.msn.com as the domain name, and messenger as the keyword and click Add. We see it in the window below, you can repeat this step for multiple keywords, making a list
of keywords to search for that domain. When we hit start, Rank checker will go through Google Index, Yahoo Index, and Live Index to find the position of your domain for each particular keyword.
Results(Click to enlarge)
This is the interface after a search. It may take some time, but eventually you will see what your position is for each specified keyword. Here we see that www.msn.com is rated 9th for the keyword "messenger" (Msn Messenger) if you havent figured that out already.
Rank Checker Presets
If this search is going to be used often, you can save it as a preset. Click the Save button, and type a name for this preset. The next time you load, you can load the preset using the OPEN button on the interface. Please save a preset, we'll need it later on!
Rank Checker Export Ability
One nice feature of the rank checker extension is its ability to export your results to a csv file (comma seperated value). This file can be opened in a number of applications including wordpad and excel. This allows you to track your results. You can save a copy of the csv file, and next time you run your check, you can compare the two to see how effective your SEO techniques have been.
Rank Checker Extra Features
By clicking Tools>Rank Checker in your Firefox Menu bar, you have access to some neat features which aren't that visible on the interface.
Hell, im not even sure they exist on it. Tools>Rank Checker>Options, allows you to customize rank checker for your locale (ie Google.ca instead of Google.com). It also allows you to put a delay on the time between requests. This is to keep your IP from being banned if you're querying a LARGE number of keywords - dont worry about this for a low number of keywords.
SCHEDULING!...YES...SCHEDULING.
This ones pretty exciting. By clicking Tools>Rank Checker>Scheduling, you can schedule rank checker to run at a certain time, and certain frequency. On the scheduling interface, choose a time and click the Save button. At the drop down in the bottom, pick the preset we saved earlier, choose your frequency, then click Add. This will run your preset on a schedule. If you would like to view data gathered by these scheduled runs, click Tools>Presets. Select your preset and click Export History to CSV. This will allow you to see all the data gathered by this tool.
Anyways, headin to bed, so thats it for today, but enjoy.
This tool will DEFINITELY help you improve your SEO rankings. Often times with SEO I felt that I had no clue if it was working or not.
This tool gives you a definite way to measure whether or not the SEO techniques you're applying are working effectively or not.
Feel free to leave comments or contact me with suggestions, questions, or requests.
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Beginner Ad Programs
A big part of your website and/or blog is monetizing it. Most people who create a website do so for fun, but then realize they can make a little bit of return on all the effort they invested. I began to research and look at different ways to monetize a website and the 2 easiest, no hassle advertising programs I have seen are Google Adsense and Ad-Brite.
Now, after using these for a couple months, they both have some pros and cons. Before going through these, I just have to share a few definitions that float around in the online advertising world and will better help you understand the content to follow.
PPC(Pay Per Click): An ad that is Pay Per Click means that you will be paid only if the ad is clicked by a user. Most of the ads that fall into this
category are text links, and banners.
CPC(Cost Per Click): Denotes how much you will make on a PPC ad if a user clicks. If an ads CPC is $0.10, you will be paid 10 cents per click.
PPV(Pay Per View): An ad that is Pay Per View means that you will be paid everytime the ad is viewed. Most full page ads cost
CPV(Cost Per View): Denotes how much you will make on a PPV ad when viewed. If an ads CPV is $0.10, you will be paid 10 cents per view.
CPM(Cost Per Mille): Denotes how much you will make when an ad is viewed 1000 times. If an ads CPM is $1.00. You will be paid $1.00 after
1000 views.
eCPM(estimated Cost Per Mille): This is a statistic that denotes how much you will make for every 1000 webpage views. This is not related to the ad itself, but rather to the money-making ability of your website. If in 500 visits you generate $5.00 your eCPM would be $10.00. Again this is just an estimation, but gives you a good idea of how well you are doing.
Now that you understand those terms lets look at Adsense and Adbrite
Legend: += pro -=con n=neutral
Google Adsense (https://www.google.com/adsense/):
+ Amazing targeting: Ads are extremely relevant thanks to Google's content analysis. However sometimes, some ads do get by that aren't relevant. For this Google provides it's competitive ad filter, which allows you to filter certain ads based on URL. This list will fill up pretty quickly, but all in all, Google's targetting is very well suited to the content of your website.
+ Ad Availability: Ads are available in a variety of different sizes. Ranging from wide banners, to tall skyscrapers, to square button ads. Google Adsense also provides Link Units, which are basically low paying text ads. The advantage of text ads is their ability to be blended flawlessly into a website by setting the link units background color to your website color...and yes this is legal. Google has CPM and CPC ads, but does not have any CPV ads.
- Payout: You need to hit $100 BEFORE you receieve a cheque. You will not receive your first cheque until this balance is met.
- Control: You do not have any control over how which ads are displayed. You CAN limit which ads are shown by filtering URLs however, the amount you can filter is limited, and you will have to manually check your site to find ads you want to filter (they aren't even guaranteed to show up when you do visit).
-Transparency: Not very transparent. You usually don't know how much an ad will pay you or its ad type (CPM, CPC).
n Customer Support: I've contacted customer support once or twice, they were usually slow to respond and sometimes did not respond at all.
AdBrite (http://www.adbrite.com/mb/landing_both.php?spid=119614&afb=120x60-1-blue):
Note: The above URL contains my referral id. If you would not like to be counted as my referral for whatever reason, you can use the link http://www.adbrite.com. However, if you did learn about Adbrite from me, I would appreciate it if you used the referral link instead. Thank you.
+ Ad Availability: Ads are available in a variety of different sizes as well as different formats. One thing I really like about adbrite is their CPV ads. Full page ads can be set to run every 1-5 pageviews, and shown to a user once every 6, 12, or 24 hours.
Recommended you start at 5pageviews and 24hours. Then adjust and see how your revenue and traffic changes.
+ Payout: With a low payment threshold, you can receive your first cheque at the end of the month. Adbrites minimum threshold is $5. You can set yours anywhere you would like, and payment will be held until your minimum threshold is met.
+ Control: You have a ton of control over the ads that are displayed. By turning auto-approve off, you have a chance to review every single ad before it is approved to run on your website. Turning auto-approve off and only approving ads you would like to run makes the bad targeting con obsolete, but does require you to do a lot more work. This does make your ads extremely well targetted though.
+ Transparency: Extremely transparent. You can see the geographical targeting, ad-type(CPM, CPV, CPC), as well as how much the ad pays.
+ Customer Service: I've contacted customer service twice with inquiries and they have usually responded within 24hours.
+Integration with other Ad companies: There is a section where you can paste your other ad-code, and if your other ad-code is serving an ad that would generate more revenue, adbrite will serve that ad instead of an adbrite ad. This ultimately results in more revenue for you.
Signing up:
Adsense: Visit https://www.google.com/adsense/ and click signup now. Fill out the form information.
AdBrite: Visit http://www.adbrite.com and click For Publishers.
After your information is reviewed, you will be contacted and informed whether or not your site has been approved.
My Personal Preference:
I like the ease and targetting of AdSense. I like the transparency and control of AdBrite.
At the moment, I run both.
It seems to be a matter of preference, if you're looking for a set-it-and-forget-it solution, I'd go with Adsense.
However, if you're a control freak and like to have oversight on everything that goes into your website, AdBrite will help you feel at ease.
All-in-all, monetizing should be done as a way to help recuperate the losses you pay for hosting and domains, as well as to make a little profit.
Don't just make a site so you can make money off ad programs. Make a site you love, so you update and add new content often. This results in loyal users, which results in more revenue generated from well targetted ads
That concludes my little Adsense/Adbrite primer. I hope this gave you enough of an incentive to research advertising programs. These can be a great way to make a little income off your hard work.
If you have any questions or comments, or if you would like to suggest an article, please comment.
Beginner SEO(Search Engine Optimization) and Web Marketing
I am a beginner at SEO, however, after couple months of research I feel I've learned enough to maybe help some beginners at least get started with some basic SEO.Watching videos, reading e-books, reading websites, and looking at googlebots content analysis of my site and how it changed depending on some of my changes has helped me rank a little higher in the search engines. I may not be page 1 for some of the queries I would like, but optimizing for search engines has increased my traffic substantially. (I think about 85% of my visits are from search engines). SEO is practically a whole different discipline, but there are some things that are extremely easy to implement. These tips and tricks use my Death Note Anime Site (www.alldeathnote.com if you're interested) as an example.
SEO Tools:
As a webmaster, Google is your friend! Google has so many services that are free to use, its unbelievable. These tools will help you with everything from picking keywords to tracking your website's statistics. I just wanna make you aware of some of these tools so that you can install them before you do your SEO so you understand what's out there, and how you can make it work for you.
Adwords Keyword Tool (free): https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
This tool allows you to input a website, or submit a list of keywords. Google will suggest keywords for you
as well as show you information on Competition, Approx Search Volume for the month, Approx Avg Search volume.
Based on this tool you can pick good keywords that will more than likely get you traffic.
Webmaster Tools (free): http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Setup: 5mins
This tool does an analysis of your site, shows you potential problems, crawl errors, allows you to submit sitemaps, tracks statistics (top search queries, content analysis, view external/internal links) and others. This tool is amazing...USE IT.
Analytics (free): http://www.google.com/analytics/
Setup: 5mins
A ton of analysis data and by a ton, i mean A TON. Some of the data available: Visits, PageViews, New vs Returning Visitors, Location of Visitors(maps), Top Content Pages, Traffic Sources(Direct, Referring, Search Engine), Visitor Trending (Time spent on site, avg page views, bounce rate). With this tool, you can actually see how much of an impact your SEO is making. This is an AMAZING tool....use it!
Now the good stuff ...Actual SEO:
Keywords:
Keywords are important! When you optimize your site, you want to have a list of keywords that you would like to optimize for.
When picking keywords, don't just pick the obvious ones. For example in my death note website, "death note" is not a keyword I optimize for.
Why? Because the amount of competition on that keyword is ridiculous and the chances of me being 1st page are slim to none. Instead I choose to optimize for keywords which are searched for less frequently, but will bring me more traffic. Use the keyword tool from google to pick
good keywords with low competition (if you export the file to excel, you will be given a number from 0 to 1 for competition, lower being less competition...this is a lot easier to analyze then their little blue bars).
Header Tags <h1>-<h3>
USE THEM PROPERLY and then use css to style them in the manner you like.
You should try to include keywords in your headings.
<h1>Death Note</h1>
<h2>Episodes</h2>
<h3>Dubbed</h3>
stuff stuff stuff stuff
<h3>Subbed</h3>
stuff stuff stuff stuff
<h2>Anime</h2>
<h3>Chapter 1</h3>
stuff stuff stuff stuff
Meta tags:
are they as important as they used to be? NO.
Will having meta tags make you #1 on google? NO.
does including meta tags harm SEO? NO
Meta tags are not hurtful, so include them!
"Better to have and not need, then need and not have"
Some meta tags you can include.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="author" content="alldeathnote.com"/>
<meta name="designer" content="alldeathnote.com"/>
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright 2008-2009"/>
<meta name="rating" content="General" />
<meta name="description" content="All Death Note Online, Manga Series, Wallpapers, Death Note Episodes Dubbed/Subbed,
Videos, Anime" />
<meta name="keywords" content=" "/> Make this descriptive, 160 characters or less, and these keywords should be more specific to this PAGE, not your entire site.
IMPORTANT - a good title tag
Death Note Episodes, Manga, and Wallpapers Online
as opposed to
Death Note
Important, bold some of your key words
e.g This is a site for the anime Death Note
Build your one way links:
http://www.dmoz.org/add.html (Open Directory - google, yahoo, msn use this directory)
http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/index.html (Google)
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html (Yahoo)
http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx (MSN)
Read this article on getting highly regarded one way links:
http://www.yourblogismoney.com/2009/...one-way-links/
The alt attribute
The img tag has the alt attribute as a required attribute.
Bots cannot crawl your images, so provide them the alt text so they can
index your images etc.
<img src="deathnotewallpaper.jpg" alt="Death Note Kira Wallpaper" />
The title attribute
The anchor tag (<a>) has the title attribute.
Sometimes it may not be feasible to put your keywords in your link text.
Example:
Your links may wanna read
Home Episodes Manga Chat Contact
This isnt describing your link to bots, however the following will
<a title="Death Note Episodes Dubbed and Subbed" href="deathnoteepisodes.php">Episodes</a>
External Links
One way: A site links to you, and your domain does not link back to that site
Highly regarded, proves your content is worthy.
Two way: A site links to you, and your domain links back to the site.
Still good to have, but one way links in a search engines eyes are better.
Think about it
one way = endorsement with no return for the endorser
two way = endorsement because you're endorsing
Theyre both still good to have, but opt for good quality one way links.
If a site links to you like this <a href="http://www.alldeathnote.com">Click here</a>
This is not considered a good one way link, however the following is:
<a title="Death Note Anime Manga Wallpapers" href="http://www.alldeathnote.com">Death Note Anime Manga and Wallpapers</a>
Beware of keyword stuffing and/or css tricks
Using the same keyword to many times on a page or using css to hide keywords will harm your page rank and the way the bot sees your site.
SEO is very delicate and a recommended keyword density is 3-7%. Meaning for every 100 words, you should pop a keyword in 3-7 times.
Stuffing keywords in your page will result in your site being penalized by search engines.
<strong>Example:</strong>
<h1><strong>death note, death note anime, death note episodes, death note dubbed, death note subbed</strong></h1>
<h1 style="font-size: 1px;"><strong>death note, death note anime, death note episodes, death note dubbed, death note subbed</strong></h1>
<h1>This is a site for death note. The Death Note anime was the best anime I've ever seen. If anyone doesn't like Death Note, they have got to be out of their mind. I love anime and I love Death Note.</h1>......you get the point
Privacy Policy/TOS/Contact Page:
try to include a privacy policy, terms of use, and contact page
I read somewhere that google respects sites that include links to a privacy policy,
terms of use, and contact page. so it would be a good idea to include these somewhere on your site.
Sitemaps:
A sitemap is basically a txt file (or XML) where you list all the url's of your site.
Text File
--------------------
www.mysite.com
www.mysite.com/pictures
www.mysite.com/holiday_pictures
www.mysite.com/programmingtips
This file can be submitted to Google WebMaster Tools to help Google crawl your site.
SEO Analyzers:
SEO for Firefox(free): http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html
This is a Firefox plugin that allows you to view certain SEO related statistics such as Page Rank, Alexa Rank, Keyword density.
Website Grade(free): http://website.grader.com/
Provides an analysis of your site, and alerts to potential problems.
Traffic Tricks:
Include your site EVERYWHEREEEEE.
Your email signature, forum signatures, relevant forum posts etc etc.
Im not sure if actual traffic directly effects SEO, but the more traffic you have, the more chances for external one way links you have and this will inadvertently affect SEO.
These are not a surefire way to get a page 1 google ranking, however, it's a start. Research, read, and watch videos on SEO. Constantly, constantly learn!
Feel free to comment, or asks questions