The Best Seo Blogs

Archive for September, 2009

If you’re launching a new product — or even just putting new energy into an old product — the holy grail of marketing is a hearty endorsement from a popular independent blogger.

But how do you do that? What can you as a marketer do to get bloggers talking about your product?

In the video below, Sarah Pinnix (@RealLifeSarah on Twitter), a popular and prolific independent blogger based in Boone, NC, explains. 

 

 

Sarah is well qualified to give this advice.

When she and a handful of other bloggers began using and enjoying Nintendo’s new exercise/video game platform, WiiFit, they decided to setup a blog dedicated to the product.

The blog, Wii Mommies, has been a huge hit. It caught the attention of EA Sports, which then sponsored the group of bloggers to attend the Blog World conference on behalf of the company. 

In the video above, Sarah points to three keys for companies trying to engage independent bloggers: 

1. Find those who are already talking about you. Engage in their conversation and learn what they love. Add fuel to their fire and get to know the fans of your products. 

2. Create space where bloggers will create content for you. Invite writers to guest blog on your site or post in forums. Let them know that content creation is encouraged. 

3. Reach out and give them something to write about. You can offer giveaways, contests, products for review, or sponsor a blogger!

What do you think? Do you have any other tips for companies trying to engage independent bloggers? Please share them in the comments. 

 

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by Mike Moran

Sometimes I can tell just by the way they sidle up to me at a conference. They look around to make sure no one is watching, and then they half-whisper to me out of the side of their mouths, “Just between you and me, what is the trick to search marketing?”

Now, you are all reading this column because you think I am some kind of high-fallutin’ book writing, Twittering, blogging search marketing expert, so I have decided, for the first time, to publicly reveal the all-time top-secret search marketing trick.

Just promise that you won’t tell anyone else. (Or at least look both ways and half-whisper out of the side of your mouth if you do.)

The all-time top-secret trick to search marketing is to have what your customer wants.

You need to have the right information to answer their questions. You must have the right arguments to overcome their objections. You must have the right offer to fit into their budget. You must have the right offering to solve their problems.

Whew! Aren’t you glad you asked?

You see, search marketing is more about marketing than about search. The same things that make marketers successful in any other form make search marketers successful. But we so wish that wasn’t so.

We tell ourselves stories about how this TV commercial worked so well to sell that lame product. We regale our colleagues with tales of how marketers have changed the course of so many unsuccessful products.

And, once in a while, that does happen. Sometimes a brilliant marketing message can save an otherwise unremarkable offering. But that’s not the way to bet.

Instead, try to place yourselves in the searcher’s shoes. What are they looking for? How can you help them? What problems do they have? How can you solve them?

The beauty of search, and of the Web in general, is that you have an unlimited amount of space and time to help your customer. You can approach your customer’s problem from every possible angle. You can use as many different words and examples as possible. You can put so much information on your site that they are bound, not just to find you, but to be persuaded by you.

When you do that, suddenly you’ll find that you have content written for all the possible keywords your customers use. You’ll have information so compelling that it will attract links. And it will be passed along in social media. Basically, everything that you need to do to rank well in search will start to happen, not because you forced it, but because your helpfulness attracted it.

So, that’s the secret. Don’t tell anyone, OK?

Check out our small business news site.

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by Scott Buresh

This is part
two of the article Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix. Read
Part 1.

Leveraging
Your Assets

Search engine
optimization is not something that should be done in a vacuum if you wish to
achieve optimal results, nor is it a discipline in which it is necessary to
start from scratch. Many of the pieces necessary for a successful SEO campaign
are already in place – it is simply a matter of identifying them and
using them (and your search engine optimization company) to their full potential.

Your
People

While your
search engine optimization company should take the time to understand
everything that it possibly can about your business before embarking on your
SEO campaign, nobody will ever understand your business better than you and
your colleagues. This is why it is important for your search engine
optimization company to help you to utilize key people that are vital to the
success of the initiative, including people outside the marketing department.

Sales

Salespeople are
the front line of your organization – the people who know how to talk to
your prospects and understand what is involved in their decision making
processes. When it comes to collaborating with your search engine optimization
company on keyphrase selection (finding the phrases that will bring
highly-motivated prospects to your site), your sales staff can be invaluable.
Many companies have names for products or services that are very popular
internally but very rarely used on the street, so targeting these phrases
during your SEO campaign will not bring you the type of traffic that you seek.
Your salespeople (at least the good ones) know how your prospects speak in the
real world. A good search engine optimization company will help you to utilize
your sales staff – and ensure they feel involved and enthusiastic about
the SEO campaign in the process.

Customers

Customers can
also be invaluable when it comes to selecting the keyphrases to target for your
SEO campaign. Many companies are surprised when they enlist the help of a
search engine optimization company to begin a campaign only to discover that
their customers do not speak the same language that they do. This is common
across just about every industry – most people are very intimately
involved in their industries and use proprietary names, acronyms, and other
verbiage that is, at the least, confusing to an outsider. Anyone who has ever
been dragged along to a work function by a spouse can attest to this – it
often sounds as though the employees are speaking animatedly in a foreign
language, leaving the reluctant spouse to fend for him or herself. In short,
talk to your best customers. Ask them what they would type into a search engine
if they were looking for a company that provided what you offer. You will
almost certainly be surprised by the responses.

Company
Experts

Almost every
company can boast that it has industry experts on staff – the ones who
design products and services, the ones who implement them, etc. Yet very few
companies take advantage of these experts to promote the company as a leader in
their respective fields. Since search engines place a premium on valuable,
educational content, leveraging your company experts to create articles and
whitepapers for your SEO campaign is an excellent way to attain search engine
rankings while also providing something of value to your site visitors. Adding
this type of content throughout your SEO campaign also allows you the luxury of
educating your prospects online so that they will be further down the line in
the sales cycle when they eventually decide to make contact.

Your
Content

Now that you
have learned how to effectively make the best use out of your colleagues, it’s
time to take an inventory of the content that is available to you for your SEO
campaign initiatives. As mentioned previously, valuable content is held in high
regard by engines and visitors alike. Often, however, much of this content
never finds its way to the company website for whatever reason. Your search
engine optimization company should help you to identify this content, which can
include the following:

Whitepapers

Does your
company have whitepapers that are used during presentations, at tradeshows, and
in other areas but that are not available on your website? If so, you are
missing out on a great opportunity to promote your expertise, educate your
prospects, and impress the search engines. Most of these whitepapers can be
optimized during the SEO campaign for maximum search engine benefit with
minimal changes. Even older whitepapers can usually be dusted off by your
search engine optimization company and brought up to date at a fraction of the
effort that would be involved in creating a new one.

Articles

Similar to
whitepapers but typically shorter, articles written by your company experts can
be just as beneficial as whitepapers when added to the company site and for the
same reason. Unless you have signed away the rights to any articles to the
original publishing entity, there is no reason why your search engine
optimization company cannot use them on your website for marketing purposes.
Older articles, like older whitepapers, can typically be updated with minimal
effort.

Press
releases

Your company
press releases can also be optimized and utilized on your website. In fact,
optimizing press releases prior to their distribution on the newswires is also
a good idea. Unlike whitepapers and expert articles, it is usually unnecessary
for your search engine optimization company to go back and update press
releases during the SEO campaign, since they are historical in nature.

Offline
Marketing

Almost every
organization has offline marketing materials that are used at trade shows, in
sales presentations, or in direct mail. Since this material has (usually)
already been vetted by the marketing department, it is usually fit for
consumption by the general public. Often, however, these materials are left to
rot once they have served their offline purpose, when they could easily be
repurposed by your search engine optimization company and used to great effect
on the website. Of course, there may be good reasons for this – you may
not want to give away your best sales pitch to your competitors by making it
public.

Unique
Challenges

Although it is
wise to make the most out of your existing assets when you are launching an SEO
campaign, you should also be aware of some of the unique challenges that are
inherent to the online arena. Keeping these challenges in mind as you begin
your SEO campaign can make a large difference in your results down the road.

Understanding
Searcher Behavior

In marketing, it
is accepted that one must grab the prospect’s attention with a compelling
message in order to maintain his or her interest. On the Internet, this is
paramount. People who are using search engines are, by definition, in a
“searching” mode. While this is of course obvious, it is also
important to remember that in no other form of marketing is it easier for the
searcher to abandon your attempts to attract his or her attention and look
elsewhere. Your competitors are a simple click of the ‘back’ button away. In
fact, a recent study shows that the average visitor to a website stays for less
than three minutes – hardly enough time for him or her to be sold.
Searchers have been conditioned, by the sheer amount of information available,
to be impatient when they do not immediately find what it is they are seeking.
What does this mean? It means that your pages should offer immediate insight on
the common problems that your customers face. If you cannot communicate, within
a few seconds, how you understand your prospect and how you are different from
the myriad of other firms out there, you have lost them, perhaps forever. With
help from your search engine optimization company, take a close look at every
page of your website. Do you focus on the user, or do you focus on your
company? Do you immediately engage your prospects with your knowledge of what
particular business challenges they are facing? If not, it may be time to
rethink the most prominent marketing message on your individual pages and
devise a new action plan for your SEO campaign.

Redefining
“Competition”

Almost every
company has a list of four or five companies that it considers to be its primary
competitors. These are generally the companies that it believes offer products
and services most similar to its own. Often these companies steal employees
from one another, and they seem forever concerned with what the other is doing.

On a search engine,
however, your definition of competition should be broader. It should include any
company that offers the same products or services as your company that outranks
you for important terms. Whether or not these companies are on your
immediate radar is immaterial – a searcher will not know the difference,
nor will he or she care. The Internet is, by and large, a vast and level
playing field. There are quite possibly companies that you have never heard of
using the Internet almost exclusively to promote their brands. It is important
to watch out for these competitors as well as the ones you and your search
engine optimization company currently track.

The Role
of Patience

Unlike with most
marketing channels, search engine optimization has many variables that will be
outside of your control and the benefits will not be immediate. Simply put, it
takes time to properly optimize a website for optimal search engine
performance, and there are no guarantees as to when the engines will re-visit
your site and reward you for the efforts of your SEO campaign (although, if you
select the right search engine optimization company and play your cards right,
it will happen).

The obvious
downside is that an SEO campaign can take time before you begin to see your
ROI, and unlike most other forms of traditional marketing, the timing can vary
greatly. The upside, which people who successfully engage in an SEO campaign
realize, is that the ROI is typically much greater than other forms of
marketing (refer to the chart above). It
is also important to remember that working with a search engine optimization
company is a longer-term investment, which, like other longer-term investments,
takes time to mature. If you spend marketing dollars on a print ad, that ad
will only be effective for as long as the publication is in the public eye. If
you buy banner ads or use pay-per-click advertising, your presence will decline
once you stop paying. But a website that’s been properly optimized by a
competent, knowledgeable search engine optimization company will likely bring
you traffic for years to come.

Check out our small business news site.

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With Twitter riding the social media wave to a $1 billion valuation, the attention from celebrities, usefulness for everything from real-time communications in natural disasters to serving as a profitable marketing channel, a momentum of interest has spawned in how to make the most out of spending time on Twitter. Like any tool, Twitter is what you make of it. But Twitter and social communication applications like it are a lot more than just tools. One question about Twitter best practices that often comes up deals with how people (not bots) decide to follow one another on Twitter.

I ran an informal poll (on Twitter of course, another of it’s many uses) to proof a few ideas I had on what factors weigh most heavily for people when deciding whether to follow another Twitter account. My initial influences included location, bio, offline connections and others. You can read the replies to that poll here: #whyfollow. A self-assessment in combination with the informal poll feedback are what power the potential answers in this Reader Poll.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

By sharing your top reasons for following others on Twitter, we can all learn how to be more useful to the communities we’re trying to reach.

If one or more of your answers are in the “Other” category, then please add them in the comments below.   Sharing this poll with others is GREATLY appreciated. Can we get over 200 responses? How about 500?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
Follow Me Follow You: WhyFollow Twitter Poll |
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Posted by randfish

If you’ve been around the SEO world a while, you’ve undoubtedly heard the old adage:

Do what’s right for users and engines will reward you with higher rankings

Along with its peer:

SEO tactics that focus on engines, rather than users, are manipulative (black/gray hat) and will eventually be discounted or penalized

In my opinion, both of these statements are utterly false and tragically misleading. When I first considered the issue, I thought that perhaps, years ago, these opinions were more accurate than they are today. However, after visualizing the issue, I discovered even that isn’t true:

(please note: graphs like this are, as always, just my personal opinion)

The value of tactics from each set has risen/fallen over time, leading me to the conclusion that this was never good advice. And yet, thinking back, I’m almost sure that at some point, at a conference and during interactions with clients, I personally repeated this misnomer. I want to issue an apology for that now and set the record straight – SEO is a task that requires paying close attention to the needs of both users and engines. You can’t be an effective SEO without it.

Just think of all the specific tasks we perform that we’d never do if it weren’t for search engines:

• Title tags: We might still make them, but agonize over keyword usage and positioning, uniqueness and flow? I doubt it.
• Meta tags: Nope. No reason to even bother.
• XML Sitemaps: I’m pretty sure no human has ever visited this file in an attempt to sort out the pages on your site.
• Webmaster Tools Registration: Without engines, there wouldn’t be any.
• Keyword Research: I think this practice would be more like advertising copy – think Mad Men.
• Keyword Targeting: Why worry about keyword placement for anything other than conversion rate optimization?
• URL Canonicalization: No need – visitors are getting the content either way.
• Accessible Link Structures: So long as you’re not worried about the >2% of visitors who can’t see Flash, go ahead and build rich applications to your heart’s content.
• Robots.txt & Meta Robots: No engines, no reason to direct engines.
• Link Building: Unless it’s specifically to draw in relevant traffic, why bother?
• Creating Vertical Search Feeds: That’s going to be time wasted.
• Information Architecture: While there’s good reasons to do some of this for users, a significant portion of the accessibility and link hierarchy arguments are made moot.
• Redirection: Without engines, we can use whatever method is convenient – javascript, meta refresh, 302 - it makes little difference to the user.
• Rel="Nofollow": Internally or externally, it becomes a pointless attribute.

I think the problem with the classic "build for users" advice is that it sounds so compelling and, on a surface level, makes a lot of sense. Maybe this is a good warning not to adhere to any advice just because it seems logical on its face – knowledge and expertise may not make for simple messaging, but, outside of politics, accuracy is far more valuable than fitting into a sound byte.

UPDATE: A lot of folks in the comments are under the impression that I’m recommending against building for users – nothing could be further from the truth. Websites are made for people, and users should absolutely be the focus of your efforts. My argument in this post centers specifically around the practice of search engine optimization and the idea that tactics which are engine-focused (like XML sitemaps, anchor text, link architecture, webmaster tools usage, etc.) can be ignored because they’re not "for the user." The charts and points above are intended to illustrate that if you only focus on "user-targeted SEO" you’re missing a huge chunk of the potential SEO opportunity pie.

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Last week I shared a set of slides from a presentation I recently gave which outlines a variety of lessons that I’ve learned as a blogger over the last 7 years. Over the coming months I intend to expand upon many of the points in that presentation – starting today with ‘Listening’.

When I began blogging in 2002 I made a lot of mistakes and had a lot of false assumptions about blogging. One of the things I quickly found out didn’t work when trying to grow a blog was to use it purely as a broadcast tool.

In the first few weeks of blogging it was almost as though I was using the blog as a platform or a stage where I stood with a megaphone in hand blasting out my message for anyone who might happen to be passing by to hear. It’s no wonder that only my wife read my blog that first week (and even she never really came back).

Nobody likes a loud mouth. Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of someone talking AT them.

The people we tend to be drawn to in real life are people who pause in conversation to let you have a say, people who ask questions about you, people who have a genuine interest in what you’ve got to say.

The same is true (in most cases) when it comes to blogging.

Of course there are cases where blogs are successfully used as broadcast tools with little interaction between blogger and reader – however in most cases there is at least some element of ‘listening’ going on by the blogger. Let me explore a few ways that a blogger should consider ‘listening’:

Listen to the culture of the blogosphere

This is one for those yet to start blogging (and it should also be applied to those getting into new social media tools like Twitter, Facebook etc).

I was chatting with a new blogger recently who described her first week of blogging as being similar to travelling to a new country and having to adjust to a new language, climate, etiquette and customs as an outsider.

When travelling overseas for an extended stay (perhaps for a new job) most travellers know that one of their first tasks as a new resident is to make some cultural adjustments.

• learning some basic words in the local language
• finding a local who can talk them through the etiquette
• getting a map so that they can find their way around
• learning to use systems like public transport…. etc

In a similar way – when you’re new to the blogosphere (or any new part of the social media-sphere) it’s important to pause, take stock, learn about the culture, learn to use the tools, discover what is acceptable (and not acceptable), learn the rhythms etc

The danger in not learning the culture of the blogosphere is doing something that not only doesn’t work but that offends ‘the locals’ and hurts your reputation.

Listen for where your potential readers are gathering

One of the key tasks that any new blogger who wants to grow their readership should do is identify where their potential readers are already gathering online.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back – it’s not enough just to build a good blog with great content in order to find readers for your blog. If you want people to know about your blog you need to ‘get out there’ and interact with them and develop a presence in the places that your potential readers are already gathering.

Of course before you can find these places you need to have an understanding of who you’re trying to attract – so do a little work on defining who you want to read your blog and then begin to look for where that type of person is already gathering (I talk more about how I did this in this recent video on how I use promote my blog).

Listen to what others in your niche are saying

One of the most powerful things that I did which helped take my early blogs to the next level was to begin to monitor what others in my niche/industry were talking about.

I discovered the power of this accidentally one day when I just happened to be surfing on another small blog that broke news of a big story. I picked up the story on my own blog (linking to the first) and then my post got picked up by a massive blog which drew in a lot of new readers. Knowing what was happening in the niche helped to break stories but also build relationships with other bloggers in the niche.

Back then the tools for monitoring other blogs and topics were primitive and meant some manual hunting around (I remember in the very early days having to manually bookmark the blogs I wanted to track and visit them each every day to see if they’d posted anything new) but these days it is a lot easier to set up and automate.

My own monitoring of my niches generally happens in two ways:

1. Subscribing to Feeds of Key Sources of Information – these days most sites have some way of subscribing to them, usually via an RSS feed. I have a folder in my feed reader for each of my main topics which contains a number of key blogs and news sites in that niche. I used to follow close to a thousand blogs to do this – but these days have refined the list to much less for each topic.
2. 2. Keyword Alerts – using Google’s news and blog alerts I have a number of alerts set up so that if any news site or blog uses a keyword that I’m interested in I know about it. Choosing keywords that are specific enough can take a little time (some words just generate too many alerts) but on almost a daily basis these alerts identify important posts in my niches.
3. Recommendation Sites – the other listening tool that I use to help me know what’s going on in my niches is to subscribe to sites that are in the business of looking for popular content in my niches. These sites can be a little hard to find depending upon your niche but because I’m largely working in the Tech space there are a few including TechMeme and Delicious. TechMeme looks at what content key blogs are linking to in the tech space and Delicious is a bookmarking site that produces a list of popular content being bookmarked at any point in time (it’s not purely tech related but does consistently produce good results for me). Both of these sites have RSS feeds you can subscribe to to monitor what’s hot.
4. Twitter – I also find that being active on Twitter and developing a Twitter account that has a niche focus can also help you listen to what people are saying about your niche. This partly happens naturally (those you follow in your niche will share links) but there are also great tools including Tweetmeme (which shows you what is being retweeted in different categories) and other monitoring/search tools such as Twitter search (you can set up an RSS feed for different search terms) and tools built into Twitter clients (like TweetDeck which allows you to set up a column specifically for alerts). More and more useful tools are being set up for Twitter to help monitor what people are saying about your industry.

Listen to what is being said about you

The other use for some of the tools mentioned above (keyword alerts and the Twitter keyword monitoring) is that you can use them to alert you when someone is talking about you, your business, your blog or your brand specifically.

I’ve talked previously about setting up a vanity folder in your feed reader to help you do this so won’t go into great detail about it here – however it’s something that I’ve found particularly useful for a couple of reasons:

1. Building Relationships – when another blogger links to you it is useful to know about it so you can go and build a relationship with that blogger and their readers.
2. Reputation Management – from time to time you might also be mentioned on another site/blog/press in a more negative way. Knowing quickly about this is also important as it enables you to respond (if necessarily) or at least monitor developments.

Create Listening Spaces on Your Blog

Have you ever had a ‘conversation’ with someone where you simply could not get a word in edgeways? The person talked so fast and without taking a breath – to the point where there simply wasn’t space for you to be listened to.

Sometimes I get that same feeling while on blogs. It’s not that the blogger isn’t interested in their reader – it’s just that they get so excited about what they’re blogging about that they just don’t stop long enough to let others have a say.

One of the simplest ways to create these ‘listening spaces’ on a blog is to ask questions. Ask them at the end of your posts, ask them half way through the and even write posts that are nothing but questions.

Listen to the Questions Your Readers are Asking

One of the most important things to be on the listen out for is questions.

I remember one of my first teachers drumming into the class I was in that there was no such thing as a dumb question and that if one person asked a question it usually meant that others also had the same question going around in their minds.

As a result – when a reader asks you a question, you can bet that they’re not the only one thinking it.

Questions reveal potential topics to write about, problems with your site and opportunities to expand what you’re doing on your blog. Pay careful attention to them in the following areas:

1. comments section – this is the most obvious place for your readers to ask questions
2. your inbox – what questions are you getting from readers via your blog’s contact form?
3. search engine referral terms – often people arrive on your site having plugged a specific question into Google. Most stats packages will reveal these terms and phrases – keep on the look out specifically for questions – also check out 103bees – a tool that specifically monitors and collates questions being asked in your search stats.
4. questions typed into onsite search boxes – this is a goldmine of information, monitoring what people are searching for when they’re actually on your site will show you all kinds of needs, problems and challenges that your readers want to learn more about. Lijit is one tool that helps you track these questions.
5. ask readers for questions – from time to time it can be worth writing a post on your blog that specifically invites readers to ask a question.

Listen to what is working (and what isn’t)

The last thing I’ll add on the topic of listening before I open this topic up to others to share their thoughts is to listen by tracking what is and isn’t working on your blog.

This means setting up your blog with a good metrics tool (I use Google Analytics but there are other great ones out there) and regularly using it to work out what is readers are responding to on your blog.

Some places to start include:

• What posts are being read most?
• What posts are generating good conversation/comments?
• What posts are being linked to by others most?
• How are readers using your design? (use a tool like CrazyEgg to create a heatmap)
• What days of the week are people reading your site most on? What times of the day?
• What pages are people ‘bouncing’ from your site on (bounce rate shows how many people arrive on your blog and immediately leave)
• What posts are people spending most (and least) time on?
• What posts are you getting most negative feedback on?

It is easy to obsess on some of these stats – but it’s also easy to ignore the useful stuff in them that could help you improve your blog.

How else do you Listen in your blogging?

I’ve talked for way too long on a post about listening – so now it’s over to you.

What would you add? Do you use some of the above techniques? What has worked well for you? I’m all ears!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Listening – Principles of Successful Blogging #1

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You are reading this article probably because you have a flash website and you need it to be ranked well. First of all, you should re-consider using Flash on your web site. Keep in mind that many visitors still use slow dial-up connections (Such people are becoming less and less but still, we can’t rule out the chances. Who knows, maybe they would be your possible customers) to access web pages. They don’t like to wait 1-2 minutes only to see your company logo fancy animated. Your Flash movies must carry invaluable information to the visitors, otherwise they will be disappointed.

Consider this case. You have a company providing broadband services. One advantage you can put the flash website to is to make the viewer feel the PAIN for having to wait for long, for the website to load on the person’s pathetic dial up connection. Yes, “IF” they come over to your main page they would surely be interested in your service. Don’t neglect the stress on the point “IF” they make it your website home page at all. Why? Well, ask yourself whether you will wait 3-5 minutes just to enter a website you didn’t even know existed? Personally I wouldn’t. So aside from the business part, let us focus on more important aspects. Entry pages that only show your company logo are becoming more and more annoying to users. Using web pages like company brochures only show that your company didn’t get the whole Internet idea.

Keep in mind that not everyone has installed the Flash player. Always add a link to a web page that contains the same important information as found in the Flash movie in plain text. Try to get your coder to wrap up a code which automatically detects the flash player version installed and if it is not installed or is an outdated version which wont probably run your website properly , direct the user to install one. It is not always a wise idea to embed the text like “Flash player needed to view the website properly. Download here.” People would end up downloading it even if it is already installed in their system. Some people skip the website just because they feel lazy to download the software and install it.

For these reasons, not using Flash or building a duplicate site without Flash are the easiest ways to make sure that your web site visitors and the search engines can access your web site.

Giving a visual introduction of a site is loved a lot by a majority of users. But even an interested visitor if not given a proper option of moving out would feel irritated (Remember to include the skip introduction button in case you have a long video or something which will help re visiting users not get bored by being forced to view your videos again and again each time they visit). Same is the case for the web crawlers. Web crawlers or spiders in more familiar words, somewhat behave like living users and expertise in static websites or being clear, for HTML sites. Google advises on its webmaster guidelines page: "If fancy features such as [...] Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.”

Indexing a flash site that is creating a rank for the sites with flash movies was a big question quite some time before, thanks to the advancement in technologies which has now made it well within the capabilities of the web spiders to index the flash websites. Search engines can now see the flash websites by way of replacement contents. In more clear words or for better understanding the flash sites are not ranked but their static contents are ranked which are more readable by the crawlers. The design trick has become quite famous and accepted by the web developers which is even accepted by the Google and recommended.

The designers can now leverage the opportunity to optimize the flash site for better rankings on the engine by using the replacement method in which, messages containing highly searched and tagged key words get an edge. Anyone planning to use flash in the website for greater attraction should make it a point to construct it in a manner which is readable to the web spider and going one step further, not just readable to web spider but should have content relativity with the searched subjects. The replacement content for the flash site should have links which have been provided in the flash content for the better readability and credibility in the search .To explain better ,if the flash content of the site has links to some parts of the site then that should also be featured in the replacement text of the site also.

It’s a brilliant approach to impure the Flash content with keyword rich messages that can be replaced in the text form by the smart crawlers.

Industry wise recommendations are for SWFObject 2 for flash programming, as it detects whether or not the browser supports flash objects and then serves accordingly with the appropriate version of the site (Flash or HTML).The major advantage of SWFObject 2 is that it quenches the thirst of the crawlers as the users. SWFObject 2 bolsters a site’s keyword density and crawler’s value by introducing keyword-targeted messages into the site’s flash content which can be replaced, crawled and indexed in text form. Keyword-based messages which drive the traffic are a must for the seo optimization of a site. To supplement the site with targeted keywords, which the consumer market is searching for is a primary way to obtain a better rank in the search page.

Language emphasis should get a priority over images and videos. It should be borne in mind that an image cannot be transformed into a text message which is the primary foundation for the crawlers to initiate the search for the query placed. Minimize the use of images in the flash content and main focus should be kept on contents in text form which can be replaced as well as recognized by crawlers. Flash videos with textual content which can be replaced as text gets an added edge when judged by the crawlers. Videos with dialogue must also have a readable means to qualify for a better ranking on a search site.

Spamming should be avoided in the text replacement as the former reduces the credibility of the flash website .As far as Google’s technology is concerned it can easily break .swf files and extract its contents to find whether it’s a spam linking.

The text in the anchored link is also among the key factors which decides the placement of one’s site on the search page, so utmost care should be taken to optimize the links with better explanation about the destination page and it’s materials .The keyword within the <a>are important and targeted keywords, so if a link is applied to the flash content or a flash file, care should be taken so that the targeted keywords are read by the crawlers. For images alt attributes are used and is a good practice to provide explanation there too. The use of sIFR for designer text is also a good idea for attractive look and at the same time it being easily crawl able by the spider gains extra point for ranking on the site. The advantage of using sIFR is that it is easily searched by the spider as it’s a text and on the other hand also give beautiful look to the text .sIFR happens to be light weight and acceptance is also wider in the search engines like Google and same types.

The flash content of the site should be optimized by matching the name and description in the accessibility panel with that of the HTML title and Meta description in the HTML page. Avoiding vector graphics and bit maps in the flash contents help making the deal better; replacing the same with text is the best option for superior optimization. Applying accessibility panel to the clips or buttons after converting all the photo images and videos into movie clips or buttons is another appreciated way of generating a better ranking for the search pages. Each of which should have a unique description and descriptive name. The search engine robots or the crawlers do not select from pull down menus or fill forms, so reaching that corner is tough for the agent. To answer this concern a standard <a href > type link can be provided to the entire flash movie page.

Another helpful option is to add all these standard links to the site map which defines the total layout and placing of the site. If a developer faces constraints in creating or providing static HTML links to all the pages of the sites then a better and efficient way is to provide an XML site map which tells the crawlers about the location of all the pages of the site. One can give the users a link to the flash intro from the HTML site .The primary content for any flash site should be links, headings, styled text, images–anything which can be provided in an HTML page .The SEO copy editing and indexing skills are applied to the primary content, flash is a non issue. The best way to optimize a flash site is to create an ad hoc HTML site which will have a presence along with the flash site and would work as a feeder for the search engine crawlers to help optimization for the master site.

With almost everything said, even if SEO optimization is done from top to bottom of the page there stands no guarantee of staying number one in the search results. But if the requirement of the audience are met, then one can go full flash site with PPC and still have extraordinary results. The ground reality behind the success of a site is the content it offers to its users.

Some Other Tips

So how can you achieve high search engine rankings in spite of Flash contents?
If you use Flash on your web site, the following tips can help you getting your Flash contents indexed by the search engines:

• Provide links to alternate pages that contain a lot of text and some keywords that the search engines can index.
• Place some text above and below your Flash movie that contain your keywords. Along with your title and maybe your Meta tags, this gives the search engines some contents to index.
• If you embed the Flash movie in your HTML code, use your most important keywords in the movie file name using the HTML tags <param name="movie" value="movie-filename.swf"> and <param name="src" value="movie-filename.swf>.
• You can use the <object standby="your message to show while loading"> attribute to include some text that is displayed while the Flash movie is being loaded. In addition, you can use the <object title="your movie title"> attribute to include a keyword-rich movie title.
• Use the <no embed> tag to provide text for web browsers which don’t support the Flash plug-in. Use it to describe the contents of the Flash movie as search engines can index that description.
• You may want make your Flash movie transparent and place it "over" your web page using CSS layers. However, some search engines might consider this spamming.
• Some search engines offer pay for inclusion programs that guarantee the inclusion of your web page regardless of the contents. Note that these search engines still need text to index your site.
• You could provide an alternative, "pure text" web page solely to search engine crawler programs. However, this technique is called "cloaking" and search engines don’t like it (click here for details).
• Link from other pages of your web site to your Flash page with a keyword-rich link text.
• Use the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK to convert a Flash file’s text and links into HTML for search engine indexing.
• Read another articles by by Jonathan Hochman which will give you more knowledge

Adarsh is an expert in SEO and internet marketing. He is currently the webmaster and SEO in charge of The Health and wellness blog, HealthRuns.com.

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This is a guest post by Ganesh K.. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Blogging in itself is a wide wide Universe. There are galaxies of blogs out there. Small, bright, well known, yet to be found, big, really BIG blogs and so on.

When thinking of starting a blog, we foresee a lot of competition because of that myriad of blogs.

Take any obscure niche targeting a very narrow audience, and you are sure to find umpteen blogs already catering the exact ground breaking service you thought was THE brilliant idea.

So, what is the take? Better… not to blog? Or be a philanthropist without any serious aspirations?

You could do that, but that is not what I thought would inspire you. So, here is an approach to be a great blogger without fuss, without pain (Don’t read “without work” though…).

THERE IS NO COMPETITION OUT THERE… YOU ARE THE MONOPOLY – is the mindset every blogger needs to have to enjoy blogging, which in turn makes his/her blog the best.

There are many benefits in having this attitude while blogging and here are the few benefits:

1. No Fear

You know what fear is capable of. Fear of not being successful, fear of losing the reader base, and fear of making your readers unhappy… drives any blogger crazy. You forget to enjoy blogging.

Then blogging becomes an ordeal with constant paranoia of missing your reader base. When you don’t enjoy something, the quality of your work goes down. It is as simple as that.

2. No Pretending

Also, you should never fear to be honest. You need not to pretend. You could say whatever you feel like to your readers, because at the end, your blog is, what you ARE, and not what you are SUPPOSED to be.

You wouldn’t be forced to act as the market conventionally does. You would take your own call. You would say what you really feel like saying.

3. No Numbers

Numbers drive us (at least me) crazy.

Total number of unique visitors, number of clicks, CPM, number of Feed Subscribers, number of direct visits… throw all these numbers in the dustbin.

I know, they help you to know where you really are, but to say the truth, they don’t matter until you want to review your blog. Reviewing your blog every day is not that intelligent. You could do it once in a few months or so.

When you think there is no competition out there, you won’t bother about these numbers. I doubt Google, if run by a single person, would be monitoring the number of searches every day.

Think as if your blog was Google and forget about the numbers.

And to state a truth, which you might already know, there is no competition as such. Many blogs could be in the blogosphere together. So, no worries. Create a blog in your own style and run it in your own rules and enjoy blogging.

Share your thoughts on having this mindset when blogging. What is your take? Drop your thoughts and experiences.

Ganesh is the author of iPENthisBLOG, where he shares blogging and productivity tips. He also carries out designing projects. Subscribe to iPENthisBLOG and to know what he is presently chirping about, follow him @ksganesh

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Original Post: Sometimes It Is Better NOT To Be Competitive

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Last week a reader (thanks Vlatko) emailed me letting me know that I had two URL structures working on the blog. They were:

dailyblogtips.com/

and

dailyblogtips.com/index.php

The same problem was happening on all posts and pages. For example, a post could be accessed via:

dailyblogtips.com/post-title/

as well as:

dailyblogtips.com/post-title/index.php

This is not a good thing for SEO, because Google might get confused when deciding which is the canonical version. In fact when I went to run the diagnosis tool on Google Webmaster Central I found a bunch of duplicate title tags being reported (caused by the second URL version).

Some time later Vlatko emailed me again saying that he had found the problem: the WP Super Cache plugin. WordPress is supposed to handle the canonical URL issue automatically, but somehow once I activated the WP Super Cache plugin the index.php redirect stopped working. Vatko was having the same problem on his blog, so it might be a bug on WP Super Cache itself.

I also believe that not everyone will be affected by it. It probably has something to do with your server settings.

Either way, if you are currently using WP Super Cache I recommend that you test to see if the index.php redirect is working. Make sure to log out first, and then try to access yourblog.com/index.php. If you are not redirected to the homepage you are having the same problem.

I will email the author of the plugin about it, and if you have any insights please share them with a comment.

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Original Post: Possible Bug on WP Super Cache

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Some people are writing machines. They get an idea, pound it out in minutes, post it to their blog, and move on to something else. For the rest of the world, writing is often slow, grinding work.

But it doesn’t have to be. Anyone can write faster if they follow a 5-step formula for writing more efficiently. I call it S.P.E.E.D. Writing.

Before I describe this formula, let me admit that I write a lot. I serve dozens of clients, maintain two of my own blogs, write for a political blog, write articles for half a dozen other blogs, and do other miscellaneous writing. It seems I can never write fast enough.

I’m not slow. But I can’t whip out copy and walk away as some do. One problem I have is editing while I write. It slows me down. In fact, I rewrote this paragraph that you’re reading right now three times before moving on.

By studying my own bad habits and with the advice of others, I came up with the S.P.E.E.D. Writing formula to help myself write faster and be more productive. When I follow it, I can write twice as fast or faster.

S: Select a topic

Not having anything to say can cause writer’s block. But having too much to say is a problem too.

If you try to jam in every thought, you’ll end up with an unfocused post. This slows you down because you’ll have to figure out how to make all the extra stuff sound relevant. Then, because you know it’s not relevant, you’ll just spend more time deleting it later.

Narrow your topic to one idea. ONE idea. If other topics come to mind, make a note of them for other posts. By sticking to one and only one idea, you’ll force yourself to stay on-point, which will shorten your writing time and give your readers a better post.

P: Prepare your facts

When you find yourself staring helplessly at your computer screen, it’s almost always because you don’t have facts at hand. Gathering information before you start will usually get you writing quickly.

Before you write a single word, jot down a few notes. If you don’t have the facts in your head or if you need additional information, do a little research. That can be as simple as opening a book, scanning a magazine, or Googling a few key terms. Don’t “compose” while taking notes. Just get the facts all in one place.

Starting an idea file is a huge time-saver. I keep a simple text file on my computer desktop and jot down ideas as I get them. I also use Google Notebook to record notes from online reading. I don’t tear out magazine bits anymore because that creates clutter that I have to sort through later.

E: Establish a structure

Some writers like to think that writing should be free of rules. But that’s bunk.

Every piece of writing, especially blog writing, needs structure. It could be a short narrative, a Q&A, a series of bullet points, a numbered list, etc.

You can use this structure to outline your post. It doesn’t have to be a formal outline like the type you learned in school. Just take all your facts or ideas and arrange them in the order you want them to appear in your finished piece, using your chosen structure as a guide.

For this article, I decided to use an easy to remember acronym, S.P.E.E.D., to give me five points to cover. Once I collected my information, I divided it among these five points.

A set structure also helps you avoid the trap of linear writing. You don’t have to start at the beginning and write line-by-line to the end. With a structure, you can write in pieces, in any order you like. For this article, I’m writing the five points first, and I’ll write the introduction last.

E: Eliminate distractions

This is harder than it sounds. There are so many distractions in my day that I often take multitasking to the extreme. That slows down writing exponentially.

Like any other task you want to complete quickly, writing requires undivided attention. Turn off the TV, mute the phone, close your email program, get off your social networks, and just write.

D: Dash to the finish

This is the biggie. You can’t agonize over every word or sit and stare at your computer screen. Put your fingers on the keyboard and GO.

It doesn’t have to be perfect writing. Just get the words down. You might be surprised at how much you can get done and how good it is if you take off the brakes and let ‘er rip.

This means you can’t read and reread what you’re writing while you write. I’ll admit, this is tough for me. When I get stumped, I often go back and read what I’ve written to create momentum that can carry me forward.

It works sometimes. But it’s a bad idea for a first draft. You can read what you’ve written after you’ve written it all the way through.

It also means you shouldn’t edit while you write. Writing and editing should be separate tasks. Take off the editor hat and just plow through until you’re finished. Later, you can edit and revise.

(I have to laugh at myself for giving this advice, because if this were a crime, I’d get life in jail.)

If you follow this formula, you’ll quickly end up with a written post. You’ll want to edit right away, but don’t. Just walk away. Once all the words are down and in order, save your document and do something else.

Later, you can edit with a fresh eye. Objectivity always makes you a better editor. You’ll catch the mistakes. You’ll spot the extraneous details. You’ll cut the fat.

Okay. I’m done. Now I’m going to save this and . . . aw nuts. I just reread the article.

It’s easier to give this advice than to follow it.

About the Author: Dean Rieck is an internationally-respected copywriter and publisher of Pro Copy Tips, a blog that provides copywriting tips for professional copywriters.

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