A new study detailing the likelihood of referrals and purchases from Facebook fans and Twitter followers has revealed, perhaps unsurprisingly so, that fans and followers are a brand’s best friends.  The study explains that 60% of Facebook fans and a whopping 79% of Twitter followers are more likely to recommend a brand or brands after becoming a fan or follower.  Furthermore 51% of Facebook fans and 67% of Twitter followers are more likely to purchase products or services offered by a brand after becoming a fan or follower.

New meaning to “brand loyalty”

Skeptics of the lasting impact or advantage of a brand maintaining its presence on Facebook or Twitter may insert their feet into their mouths now.  The simple act of clicking “become a fan” or “follow” is likely not the sole reason these brand loyalists are recommending or purchasing from a brand.  Still, the regular interaction with and updates from their brand of choice remain influential in their decisions to recommend or purchase.  In some ways, a person’s news feed is the ultimate location to stage a marketing campaign, as updates are mixed between posts from a user’s friends, subliminally asserting that this brand itself is a friend. 

The end of the email era?

If critics still need convincing, they need only look at the frequency with which Facebook users are logging onto the social network.  The raw numbers of daily log-ins were detailed in a previous post, but they, nonetheless, indicate that almost half of Facebook’s user-verse (universe reference, anyone?) logs in each day, most times more than once, ensuring that an update or promotion is not left unnoticed.  Furthermore, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal announced the “End of the Email Era,” positing Facebook messages had replaced emails, citing a study by Prompt Communications.  In the study, 96% of respondents claimed to use Facebook messages as a means of communication, with only 91% of respondents admitting the same for email.

Just like video killed the radio star, Facebook messages have killed the email.   Armed with the knowledge that radio remains a viable means of mass communication, we know that death is not quite as final as the Buggles suggested.  Nonetheless, as medium replaces medium, the broad encompassing tool of email has been edged out in sheer usage by its cousin, the Facebook message.  The question remains over the qualitative differences between these media, as almost certainly deeper conversations and more information can be exchanged via email than Facebook message.  That being said, it is becoming increasingly clear, given the frequency with which the social network is utilized by everyday people and the inherent loyalty of fans and followers, that social networks are and will remain a crucial arena for marketing campaigns.

First, let’s define what a bounce rate is exactly.  A bounce is essentially when a user come to your site and leaves within 8 seconds.  Therefore, if 100 people come to your site and 50 people leave in under 8 seconds, your site has an 80% bounce rate. 

When designing a conversion optimization strategy for any website, it is important to first define the goals of the website.  And to define the goals of the website, you must determine the true business goals.  The business goals (i.e. revenue and profit for example) will define the website goals, and the website goals will determine the conversion goals that must be set. 

Any business would naturally want to reduce their bounce rate as much as possible right?  The longer a user is on the website the more likely they are to convert right?  This is somewhat true in many case but again it goes back to website goals.  So is a high bounce rate really a problem?  In some cases, not so much.  Here is why:

Scenario 1:  A home page for example might receive a high volume of search traffic due to great organic rankings from broad search terms.  Often broad search traffic from short tail keywords drives “unqualified” traffic or people simply browsing the web.  If they do not see what they are looking for they might leave quickly, but this does not necessarily mean the page is not well optimized for your target audience.  Your conversion rate for the actual users you care about might be higher then you can tell from the overall bounce rate. 

Scenario 2:  In another case, a page might do a fantastic job of communicating your brand messsage or product offering, but might simply be receiving less targeted traffic.  In that case people will quickly understand what you do without having to stay on the page longer or dive deeper into the website.

A high bounce rate can of course be a huge problem.  If your website is essentially getting the right kind of traffic and the page is not meeting your defined conversion goals, this will negatively affect your business goals.  But don’t just use “reducing the bounce rate” as your conversion goals for A/B testing or multivariate testing.  You should still use your revenue goals as the benchmark.

Here are some examples of how using bounce rate reduction as your only goal can hurt revenue:

• Removing pricing from the page can reduce bounce rate but negatively affect conversions (having unqualified users digging deeper until they find out they can’t afford your product)
• Having too many special offers, discounts, or FREE services can improve bounce rate but potentially hurt revenue because the people that are converting are buying at a discount or getting free services
• Adding too much content or too many additonal tabs to the page that will keep the user longer but distract them from the end goal – in this case it can often be a good idea to put the bulk of the additonal content and resource below the fold and focus on the calls to action above the fold

When considering conversion optimization as it relates to PPC landing pages you must consider Google Quality Score guidelines.  To achieve a high Quality Score, many things are factored but landing page quality is high on the priority list.  The days of simple pages from brand new URLs with limited content and only a large call to action are over.  Google wants to see that the page is relevant, that there is good supporting content, keyword association, good domain history, etc. 

Here are some very basic tips to acheive a higher quality score as it relates to your PPC landing pages:

• Use a URL with good domain history – for example instead of creating a new landing page for a product launch by using the product name, create a new sub page under the main company URL.  If your company website is AwesomeMedicalSupplies.com and you want to launch a PPC campaign for a new product launch (your product is “Spiderman Band Aids”), you should host the page on AwesomeMedicalSupplies.com/Spiderman-band-aids/ instead of a brand new URL unrelated to the main website.
• Have compelling content – these days PPC landing pages should have a decent amount of content especially if the URL or website is newer.  If your business is a large recognized brand, you probably won’t have to worry about quality score if your pages are set up correctly.  But for newer sites and pages, content is important.  Video content in fact is a great way to engage the users and becoming a very popular form of landing page content.

Here are some general conversion goals that are tied to revenue that can be used in a conversion optimization strategy:

• Revenue per user
• Reducing CPA (cost per acquisition)
• Return on Ad spend
• Registration conversion rate
• Click to call conversion rate
• Software download
• Whitepaper download
• and the list goes on and on…

So we know the postman always knocks twice, and that the USPS will deliver your mail through rain, sleet, or snow, just not on Sundays.  But as snail mail has been replaced by email, email has been increasingly replaced by its cooler cousin: Facebook messages.  As the number of users has exploded, so too have the number of transmissions through Facebook messages.  Which leads to the latest hiccup in the world’s most popular social network.

Last week an undisclosed number of private messages were misdirected by Facebook’s servers to unintended recipients, originally reported by a Wall Street Journal writer who fell victim to the server snafu.  While spreading general confusion, these messages also offered snapshots into the lives of other Facebook members. Messages ranged from teenagers lamenting their sweetheart not asking them to the prom to even death threats.

A Selection of mis-delivered messages:

1.“Until I start hearing some thank yous from you, I will be unable to give you rides home after dance.”

This raises great questions over modern parenthood.  Are today’s adolescents so plugged in their parents need to Facebook them in order to garner a thank you?

2. “The jealousy, the vibes, and what I hold dear to me made this whole weekend hard. The cuddling, truth or dare game, the texting back and forth for long periods of time, and the whispering back and forth for a long time got to me.”

Unrequited love and intrigue has never seemed quite so titillating as when it’s delivered through a Facebook message, where you can simultaneously poke the object of your affection.

And finally,

3. “I took my stuff off don’t want to ruin your life for you. So you can continue to cheat on facebook I don’t care anymore. I have asked you please not to do things but you keep on and on. So you are listed as married but that is because my status is gone. Too bad everything had to end over a f*****’ website. Wow that was worth it to you I guess.”

The age of question of who gets to keep the circle of friends has only gotten messier in the digital age, wherein, it appears, all record of a relationship must be cleansed from that “f*****’ website.” The question remains whether a post-marriage restraining order will mandate these two be defriended.

How About We…

Go gallery hopping in Chelsea this Thursday.  Attack the crossword in a quiet café.  Take a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.  Go skin-diving in the Maldives.

Finally, an online dating site dedicated to, in the words of UrbanDaddy, finding “like-minded hedonists.”  Flipping the online dating scene on its head, new matchmaker “How About We…” lets you first propose a date, then find someone to ask out who is mutually interested in that activity.

Previous online dating platforms have matched users by interests or “chemistry;” this new model aims to find people who enjoy doing the same things when out and about in New York City.  To get a sense of your style, the site presents you with a series of sample dates, to which you can respond with interest or skip over.  Based on your reaction to these samples, the site will try and show you dates proposed by other users that may be of interest, as well as allow you to post your own dates.

Even if you don’t find a love connection, you can at least find someone with which to enjoy even the quirkiest of habits…from weekend-long Chinese checkers tournaments to blindfolded knife-throwing lessons.

The site will officially launch in mid-March, but if you sign up now during the beta phase they’ll give you 3 months of free dating.  Check it out at www.howaboutwe.com

Luxury Brands and Social Media: an Oxymoron?

Luxury brands are moving away from small targeted social networks, according to Mashable columnist Samir Balwani.  Balwani lays out the three main obstacles for luxury brands in social media:

1. Luxury = exclusive.  Social media = inclusive. The loyalties of each lie in almost polar opposite ideologies.

2. Luxury brands uphold a hesitancy toward all things experimental.  They are classic and timeless, not fans of following new fads.

3. New ventures = expensive invoices. Luxury brands put high priority on aesthetics.  Aesthetically pleasing applications or web pages for social media can often rack up the bills.

For these reasons, it has been tough for web users to find an agreeable juxtaposition of social and luxury.  But with Facebook recently reaching the ranking of #2 most popular website in America, along with a slew of other encouraging statistics enumerated in a previous post, it seems that brands can no longer ignore a growing market of online socialites.  Add another attractive element to the mix—a study recently released by Unity Marketing, claiming that nearly 80% of “affluent luxury consumers” belong to a social network—and the social media presence becomes almost essential.

Adobe Flash Logos

There are many SEO tips out there for people doing flash, but sometimes all these tips still keep some people in the dark on how this is really implemented. Some people say Flash can now be read by search engines, and you should not worry about it. Some say just use swfObject, and others say use sIFR and you should be good. For me I am not going to recommend any specific tool or script framework. You can use what works best for you. I am just going to talk about the SEO issues of running a full Flash website and it’s corresponding solutions. And to explain this better I’ve created a Flash demo site that implements most of the concepts enumerated in this blog post. This may appear more like a tutorial than a blog post, so expect this to be a bit lengthly. I plan to make this a bit detailed because I get the same questions over and over again from SEO clients who we give consultations on how to fix their Flash issues and this blog post shall serve as a good reference our clients could always go back to. So I talk about the following:

1. Enumerate the SEO  issues with Adobe Flash.
2. Give the solutions to the SEO Flash issue.
3. And explain why our recommendation is a good solution to the Flash SEO problem.

Issue 1: A full Flash website is not an option?

Probably some SEO professionals have recommended this to you in the past. Just do not make the whole website in flash. Simply because you cannot optimize it in the same way you would optimize HTML. Although this statement is true, this does not mean just because a website is made all in Flash, it cannot be optimize to rank well for a keyword.

Recommendation: Our solution to doing SEO on complete full Flash websites

If Flash really helps in your website’s user experience and can help users in a way that helps in the overall selling/marketing of your products and services, then there is a good reason to keep Flash on your website.

Always note that doing SEO for a non-Flash website is easier to do, which translates to lesser working resources and just might also mean a lower price tag. Some SEO companies may not have any difference in pricing for Flash and non-Flash website, and this simply means their price is already adjusted to expect the worst or they are probably not aware yet of the SEO challenges of a Flash website.

The bottom line is, if Flash helps in making your customers happy or increasing sales, then keep it, otherwise remove it.  And if you do keep it, be prepared for the challenges in SEO.

Read more of the other issues below and as we continue, I will be referring to this full flash SEO demo page to explain all the concepts here.

Usability, Design & Development Considerations

Issue 2: Search Engines cannot Read Flash

The main root of it all why doing SEO for Flash is done differently is because search engines cannot read .swf Flash files. In the past, both Google and Adobe has continuously mention they are getting better and better in reading content and links within Flash, and they are working closely making sure .swf files’ content can be read and is crawlable and will be willing to open the same doors to other search engines in the future.

Google seems to be leading in it’s power to read .swf Flash files and Yahoo is still on it’s way, but still there are reasons to not rely on this capability.

• Google seems to be inconsistent in how it treats .swf files.
• If text within flash is converted into a symbol to have changes in size or other properties and not just position, this text is converted into a vector format no longer recognized as text.
• Yahoo is still working on their reading/crawling of Flash files and others are not capable yet. Better take advantage of doing proper SEO Flash practices today to get the competitive advantage while it is going to take some time for other search engines to follow. Once this is working properly on Yahoo, we should expect Bing to follow soon since Microsoft does own Yahoo.
• Content within Flash cannot be optimized in the same way you would optimize content for HTML.
• Based on Bing Webmaster Guidelines, if MSNBot cannot see any content to use as a Title or Description on a Flash website, it may get content from pages with incoming links going to your Flash website. This is not always a good thing since websites can also link to you with offensive, denigrating content. It’s better that you control what the title and description is than let Bing decide pull from another website we may or may not have control of.

Recommendation: Our solution to search engine readability of Adobe Flash content

To be able to cater to all other search engines is to not rely of the search engine’s power to read within the .swf file and just serve the content of the .swf file as plain HTML text.

Check our example SEO Flash Demo homepage, you should load this perfectly fine as a complete Flash site. Since this is only for example purposes, the example site is a very simple full Flash website. The Flash embed code is loaded by the web browser using JavaScript’s innerHTML property. This makes the page appear as if there is no Flash at all. And just behind the Flash where the innerHTML values are replace, this is were the text content of the Flash is added.

Flash loading is triggered by JavaScript in an external file. And search engines will not execute JavaScript which loads the Flash and will just see the content behind it.

This sounds like cloaking, it is cloaking? Isn’t cloaking bad for SEO?

Cloaking is showing search engines something and human visitors something else. This method somewhat does that, since search engines see a non-Flash version and users see a Flash version of the website. Although the content is EXACTLY the same, and this is the most important rule to follow when dealing with “cloaking-like” methods. Besides, this method of showing something else by using JavaScript is more widely accepted as a general practice. Google’ Website Optimizer does it, sIFR does it.

Other methods that have been abused for blackhat cloaking are user-agent cloaking, IP delivery and reverse/forward DNS detection where these type of methods are not recommended for our purposes.

In the screenshot below is my example SEO Flash implementation demo.

Homepage of swfSEO demo with and without JavaScript and CSS enabled

Usability, Design & Development Considerations

Issue 3: Links are not crawlable in Flash

Google has been showing more and more proof over the years that it can crawl links within Flash files, but then again Google is not the only search engine. And even if Google can indeed crawl links in Flash files, sometimes the navigational elements within a Flash file does not link to a new page with it’s own URL. They are simply links that do certain behaviors within the Flash file, like opening up a text file, or making shifts in the timeline, so even if Google can see the link, it will probably disregard it unless it is linked to a absolute URL going to another webpage.

Recommendation: Our solution to making Adobe Flash crawlable by search engines

Within the plain text version of the Flash that loads behind it, Flash navigation should also have it’s plain text navigation equivalent within the content. This way when crawled by search engines it will be accessed on it’s own URL which will still load the same Flash file but with different Flash default options).

Products Page of swfSEO demo with and without JavaScript and CSS enabled

Usability, Design & Development Considerations

Issue 4: Creating a Non-Flash Version to Compliment the Flash Version

There are several SEO professionals who I know that simply recommends to create a separate page outside of Flash that will serve as organic SEO landing pages. This does solve the issues of Flash not being readable or crawlable by some search engines but this give’s rise to other issues and here are a few bullet points why this would not be an ideal solution.

• When the non-Flash pages start ranking, this drives visitors to the non-Flash version of the website. If the Flash is really needed which makes a better sale because of the user experience, then this does not help improve that situation. Although you can always devise a way to eventually lead the user to the Flash site after they land on the non-Flash version, this adds an extra step in the conversion process which is something we want to avoid and just lead people to the main conversion page or form.
• Doing a 301 redirect on the non-Flash version to the Flash version will not help since 301s are only allowed when the redirect happens first in the loading of the page. So if this is done on the non-Flash version, Google will not even see the rest of the content since the first thing that happens is the redirect. A pause can be added using a Meta Refresh tag or a JavaScript window.location type of redirect so Google would have time to read the code on the page, but these types of redirects would not pass any link popularity or Google PageRank value. This would only help aid the user to get to Flash website which could possibly convert better and have search engines read the content of the non-Flash page as well.
• But more importantly is there will be two pages that people could link to: The Flash version and the non-Flash version. Since the content will only be in the non-Flash version, the links on the Flash version will not help the non-Flash website to rank better. Some people may link to the non-Flash version because this is what they found online and some may link to the Flash version because this is what the user aesthetically likes. This spreads the important link popularity strength and not helping out in the ranking.

Recommendation: Our solution – No separate Flash and non-Flash website. Just use 1 website that can serve as both

Use the solutions mentioned above that puts together the Flash version and non-Flash version together. People that desire to link to the website will be linking to the same URL, thus helping in the ranking of the Flash website.

Issue 5: Using # in URLs

Why is the pound/hash/sharp/number sign (#) used in URLs?

#’s were first intended to be on page anchor links. These are special tags with names that you can refer a link to. Linking to these anchors will make the page scroll down or up going to the set location of the tag and not load a new page.

A common problem with Flash and Ajax, if someone wishes to link to a page or bookmark it, they may not be bookmarking the right content. Many Flash and Ajax websites behaves in a way that there are no page reloads with different URLs, thus if someone clicks on a link and the page and content changes, the URL does not. This causes the problem where users would want to link or bookmark a specific content page on a Flash or Ajax website and they end up linking to the homepage. By using # in URLs, variables can be passed around in Flash and Ajax websites where different URLs will be created but the page will not reload as long as the changes in the URL are after the # sign. Thus users can now deep link to specific content within Flash files or Ajax website.

The SEO issue of using # signs in URLs.

The # sign in URLs are read by web browsers and not by server side scripting languages like PHP, ASP/.Net, JSP, Cold Fusion, Perl and more. The same languages that are used by search engine crawlers. Thus search engines actually disregard anything that comes after the # symbol. Even if a website gains so many links from various hash tags in the URL, from a search engine point of view, all these links may all be going to the same place and not deep linking. There is also a possibility then that links may have various keyword focus diluting the main focus of a page.

Currently to date, only Google has been experimenting on reading content from # URLs using what they call a headless browser which is still in experimental stage. A headless browser is

simply a web browser with all feature of a web browser but has no visual interface. It works and behaves like a web browser thus it can display data from # URLs. This is still not running on the main Google server and so far only Google has publicly stated this initiative in trying to interpret # URLs properly.

Current day search engines will treat all # URLs as if the # and the characters after it do not exist.

Recommendation: Our solution to the # URL SEO issue.

1. First is do not recommend the # URL.
   Recommend a real valid search engine friendly URL not using #’s. Somewhere on the page, cues like “link to this page”, “bookmark this”, “send to a friend”, or any type of link going to social bookmarking websites should be using the direct link URL without the #. This way any type of natural link building where people would simply link to you because they want to would give you the maximum deep link benefit. Although not full integrated in my example demo page and probably it is not the best way to do it, I just wanted to show it is possible. Try clicking on some links on swfSEO and see the direct link recommendation.
   

   What Google Maps does to recommend the direct URL. It has it's own "Send" and "Link" buttons that when you click on them, the direct URL link is created for the user.

2. Do not reload the page on a new URL all time.
   This defeats the purpose of using Flash. Where one of the benefits is not to reload the page for a better user experience. Even if there are direct links to every Flash “page,” this does not need to be loaded on every link so users are not turned off by the reloading experience. Search engines will not be experiencing this since they will be crawling the actual HTML links.
3. Still use the # URLs just in case users do not use the direct link recommendations.
   This sounds counter productive and against everything we have talked about but you cannot really control a user visiting your website. They will do what they want and if they decide not to follow your recommended direct URL, they will simply copy the URL and paste it. And when this is done, this is what is actually happening:
   1. Search engines will view it as if the link going to this URL has no # at all.
   2. People will see the proper content then they click on the link going to a # URL. If the link popularity metrics were not passed on to the proper deep link, at least it is still passed on to some other place that is part of the website. Better than no link at all.
   3. Redirect # URLs to their proper direct link. When # URLs are detected, use the JavaScript property document.location.hash to parse the # URL. This redirect would not be possible as a 301 redirect. The redirect will pass no link popularity metrics, but at least people that may decide to report the link TO some place else and copy and paste the URL, they will from now on, use the correct non-hash URL.

Yahoo’s Dynamic # URL updating: In the video above, see how Yahoo Maps updates the # URL right after dragging or resizing a map.

Usability, Design & Development Considerations

A special tool that can be used for parsing # URLs is swfaddress, this should make design and development easier using this script. Not only will this help designers/developers get the job done easier, this script also fixes the forward and back button of web browsers which is a usability issue in many Flash and Ajax websites.

*At current blog press time, the demo URL has not yet implemented swfaddress on swfSEO. This will soon follow shortly.

Issue 6: Using Only 1 URL

This problem was already discussed above under Issue 4 when having a non-Flash versions website, and also in Issue 5 when using hash and non-hash URLs. By now you should already know this is not a good thing to do and it is best to consolidate link popularity and PageRank to single URLs and avoid making people link to two or more different pages. The only reason I am stating this as a separate issue is I have seen some implementations adding in the URL a boolean flag turning Flash on or off.

http://www.example.com/path/file.php?var=val&Flash=on

or

http://www.example.com/path/file.php?var=val&Flash=off

Please bear in mind, any 2 URLs that are different in any way and has the same content causes a duplicate content issue which may harm sometimes in search engine ranking. And again this may cause problems of people linking again to 2 or more different URLs.

Recommendation: Our solution to one or more URLs

The solution is simple. Do not use 2 different URLs. Do not have a separate non-Flash website as discussed in Issue 4. Aside from # URLs, create direct links going to the pages as recommended in Issue 5. As long as there is 1 URL with the plain text content behind the Flash runs properly as discussed in Issues 2 & 3, there should not be a problem.

Issue 7: swf Files getting indexed

Not all .swf Flash files look good in search engine results.

Since Google can now look into Flash .swf files, there is a tendency that these .swf files can also get indexed. And sometimes the title and description in search results will not be looking good at all. Although Google has expressed in their updates that it is getting better, there is still a potential for it to not look that good.

Here are a few examples. The first and third search result, the title and description snippet looks normal, but in the middle one, the letters look spaced out:

Search query with spaced out characters.

Another one with spaced out titles and descriptions.

Flash Search Query

These titles and descriptions may not really matter, I can still imagine people clicking on these links even if the letters are spaced out. But something like this below might decrease clickthrough rates.

Flash files that get indexed with no description.

Although this may really be a problem with the Flash Designer/Developer. And we should not risk this opportunity to do better not only in ranking but in increasing clickthroughs from search engine results by having more compelling, more inviting titles and descriptions.

Traffic to .swf files might have an incomplete site

When Flash .swf files get indexed, and people click to visit the file, since these were intended to be included with an HTML file, sometimes the experience can be different. In the search results above… I actually tried some of the link and I enjoyed playing Ruffus Snowboarding and felt I was better than Shawn White.

Flash file with no other links going anywhere. Click to play the game. I liked it!

This game actually works, but you get stuck on this site and has no other navigation going to the other parts of the Disney website.

Recommendation: Our solution to .swf Flash files indexed with bad SERP title and description and incomplete pages indexed due to .swf files.

The recommendation is simple. If you have optimized your Flash website properly, then there is no reason to get your flash files indexed. And if you are confident that you have done all optimization possible, then you can simply exclude Adobe Flash .swf files from robots.txt.

If ever some .swf files already get indexed and you have no intention for them to be indexed, then 301 redirect this .swf file to the proper HTML file that embeds this file.

Design & Development Considerations

It would be more convenient to save all .swf files all in one folder. This makes it easier to block them all by simply blocking the folder in robots.txt. Also make sure directory files without an index file is not allowed to be displayed or simply add a blank index file if needed with a 404 http status header.

Issue 8: I am using sIFR, am I already optimized for SEO?

If you are aware what sIFR is, you probably already know the answer to this question. But if you are not aware of what sIFR does, you have probably heard it from somewhere that sIFR is good for SEO and is not really sure that this is for. The acronym really means Scalable Inman Flash Replacement. Although his blog post is not about sIFR, all information on sIFR can be found from the original source. And all you need to know is sIFR is used for making graphical text headings only and not for running complete full Flash websites.

So people that use this are more interested in coming up with good looking text that is still interpreted as plain text by search engines and not really interested in creating complex Flash animations. sIFR is not a complete full Flash website SEO solution.

Design & Development Considerations

• sIFR Alternatives
  If your main concern is not about making SEO friendly full Flash websites and is to simply come up with good looking text, sIFR is not the only option. You might want to also look into CSS Image Replacement, FLIR, TypeFace.js, & cufon.
• Use only for headers
  All of these text replacement scripts are still programming scripts that use some amount of processing resources. They run really fast and you should not have any problems running these, but using them on complete whole paragraphs, the whole content of the page, you will see a significant decrease in load time. Thus this is ideal to use only for headers and subheaders on a page.

Issue 9: I am using swfObject, am I already optimized for SEO?

swfObject, previously called Flash Object is simply a method of embedding Flash files in HTML documents by using JavaScript. Thus swfObject can be used in all the issues I have discussed above.

Just because you use swfObject does not make a Flash website SEO friendly, you will still have to review all the issues mentioned above and do the appropriate solutions to these issues.

You do not necessarily need to use swfObject. swfObject is nice with good simple JavaScript code for embedding Flash files in webpages, although the latest versions of Flash has a similar JavaScript function to embed Flash files. The function named: AC_FL_RunContent is generated automatically by Flash right after you publish a Flash file.

Design & Development Considerations

The use of swfObject is totally optional, if you decide not to use it, you can stick with Flash’s AC_FL_RunContent function and externalize it as a separate JavaScript file. In my example demo Flash SEO website swfSEO, my implementation used neither of the two. It was simply using JavaScript and doing a document.write to generate the non-JavaScript embed code version and using JavaScript’s innerHTML to display of the webpage. The only reason why I prefer to do it this way, the code looks more cleaner, no additional <script> tag in the main content and are all in external files within the <head> section.

The Summary

• Full complete Flash websites can be optimized for SEO purposes. As long as it is done correctly.
• Have content as plain text. Google can read Flash files, Yahoo is working on it an Bing can pull content from pages linking to your webpage using Flash. Everything is not consistent and not yet perfect. Have the exact same content in the Flash file as plain HTML behind the Flash will ensure all content is indexable by search engines.
• Use links in plain text. Even if Google can see links within Flash files, not all Flash navigation ends up in a new page. And Google is not the only search engine in the world. Have plain HTML pages and links in them that reflect the same content in the Flash file.
• It is better to consolidate both plain text content with the Flash version on a single page, than create a separate non-Flash website since this spreads link popularity metrics.
• Hash (#) URLs are good to use in Flash for deep linking, but remember search engines will consider the URL as if there is no # in it. Thus plain text links should be using valid search engine friendly URLs.
• You can block .swf files in robots.txt if all your optimization is done properly. It is easier to optimize an HTML file than a .swf file.

Are we all asking to get robbed?  That’s what the guys behind PleaseRobMe.com are telling us, with their new website dedicated to a Twitter reel showing anyone who recently left their homes and then notified the public via location-sharing networks, such as Foursquare, Buzzd, Gowalla, all of which have been profiled in this blog.  Really it’s about time someone highlighted the dangers of sites like Foursquare and Google Buzz; when you break it down, it really does seem ridiculous to tell the entire world when you leave your home and to publicly list your address.  The site itself is overall quite primitive—all their “inside scoop” comes from a simple Twitter search that anyone could perform on their own computer in about 0.4 seconds.

Okay, so maybe these guys are exaggerating a bit, making it sound like we might as well put out a welcome mat and greet burglars with a tray of freshly baked cookies.  But they do make a very good point about how oblivious most users are to the privacy risks that come with being so connected.  And now that they’ve done that, and in the process garnered a whole lot of buzz, they want to dedicate the website to a foundation for online privacy awareness.

What does it all mean?

One reading of this development is as follows: privacy concerns are taken far too lightly by members and participants of these social networks.  People share too much information too frequently and are compromising their safety.  Conversely, one could argue that the size of these networks has grown faster than imagined, creating a wealth of information that is now being sifted through and sorted out, allowing for a disciplined thief to digitally case someone’s place.  If members start to post less information they will be protecting themselves, but they’ll also be providing marketers less information to assemble a profile from.  In the meantime let’s not forget the major precautions one can take to protect their home and belongings…like locking the door.

Two new studies of social behavior over everyone’s favorite social networking site were released this week, detailing the nature and extent of sharing links and information on the network.  The network, which grew from 250 million users to 400 million in only the last six months, was the subject of criticism once again this week as users debated the merits of the facelift the site received.

Sharing is caring on the social network

One study, an update on Facebook’s statistics page, indicates that users are moving away from using their statuses to really tell friends “what’s on their minds.”  Instead, people are using Facebook more often to share links, news articles, songs, YouTube videos, and the like.  And they’re doing it a lot.  Five billions links shared a week in the whole of the Facebook network – a staggering figure – averages to 12 shared pieces a week per user.  Facebook also revealed that 175 million people log in to the network each day, meaning just shy of half of all Facebook account holders are checking their friends’s links daily.  This trend points to a great importance on the part of fan pages of businesses to take an active role in the conversation by sharing as frequently as possible.  Sharing content other than promotional status updates has amazing potential to be commented on or liked by other users, thus reposting the article in their news feeds and keeping the fan page in the public eye.  Fandom increased dramatically as well as the number of fan pages doubled in the same time, fuel largely by new pages

for local, small- and mid-sized businesses.

The Facebook Gazette

Facebook called on its users at the end of January to share more news links with friends through their account, a move aimed at undermining the attraction of Twitter and RSS feeds to web surfers looking for quick itemized news updates.  As a result, Facebook has surpassed Google News as the dominant driver of traffic to news sites, currently beating it handedly by sending a 350 people to every news article Google News sends 1 to.

What do these numbers boil down to?

Ultimately these numbers indicate a growing legitimacy of Facebook.  This is not something that happened over night, nor has Facebook replaced the newspaper, but Facebook is nonetheless consistently adapting and evolving and incorporating new features that the community ends up adopting and utilizing with great frequency.  So maybe we shouldn’t complain about the new face of the social network just yet…it appears they know what they’re doing.

If you are not from the search marketing industry, you already know that rankings fluctuate. They change over time and this is were SEO companies use ranking reports checking how rankings change over time, looking at the trend and seeing the benefits of these ranking improvements in terms of traffic, conversions and ROI. Knowing that ranking change all the time due to different factors such as personalization, geographic location, all sorts of Google One-Box algorithms, Google Subscribed Links, Image Search, Video Search, Real Time Search, the search engine results page (SERP) may always look different from two different people. So I decided to check last Google commercial that was aired during the Super Bowl. This is actually not a new commercial, it was uploaded by Google online on YouTube last November 19, 2009 and many people in the search industry already knew about this commercial. A full set of all their other video commercials can be found on YouTube’s Search Stories.

I took a deeper look into the search results and replicated each search query to see how these results were different from the actual results below: Read the rest of this entry »

The techies and gadget enthusiasts the world over waited with bated breath for Steve Job’s State of the Union address to shareholders last week.  Not because he offered any solutions for the growing deficit, the wars in the Middle East, or health care reform.  But unlike President Obama’s competing speech, Jobs delivered a Holy Grail of sorts in the form of the iPad.

Technically speaking, the iPad is an iTouch that has been drawn and stretched 7Xs larger.  Resembling more a tablet than a hand-held device, the iPad retains the same web-surfing capabilities and the space to store songs, podcasts, and videos of its ancestors.  The expansion of the screen however adds the option of reading texts and e-books loaded onto the device, the very feature that casts Amazon’s Kindle as hell bound, since they’ll soon begin open competition for the same consumers.

So if it is the day of reckoning, who’s headed where?

The introduction of the iPad begs the question of who exactly will Jobs be saving?  Long in need of a savior in the Internet age, newspapers and magazines have been quick to predict massive overhaul of their operating procedures and u-turns in their revenue graphs.  News corporations dream of potential readers – and in light of several major papers beginning to charge for their service, subscribers – landing on their website after seeing a tweet or post on Twitter or Facebook.

But this gets to the heart of the matter – as the iPad stands in between its smart phone and netbook cousins, it undoubtedly will be only positive for social networking sites.  Apple’s newest product couples a larger screen than the iPhone with more portability than laptops.  This will make it easier to read on-screen material  ranging from e-books to  news feeds or tweeted links on Facebook and Twitter.  The fact that the iPad is less cumbersome will encourage owners to check-in on these networks more frequently than on their netbooks.   The result: people will be spending more time, more often on social networking sites.  Beyond pop-up ads and mandatory videos, social media networks promise to be a major player in the future of effective marketing, especially with the advent of the iPad.

301 redirects and other types of URL webpage redirection.

Why SEO Professionals Seems Obsessed with 301 Redirects?

Minimizing Duplicate Content

It is common in many web design and development projects to have some cases of duplicate content. Although many people say this is a negative search engine ranking factor and some view it like a penalty, Google claims there is no penalty as explained by Google Engineer on Search Quality, Greg Grothaus.

Although a penalty or not, Google is aware of the duplicate pages and attempts to choose the best page and this is where it can make mistakes. Google tries to add diversity to the SERPs so they do not appear to be posting the same page over and over which makes a better search user experience. And in this process, the page you may be attempting to optimize and rank well might be filtered out and replaced with another page with duplicate or highly similar content. Come to think of it, this is ideal for the searcher since this filters out many spammy type of blogs also called splogs for spam blogs. But this problem can also exist internally. And this is where the 301 redirect is used. A 301 redirect means a permanent redirect which helps guide search engines consolidate cases of duplicate content.

Consolidating Link Popularity and PageRank

Links as you have probably heard over and over, help in SEO. Links are like votes of authority, votes of trust, votes of credibility. And the more links you have, the better it helps in ranking in search engines, although it is not only about quantity, but quality where links should be relevant and not spammy.

If a link goes to a page that redirects, a 301 redirect is the only type of redirect that will pass on the link metrics to the destination page. If not the proper redirect was in place, you can be passing precious link juice to another page that would have been beneficial to the destination page loosing this ranking boost benefit.

Some URLs change, but the content still generally remains the same

On old websites, even new ones, URLs may change. It could be due to a website redesign, or a discontinues product or service, a abolished department, a change in product description or whatever case that makes some old URL disappear. Using a 301 redirect will fix problems of missing pages that used to exist. There are mainly two benefits here:

1. Link Popularity metrics are transfered over to the destination page.
   If ever the old URL may have gained some links you may or may not be aware of that helps in the ranking of a missing page will be passed over to the new equivalent page if a 301 redirect is in place.
2. The user experience of not getting lost on your website.
   Visiting a page that no longer exist, either because you clicked on a link on another website, or from a search engine or was saved in your bookmarks can sometimes cause frustrations and this may make or break a  possible sale or lead online. Redirecting users to the right place helps avoid possible lost traffic.

Now just because you have to do a redirect and telling this to your web designer, web developer, network administrator, company IT guy may not be sufficient enough if they are not that familiar of the types of redirects and why it would be ideal to do a 301 redirect. Read more on the different types of redirects below. Read the rest of this entry »