The different methods by which one would go about learning basic search engine optimisation techniques and what options are available for those who do not wish to learn search engine optimisation.
Search engine optimisation is the latest industry to hit the news, and is a rapidly growing sector. In depth knowledge in this area opens the door to you either sourcing out your skills to business in order to help them increase their online presence, or using them to promote your own website. Thankfully this sometimes complicated process has become a lot easier to master due to a variety of SEO Cources and information becoming available to the general public.
One such way to gain this information is through various e-books which are available all over the internet if you have the time to look for them. A quick search for seo e-books on Google will bring a large number of results, and many are distributed free of cost. The best bet is to download every one you can find and have a read through them all. Once you gain a general understanding of SEO and its various methods you can then make a more qualified decision as to whether you need to make purchases of e-books for more information or if you think you have the handle of it already. This is most definitely the place to start though as it is a low cost way of getting a feel for the industry.
Once you've read through the available literature you'll want to get started on actually promoting your website and moving up the rankings. The e-books will explain the various methods required to achieve better rankings, through link building and other methods. All these things can be done by hand although it will become very time consuming and tedious, if you wish to build enough links to rank well for profitable keyword terms. Therefore many internet marketers turn to SEO software to automate the process and give them more time to work on the content of their site rather than promotion. These software programs can automatically email link requests, check your back links, find out which keywords will work best for you and every other task connected to SEO. There are many different programs out there to help you optimize and promote your website and most of them offer a free trial. Therefore it’s not hard to just look around downloading the different trial programs and testing them out until you find one you like. It must be said though that a good SEO program is a must if you want to streamline your online promotion as it will cut through the grunt work, leaving you more time to use your mind creatively to build better websites and plumb new markets.
Ok you have been shown the do it yourself alternatives to taking an SEO course, and the best ways to learn SEO at your own pace. If you still want to take an SEO course, and there are many reasons to do so, such as if it was required by your place of employment or you want to have a certificate to show potential employers, then there are some good courses out there. Your typical SEO course should be up to date with current algorithm theories and make sure you get a solid guarantee so if the course doesn’t live up to expectations you won't be out of pocket. Most SEO Cources out there are far more expensive than just getting an e-book and some software and learning for yourself, which many consider to be the best option. So it might be an idea to do a smaller course first and see if you enjoy learning that way before shelling out for the major courses. It is hoped that you find something suitable to your situation as there is a wealth of choice out there.
This has been up until now a general outline of all the different ways you can become competent in search engine optimisation and be able to handle your internet marketing yourself. Now there will be a summary of what to do if you find it hard to get a handle on the techniques involved, or if you just find it plain boring and would rather spend your time doing something else.
Out Sourcing - Depending on the keyword you have decided to optimise for, it could be extremely easy or extremely difficult to achieve high rankings. For a non-competitive keyword, relatively few back links and optimisation factors will be needed and you will probably find it quite easy to manage a successful SEO campaign all by yourself. However for the more competitive keywords, which are often the most profitable ones, ranking high will be very difficult. For the more competitive keywords, one may need to consider outside help to build your pages search engine ranking and traffic. There are a few different options to consider here, such as purchasing the SEO services of an experience practitioner, or purchasing targeted traffic for your websites niche. Moreover there are many other forms of advertising on the internet available for you to try out, as long as you’re willing to put in the effort to find them. We will go through the various options available to you to increase the traffic to your website.
SEO Companies - If you find that either SEO is too technical for you, or your efforts have not born any fruit then it may be time to consider handing it over to a professional search engine optimisation firm. There are many different companies out there working with a lot of websites to achieve better rankings for their customers and you can definitely benefit from their resources. They achieve better rankings for your website through the same techniques you could implement yourself, but at greater efficiency and with far less time invested on your part. There are many companies offering these services and some are farm more successful than others. It is an absolute necessity that any company you choose to purchase SEO services from offers a full money back guarantee, if they don't offer it then do not go near them. Sadly there are no free options in this category, as no one will do SEO work on your website for free as it is just too time consuming to do even to build up company image.
Targeted Traffic - Another option available to internet promoters who have not found success with search engine optimisation would be to purchase targeted traffic. This is when a company who owns a large amount of expired domains sends the traffic to your website for a fee. Depending on the quality of the traffic this can be very lucrative but this is one area which contains far more rip off merchants than honest ones. Often times you will buy a traffic package and the company will send your site X amount of bot hits which will mean your site will register a lot of visits but as none of them are actual people you will obviously receive no sales or revenue of any kind. The upside of this all is that targeted traffic is an instant solution to visitor numbers, and the relatively low cost ( $20-$60 for 5k to 10k visitors) it is not a huge outlay to experiment with a few companies and see which ones work for you. One traffic seller we most definitely do not recommend is one called BuyExpiredDomains.com. They have very attractive prices, and so we took a test run of 5000 visitors. On one of our websites known to convert visitors to sales, not one of those 5000 visitors made a purchase. So it makes you wonder whether any real human visitors were delivered to our site. As stated earlier though, the cost to test a company’s traffic is so small that it won't hurt the bank if you do encounter a few duds. The thing about this kind of traffic is it’s never going to be as targeted as regular search engine traffic so you won't be able to convert at 1/110 like you would normally. You might get one sale for every 500 or so visitors they send you, but that can still turn profitable depending on the items you sell.
Traffic Exchanges - As we all know, a budget is a very important thing when starting a business or trying to turn a profit. A free method of generating more traffic would obviously be a godsend to most websites out there. So it’s quite a good thing that these kinds of programs exist and are proving quite successful. Traffic exchange networks work by either you viewing ads and in doing so earning your own ads some viewing time on their networks, or getting a visitor to your site for every one sent to another site in the network. Both methods can work very well if implemented correctly and are great sources of free traffic. Though it sounds too simple this method has been working for many people for a long time. It’s also a great way to test out new products as the audience is there waiting for you. Many traffic exchanges work free of charge so you have nothing to lose by testing them out.
Purchasing Ad Space - When considering purchasing ad space, so many people jump straight onto Google Adwords and start shelling out money. The fact of the matter is paying per click will always be a low margin game, meaning you have a great chance of making nothing at all or even losing money. Moreover Google’s cost per click does seem to be a little extreme at times, though that is probably because so many people advertise there that it drives the price into orbit. A better option is to purchase adverts which will be displayed for a set period of time regardless of the amount of people who click on them. As long as the price is right this can be a very profitable way of going about your internet promotion. Buying advertising space based on the length of time your ad will be displayed is by far the best method for a new business, and search engines such as ExactSeek supply exactly this. Just Google ExactSeek and check out their paid inclusion program, which is a far better option than most pay per click programs.
The above methods can all be invaluable when trying to increase your online presence and the profitability of your web business. When starting out it is often very hard to catch up to the rest of the pack with all the technical things SEO involves. Therefore outsourcing your internet marketing can be a great way of getting more revenue out of your website without having to put in the man hours learning the technical side of all the methods involved. Good luck in your internet promotion campaign.
Kamis, 06 Oktober 2011
Optimizing Flash Files For The Search Engines
What is a Flash Movie?
A flash movie, or shock wave file (SWF), is the file format published when a Flash movie is exported. A SWF file can also be exported by several other Macromedia or Adobe Products. The SWF is usually an animation, dynamic menu, or highly interactive web-based application embedded into an HTML page. Flash files, when exported correctly for the best web-based optimization, are compressed, thus making their file size lightweight. The SWF format is ideal...
What is a Flash Movie?
A flash movie, or shock wave file (SWF), is the file format published when a Flash movie is exported. A SWF file can also be exported by several other Macromedia or Adobe Products. The SWF is usually an animation, dynamic menu, or highly interactive web-based application embedded into an HTML page. Flash files, when exported correctly for the best web-based optimization, are compressed, thus making their file size lightweight. The SWF format is ideal for presenting vector-based, interactive and animated graphics with sound and video for the web. Vector images are ideal because they will not “pixilize” if stretched or compressed. Flash files can also contain text which can be animated, static or dynamically populated from external sources, such an XML file or a database. Text embedded in a Flash file, for many years, could not be read by search engines. However, recent updates by Macromedia are making this a possibility.
Problems with Flash and Search Engines
Historically, it has been difficult to get Flash content indexed and ranked by search engines. In the past, search engines, such as Yahoo and Google, did not spider Flash content as they could not read the compressed file and much of the text inside the SWF appeared as graphics to the search engines.
The main page of a web site, if Flash-based, rarely ranked well, unless off-page factors such as link popularity or link reputation were sufficient enough to carry the page. Flash files that were indexed by Google, Lycos and other search engines, which did not have any text or key words associated with them in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Techniques Used in the Past to Make Flash Visible to Search Engines
Traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques would help your site get indexed, but not rank for search terms. Every web site needs at least one HTML page to load into a browser. For a web site developed completely in Flash, developers would embed their flash files into an HTML document and then create the meta tags in the head section of the HTML file. They would also add descriptive HTML text for the search engines in the body section of the HTML page, then use CSS positioning and percentages to load the Flash move in a pixel-perfect location over the top of text. This particular technique should not be used any longer, as search engines will view this technique as an attempt to add hidden text, and hidden text will incur a penalty from the engines.
Another technique which could help your Flash ranking is to not compress your SWF files. One of the reasons search engines could not read flash files in the past is that the files are compressed. If the SWF is uncompressed, search engines can read the static text. This technique can be accomplished easily. Upon exporting a Flash file, you can set the compression to "not" if you want your text inside the Flash movie to be readable by the search spiders. However, this is not a good practice, as not compressing your SWF will increase the file size, consequently negating a major benefit to Flash file – a lightweight file.
What Macromedia has Done to Make Flash More Visible to Search Engines
In the past, Google did index Flash files. Anyone can test this fact out by searching in Google using the “filetype” operator to restrict your search. For example, try the following search: "Casino Games filetype:SWF”. The SERP will include over 200 Flash files, which are indicated by the “Flash” text to the left of the listing.
Some search engines are now using the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK (Software Development Kit). For example, Google, AllTheWeb, Lycos, and other sites can readily display links to Flash content. Flash Search SDK is and open source tool that allows search engines to modify it to suit their needs. With this level of customization, it is likely that the major search engines will modify SDK, making it difficult for website owners to know exactly what information will be pulled out of the SWF file or how it will impact actual rankings.
The Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK can be found at
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/download/search_engine. According to the Macromedia/Adobe web site, The SDK includes an application named 'swf2HTML'. Swf2HTML extracts text and links from a Macromedia Flash SWF file, and returns the data to an HTML document. Swf2HTML is provided as a compiled application and as a static library for linked library implementation. SDK can interoperate any links that are in the action script so long as adhere to the following criteria:
• The link is contained within single quotes (' ') or double quotes (" "), and
• The link prefix is HTTP, and
• The link suffix is HTM, HTML, CFM, SWF, JPG, JPEG, MP3, or WAV
By default SDK extracts the following text from your flash file:
• Text on stage in the current movie (dynamic text, static text, or input text that has an initial value assigned)
• Text on stage in a movie that is called with movieClip.attachMovie()
Google can see certain text in Flash files now, but how and where certain text gets extracted depends on what you do with that text in the Flash presentation. For example, text that is static or is used in a motion tween can be read as a single instance with SDK. However, some animation involves converting text into a symbol and then using multiple copies of that symbol to achieve a desired effect. This will create duplicate instances of your text to the SDK output, which may be viewed as duplicate content and not given much importance by Google.
Using the SDK tool, any developer can get the text output from the SWF and see how search engines view the extractable text of any SWF. On a Windows operating system, you can go to the DOS prompt and execute the swf2HTML application very easily. The following is an example from the DOS prompt: C:\sdk\swf2HTML -o test.HTML C:\sdk\crt_webfiles\test.swf
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques Used Historically for Flash
Each Flash file does not need to be uploaded independently and called as a SWF file; rather a Flash file can be embedded in a standard HTML document. One of the best techniques is to create a modular web site, where there are several Flash files which make up the web page combined with standard HTML elements. A hybrid site such as this, works especially well, if your navigation uses traditional HTML links. You can use cascading style sheets to give the appearance of flash text links. This type of hybrid site will always rank better than an all Flash site – all other factors being equal. It's also important to have your HTML page title correct, regardless of anything else. Several search engines look at meta titles first. In addition to the page title, you can add meta tags to the head of the file. Outside of the actual HTML page, off page factors are important. There has been much written in recent articles that reciprocal links are not as important any longer, but certainly, one-way links pointing to your site from highly relevant and high ranking pages will increase your page rank. In addition links from prominent directories, such as Yahoo and Business.com, placed in the most relevant categories will help. One-way inbound links from relevant sites is still the best way to increase your ranking with or without Flash.
There are programming techniques which work while in the Flash authoring environment. While you are in the Flash authoring environment, with your FLA open...click F12. It will generate the HTML page for you. Look at the code of the page; it creates a place for you to put the text and URL's used in the Flash.
New SEO Techniques for Flash
Today there are many techniques which can overcome the limitations of the past, where Flash files are concerned. With the inception of the new Macromedia Flash 8, there are techniques which can be implemented to greatly increase the ability of search engines to index Flash files and even rank for key words.
In the past, SWF files could not have titles. This is one important reason why Flash files didn't rank well. This title limitation has now changed. Flash 8 does allow you to input meta data. Flash 8 defines two fields with meta data for all Flash files. These two fields are Title and Description. You can access the meta data fields under Document Properties. To add meta data, fill in the text fields and the search engines will know what info to display about your Flash file.
SDK is fairly intelligent in terms of recognizing text and links that are embedded in the file. If text is static or dynamically driven by an XML or text file, it can be read. If your content is dynamically driven it must be done so using the latest version of ActionScript 2.0. The SDK does parse ActionScript 2 byte code looking for links. It could conceivably find the link to the XML file that way and hand it back to a search engine.
As referenced earlier, certain text can be modified into a symbol rather than strait text. For example, a button might have the text output two or three times. Alternatively, tweened text has motion associated with the action. Tweens result in a single occurrence in the output from the extraction process. You should also notice that the link text in the Google results page is identical to the first couple of lines of text at the very top of the text extracted by swf2HTML. Armed with the knowledge of how SDK parses your content, you can manipulate text in your Flash Movies more carefully and make your content key word dense, easily indexable, search engine friendly and, with a little more skill, even optimized.
What is the gist of all this? Flash is still not the best solution for a pure SEO-based project, but their have been giant leaps forward by both the search engines and Macromedia in allowing your flash files to be indexed and even rank for the key word phrases you covet.
A flash movie, or shock wave file (SWF), is the file format published when a Flash movie is exported. A SWF file can also be exported by several other Macromedia or Adobe Products. The SWF is usually an animation, dynamic menu, or highly interactive web-based application embedded into an HTML page. Flash files, when exported correctly for the best web-based optimization, are compressed, thus making their file size lightweight. The SWF format is ideal...
What is a Flash Movie?
A flash movie, or shock wave file (SWF), is the file format published when a Flash movie is exported. A SWF file can also be exported by several other Macromedia or Adobe Products. The SWF is usually an animation, dynamic menu, or highly interactive web-based application embedded into an HTML page. Flash files, when exported correctly for the best web-based optimization, are compressed, thus making their file size lightweight. The SWF format is ideal for presenting vector-based, interactive and animated graphics with sound and video for the web. Vector images are ideal because they will not “pixilize” if stretched or compressed. Flash files can also contain text which can be animated, static or dynamically populated from external sources, such an XML file or a database. Text embedded in a Flash file, for many years, could not be read by search engines. However, recent updates by Macromedia are making this a possibility.
Problems with Flash and Search Engines
Historically, it has been difficult to get Flash content indexed and ranked by search engines. In the past, search engines, such as Yahoo and Google, did not spider Flash content as they could not read the compressed file and much of the text inside the SWF appeared as graphics to the search engines.
The main page of a web site, if Flash-based, rarely ranked well, unless off-page factors such as link popularity or link reputation were sufficient enough to carry the page. Flash files that were indexed by Google, Lycos and other search engines, which did not have any text or key words associated with them in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Techniques Used in the Past to Make Flash Visible to Search Engines
Traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques would help your site get indexed, but not rank for search terms. Every web site needs at least one HTML page to load into a browser. For a web site developed completely in Flash, developers would embed their flash files into an HTML document and then create the meta tags in the head section of the HTML file. They would also add descriptive HTML text for the search engines in the body section of the HTML page, then use CSS positioning and percentages to load the Flash move in a pixel-perfect location over the top of text. This particular technique should not be used any longer, as search engines will view this technique as an attempt to add hidden text, and hidden text will incur a penalty from the engines.
Another technique which could help your Flash ranking is to not compress your SWF files. One of the reasons search engines could not read flash files in the past is that the files are compressed. If the SWF is uncompressed, search engines can read the static text. This technique can be accomplished easily. Upon exporting a Flash file, you can set the compression to "not" if you want your text inside the Flash movie to be readable by the search spiders. However, this is not a good practice, as not compressing your SWF will increase the file size, consequently negating a major benefit to Flash file – a lightweight file.
What Macromedia has Done to Make Flash More Visible to Search Engines
In the past, Google did index Flash files. Anyone can test this fact out by searching in Google using the “filetype” operator to restrict your search. For example, try the following search: "Casino Games filetype:SWF”. The SERP will include over 200 Flash files, which are indicated by the “Flash” text to the left of the listing.
Some search engines are now using the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK (Software Development Kit). For example, Google, AllTheWeb, Lycos, and other sites can readily display links to Flash content. Flash Search SDK is and open source tool that allows search engines to modify it to suit their needs. With this level of customization, it is likely that the major search engines will modify SDK, making it difficult for website owners to know exactly what information will be pulled out of the SWF file or how it will impact actual rankings.
The Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK can be found at
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/download/search_engine. According to the Macromedia/Adobe web site, The SDK includes an application named 'swf2HTML'. Swf2HTML extracts text and links from a Macromedia Flash SWF file, and returns the data to an HTML document. Swf2HTML is provided as a compiled application and as a static library for linked library implementation. SDK can interoperate any links that are in the action script so long as adhere to the following criteria:
• The link is contained within single quotes (' ') or double quotes (" "), and
• The link prefix is HTTP, and
• The link suffix is HTM, HTML, CFM, SWF, JPG, JPEG, MP3, or WAV
By default SDK extracts the following text from your flash file:
• Text on stage in the current movie (dynamic text, static text, or input text that has an initial value assigned)
• Text on stage in a movie that is called with movieClip.attachMovie()
Google can see certain text in Flash files now, but how and where certain text gets extracted depends on what you do with that text in the Flash presentation. For example, text that is static or is used in a motion tween can be read as a single instance with SDK. However, some animation involves converting text into a symbol and then using multiple copies of that symbol to achieve a desired effect. This will create duplicate instances of your text to the SDK output, which may be viewed as duplicate content and not given much importance by Google.
Using the SDK tool, any developer can get the text output from the SWF and see how search engines view the extractable text of any SWF. On a Windows operating system, you can go to the DOS prompt and execute the swf2HTML application very easily. The following is an example from the DOS prompt: C:\sdk\swf2HTML -o test.HTML C:\sdk\crt_webfiles\test.swf
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques Used Historically for Flash
Each Flash file does not need to be uploaded independently and called as a SWF file; rather a Flash file can be embedded in a standard HTML document. One of the best techniques is to create a modular web site, where there are several Flash files which make up the web page combined with standard HTML elements. A hybrid site such as this, works especially well, if your navigation uses traditional HTML links. You can use cascading style sheets to give the appearance of flash text links. This type of hybrid site will always rank better than an all Flash site – all other factors being equal. It's also important to have your HTML page title correct, regardless of anything else. Several search engines look at meta titles first. In addition to the page title, you can add meta tags to the head of the file. Outside of the actual HTML page, off page factors are important. There has been much written in recent articles that reciprocal links are not as important any longer, but certainly, one-way links pointing to your site from highly relevant and high ranking pages will increase your page rank. In addition links from prominent directories, such as Yahoo and Business.com, placed in the most relevant categories will help. One-way inbound links from relevant sites is still the best way to increase your ranking with or without Flash.
There are programming techniques which work while in the Flash authoring environment. While you are in the Flash authoring environment, with your FLA open...click F12. It will generate the HTML page for you. Look at the code of the page; it creates a place for you to put the text and URL's used in the Flash.
New SEO Techniques for Flash
Today there are many techniques which can overcome the limitations of the past, where Flash files are concerned. With the inception of the new Macromedia Flash 8, there are techniques which can be implemented to greatly increase the ability of search engines to index Flash files and even rank for key words.
In the past, SWF files could not have titles. This is one important reason why Flash files didn't rank well. This title limitation has now changed. Flash 8 does allow you to input meta data. Flash 8 defines two fields with meta data for all Flash files. These two fields are Title and Description. You can access the meta data fields under Document Properties. To add meta data, fill in the text fields and the search engines will know what info to display about your Flash file.
SDK is fairly intelligent in terms of recognizing text and links that are embedded in the file. If text is static or dynamically driven by an XML or text file, it can be read. If your content is dynamically driven it must be done so using the latest version of ActionScript 2.0. The SDK does parse ActionScript 2 byte code looking for links. It could conceivably find the link to the XML file that way and hand it back to a search engine.
As referenced earlier, certain text can be modified into a symbol rather than strait text. For example, a button might have the text output two or three times. Alternatively, tweened text has motion associated with the action. Tweens result in a single occurrence in the output from the extraction process. You should also notice that the link text in the Google results page is identical to the first couple of lines of text at the very top of the text extracted by swf2HTML. Armed with the knowledge of how SDK parses your content, you can manipulate text in your Flash Movies more carefully and make your content key word dense, easily indexable, search engine friendly and, with a little more skill, even optimized.
What is the gist of all this? Flash is still not the best solution for a pure SEO-based project, but their have been giant leaps forward by both the search engines and Macromedia in allowing your flash files to be indexed and even rank for the key word phrases you covet.
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