zutroy.net

So my son just started blogging. Real blogging that is.  He’s had a BlogSpot blog for quite a while and has been fairly casual about it but he writes pretty good posts.  I recently added adsense to some of my sites and he’s excited to be able to earn a few extra dollars the same way.  So we setup his blog tonight and he has been copying all his posts over from his old blog.  So far he says he really likes WordPress compared to BlogSpot.  Can’t agree with him more.  I can’t stand BlogSpot.

Tomorrow I’ll show him how to setup analytics and adsense and he’ll be on his way.

So please take a minute and check out his blog (www.jonathancurtis.com) and don’t forget to support him by visiting a sponsor or two.  He’ll be thrilled to see his site getting traffic and earning a few cents.  And don’t forget to check back to see his updates on his stories he’s writing.

So I have been working in SEO for about 10 years now.  That’s Search Engine Optimization to all you non-techies.  Basically it’s what makes a website show up at the top of the list when you google something.

It’s funny I have done SEO for countless websites and I haven’t ever really done it for this website.  Why? Because honestly I don’t care who comes to my site.  In fact, I would prefer that I didn’t get tons of traffic because I don’t use my website to make money.  Lots of traffic would actually cost me more  money.

But lets say just for fun that I did want lots of traffic.  What are some things I would do?

1. Content.  I would pick a theme and stick to it on my blog.  If you notice this list of categories over there on the side, I don’t really have a central theme.  But if I wanted to make money here, I would.  I would also do some things to make visitors want to stay here once they got here.  Good articles, videos, products reviews, links to my amazon affiliate products, etc.

2. Links.  The way Google knows that your website is important is by other sites linking to you.  That’s pretty fair right?  So how do I get people to link to me?  I would do several things.  Send out regular PR to online pr sites, get all my friends to link to me, post comments on relevant blogs linking back to me, probably create a couple sister sites that are loosely but not 100% related and have them link back to me.

3. Freshness. I would dedicate a few hours each week to adding new stuff to my site.  Google loves new content. Google loves new links.

4. Social Media.  I would make sure I am actively participating in related discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.  And I would definitely keep my profile on those sites updated.  Again, just a couple hours a week.

So how does someone that hasn’t been doing SEO for years tackle this?  Until now it has been by hiring someone, throwing money at Google Adwords blindly with fingers crossed or by finding a mentor.  Now there’s finally a solution for the DIYer.  Enter DIY SEO from Main10.  Here’s a nice little program that knows where you should do each of these things and can walk you through it all. One step at a time.

If you have a website that is intended to make money (directly or indirectly), go check it out. It just might be the solution that you have been looking for.

The first time I saw a Foursquare update on Twitter, I figured that someone must have taken a funny photo of the group that had gone out to some venue and posted it to twitpic.  I was a little disappointed but shrugged it off.  Then I started seeing them everywhere.  It got really annoying.

Then I decided that I really hated Foursquare.  Just like the way I used to hate Twitter.  I didn’t understand it and hadn’t taken the time to even try.  This time however, I recognized that that’s why I didn’t like it.  So I decided to go try to figure it out.

I remembered how annoying all those tweets had been so I made sure I wasn’t updating Twitter with Foursquare check-ins.  And you know what happened?  I forgot to exclude Facebook.  And I started hearing from people who Continue reading

This has been on ongoing issue since the late 90s. Traditional graphic designers love to push Flash because it allows them more creative flexibility. Flash doesn’t have the same technical limits as HTML.

Sites that are built in all flash can still rank well in search engines but not as well as a similar page built in HTML. The reason? Google has over 250 parameters they take into account when indexing and ranking websites. Flash can still accommodate some of these parameters but not most of them. Even with the Google/Adobe announcement that Google would begin indexing flash files, they don’t behave the same way that HTML files do and are still treated differently.

Industry Leader Rand Fishkin (who loves flash) has come up with a great list of 7 reasons why you shouldn’t have a site created in ALL flash. (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/flash-and-seo-compelling-reasons-why-search-engines-flash-still-dont-mix)

1. Different content is NOT on different URLs
2. The breakdown of text (not formatted by importance like HTML)
3. Flash gets embedded
4. Lack of testability for flash optimization
5. Flash doesn’t earn external links like HTML pages do
6. SEO basics are missing
7. A lot of flash still isn’t crawlable

Vanessa Fox of Nine By Blue has given the following reasons to be cautious when considering Flash:

1. Search engines are still based on text, not Flash
2. Even using XML to populate your Flash, you miss most of the SEO benefits of HTML
3. Google can’t index javascript called from Flash (a common practice)

There are also many opinions about the correct way to use flash. Some say not at all, some say Search Engines don’t really matter. The general consensus is that flash is best used as a page element in an HTML based site. Even if you will have the bulk of the content be Flash. This is the best way to accommodate the edgy designers and the search engine sceintsts.

The big issue here is what really matters to companies concerned with reputation management.

To these companies, Search Engines do matter but not for the same reasons that one might expect. The main SEO push at these companies is to get good positive content on the 1st page of Google. They probably already have the top position, but also want the big detractors to not appear on page one. That will be accomplished by building SEO value in other web properties. Building the new company site(s) all in Flash will not help that endeavor, it will hinder it. Here’s why.

Links are widely accepted as the most heavily weighted factors in search rankings. Google doesn’t do well finding links from flash to other sites. The company needs to get its secondary properties to rank on the 1st page of Google for the main keyword (the company name). For example if MonaVie.com had a flash link to monaviemall.com, it wouldn’t get picked up by Google and MonaVie would be losing one of the most valuable links for that secondary domain. By putting the content and links in HTML, they gain those ever important links from MonaVie.com to their other properties AND they also gain latent semantic keyword value by having the page text associated with the links on the page. Both of those benefits are lost in the use of an all Flash website.

How companies should use flash

Companies definitely need to keep flash, but done right. Flash isn’t the only way to accomplish the premium look and feel that they need on the website but it is very effective from a design perspective. What needs to be done is to use flash as a page element that is embedded into HTML. They also need to make sure to incorporate content into the design. Every page – especially the homepage needs to have textual content.