Share your Ideas in SEO

Easy way To Do SEO for Flash Website

Flash gets a bad rap, undeserved in my opinion, for harming search engine visibility. Why are search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners concerned about Flash, and how can we SEO Flash content? Flash content is often heavy on images and interactive features, and light on text. As of 2008, the leading search engines are heavily dependant on text to understand the meaning of pages.

The leading web development tool, Adobe Dreamweaver, embeds Flash in web pages with code that fails to provide accessibility for visitors or search spiders who cannot handle Flash. Instead of using the default code, my recommendation is to hand code Flash pages with primary HTML content, and a method of automatically testing for Flash support before attempting to insert the movie. The primary HTML content can be search optimized as if the Flash wasn't there, while the Flash provides an enhanced user experience for those visitors who have the necessary Flash player.

The April 11, 2006 release of Microsoft's popular Internet Explorer (IE) browser includes an update ("Eolas") that prevents ActiveX-based Flash controls from working properly. When the user attempts to interact with the Flash, a tool tip appears, stating, "Click to activate and use this control." That extra click is an annoyance. In addition to helping search engines, the programming techniques described in this article solve the Flash Eolas problem.

Search Engines and Flash

Search engines have the ability to read Flash files and extract text and links. In particular, Google and Adobe announced a new algorithm for indexing textual Flash content on June 20, 2008. As explained by Rand Fishkin in Flash and SEO - Compelling Reasons Why Search Engines & Flash Still Don't Mix, and Vanessa Fox in Search-Friendly Flash?, hoping that search engines can decipher you Flash is not a substitute for providing indexable HTML content.

Requirements for Successful Use of Flash

Flash animation is a great way to present complex content because it allows the designer to put more content in a finite space, without wrecking page design. For technology sites, Flash is an ideal way to present a slide show or movie explaining a complex product. At the other end of the spectrum, art and entertainment sites have a real need for multimedia, and Flash is the perfect solution.

When using Flash, we'd like to satisfy each of these objectives:

• Clean design
• Search Engine Optimization
• Accessibility for a wide variety of browsers, including screen readers and mobile phones
• Code validation and standards compliance
• Correct functionality with IE

SEO Flash Programming

My recommended Flash SEO method uses a DIV with search-engine-accessible, primary content, and an open source Javascript function called swfobject() to detect when browsers are capable of viewing Flash. When an appropriate version of Flash player is present, the Javascript manipulates the page's document object model (DOM) to replace the primary content with the Flash movie. Most search engine spiders can't handle Flash, so they will elect to view the primary content. The primary content may contain links, headings, styled text, images—anything we can add to an ordinary HTML page. With SEO copyediting and coding skills applied to the primary content, Flash becomes a non-issue.

Flash accessibility programming isn't spamming, as long as the primary content and the visible movie are essentially the same. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) specifically states that multimedia content should have an alternative representation available. Accessibility programming creates the benefit of presenting visual information without losing the visitors and search engines who depend upon textual content.

As of July 2007, I discussed this method with Dan Crow of Google. He warned that this programming method could draw attention because of the possibility for abuse. If you use this method, make sure the alternative content is a faithful representation of the Flash content, and avoid combining this with other coding methods that could be abused. While this SEO method is not abusive, it is aggressive because there is a small risk that the search engines could mistakenly decide that the primary content is a form of cloaking.

SWFObject 2.0

SWFObject 2.0 is an open source project based on Geoff Sterns' original SWFobject() and UFO (Unobtrusive Flash Objects) by Bobby van der Sluis. As reported at swfobject, Adobe is likely to include swfobject() in future releases of its web development tools.

Scalable Inman Flash Replacement

If you are only using Flash to enhance headings, quotes, or callout text, a method called Scalable Inman Flash Replacement is an excellent choice. SIFR automatically pulls text from an HTML document and modifies the Document Object Model to replace the text with a Flash rendering of the appropriate font. SIFR makes it easy to modify the text, and ensures that your Flash text always matches your HTML text, reducing the risk of abuse.

The drawback of SIFR is that it only handles the presentation of simple text. Complex Flash animations, such as menus, slide shows, and interactive presentations can not be programmed easily with SIFR. For these types of Flash, SWFOBJECT and UFO are more effective.

Example: Making Flash Home Page Spiderable

The sample code below is derived from the home page of TrueVector Technologies which includes two Flash objects. The content of that page can now be indexed because search engines can read the HTML-coded content, while visitors with Javascript and Flash can view enhanced visual content.

<head>
<!--snip-->
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/swfobject.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var flashvars = {};
var params = {
wmode: "transparent"
};
var attributes = {};

var flashvars2 = {};
var params2 = {
wmode: "transparent"
};
var attributes2 = {};


swfobject.embedSWF("/flash/map_test.swf",
"myContent", "760", "350", "9.0.0",
"/flash/expressInstall.swf",
flashvars, params, attributes);

swfobject.embedSWF("/flash/homepage2.swf",
"headerbanner2", "760", "220", "9.0.0",
"/flash/expressInstall.swf",
flashvars2, params2, attributes2); </script>

</head>
<body>
<!--snip-->

<!--primary content, for non-Flash visitors-->
<div id="myContent">
<img src="/images/home-top.jpg" border="0"
alt="TrueVector Technologies" height="350" width="760">
</div>

<!--snip-->
<div id="headerbanner2">
<h1>TrueVector <em>noun</em></h1>
<p>

• 1) a tool designed to enhance web site navigation.
• 2) by eliminating clumsy dropdown boxes and checklists.
• 3) giving users easier access to data or inventory.
• 4) leading to an enjoyable surfing experience.
• 5) resulting in higher click-through rates and longer site visits.
• 6) which lead to more return visits and site referrals.
• 7) ultimately ending in true Vector's customers suffering <strong>higher profits</strong>.</p> <p><strong>Syn:</strong>Interactive Map/ Flash Map/ Zip Code Map/Rate Center Map/ Store Locator Map/ Real Estate Map/TrueVector Flash Map/ US Interactive Map</p></div>
  

Flash accessibility programming will not magically cause a site to rise to the top of the rankings, but this Flash SEO method will eliminate any ranking disadvantages associated with Flash.

We've used this Flash SEO method on many high traffic sites. The code has been served hundreds of thousands of times. Sites using this Flash SEO method have achieved top rankings for keywords found only in the Flash content.

All Flash Sites

A site built entirely with Flash suffers a great disadvantage because it lacks page structure to organize the content, internal linking, and unique page titles. One remedy is to create distinct HTML pages to represent each Flash "page," and install the Flash movie on each and every one of the HTML pages. When a visitor requests the page, they'll see Flash if they can handle it. Otherwise, a non-Flash visitor, such as a search engine, will be able to spider the site. If a user follows a search result onto one of the inner pages, they'll get the same Flash experience because the movie is available on every page. Another approach is to divide the Flash into pieces and put the relevant piece on each page.

Slicing up the Flash can result in page transitions that don't provide the seamless effect that you want to create. To get the best of both worlds, pass a parameter into the Flash movie using FlashVars. The same movie can appear on each HTML page, but depending on the parameter value, the movie can start at an appropriate point to show the Flash content that corresponds to that page. To get rid of all the extra pages, but still be able to reference different parts of the Flash piece, add a # and a tag to the end of each URL, and pass that tag into the Flash. This approach can make the back and forward buttons work properly, and allow people to bookmark specific parts of the Flash site.

It is also possible to use PHP scripts to pull both the primary HTML content, and the Flash content from a MySQL database. This approach would greatly simplify the maintenance of an accessible Flash site by storing only one representation of the content.

Search is a natural starting point for discovering the world's information, and we strive to bring you the freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices you use to access it.

That's why today, at the Computer History Museum, we're excited to share a few new innovations in the areas of real-time, mobile and social search that we feel are important steps in the evolution of information access.

First, we're introducing new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we'll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.

Try searching for your favorite TV show, sporting event or the latest development on a recent government bill. Whether it's an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it's published on the web.

Here's how it looks:


Our real-time search enables you to discover breaking news the moment it's happening, even if it's not the popular news of the day, and even if you didn't know about it beforehand. For example, in the screen shot, the big story was about GM's stabilizing car sales, which shows under "News results." Nonetheless, thanks to our powerful real-time algorithms, the "Latest results" feature surfaces another important story breaking just seconds before: GM's CEO stepped down.

Click on "Latest results" or select "Latest" from the search options menu to view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling right on Google. You can also filter your results to see only "Updates" from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others. Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices when you need them on the go, be it a quick glance at changing information like ski conditions or opening night chatter about a new movie — right when you're in line to buy tickets.

And, as part of our launch of real-time on Google search, we've added "hot topics" to Google Trends to show the most common topics people are publishing to the web in real-time. With this improvement and a series of other interface enhancements, Google Trends is graduating from Labs.

Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day. Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our new partners that we're announcing today: Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter, which we announced a few weeks ago.

The new features will be rolling out in the next few days and will be available globally in English. You can try them out today by visiting Google Trends and clicking on a "hot topic," which in most cases will bring you to a search results page with the new real-time feature.

Here's a first look at our real-time search:



We have also made some new strides with mobile search. Today's sensor-rich smartphones are redefining what "query" means. Beyond text, you can now search by a number of new modes including voice, location and sight — all from a mobile device. So we've been working to improve technology that takes advantage of these capabilities.

Starting today, we're extending our voice search capabilities on Android devices to recognize Japanese. In addition, we're using the location of your mobile phone to launch some helpful features, like showing you "what's nearby." Finally, at our event this morning, we demonstrated Google Goggles, a visual search application that lets you search for objects using images rather than words, using your camera phone. For more information on these mobile innovations, check out the Google Mobile Blog.

As we've written before, search is still an unsolved problem and we're committed to making it faster and easier for people to access a greater diversity of information, delivered in real-time, from across the web. I'm tremendously excited about these significant new real-time search features.

Update on 12/8: Check out the video from our Search Event:

"Use Google to Make 1000s of Dollars!" or "Easy Cash with Google: You Could be Making up to $978 a Day Working from Home!" You may have seen offers like these using Google's name or logo that sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are, and, despite hundreds of consumer complaints and our own efforts to keep these sites from tricking people, some scams continue. To fight back, we're working to stop various fraudulent "Google Money" schemes, and this week filed suit against Pacific WebWorks and several other unnamed defendants.

Google hasn't created or endorsed any of the sites like those described in our complaint. Misleading ads try to take advantage of consumers in the midst of a difficult economy, and as the economic situation has worsened, the problem has only grown. As far as we can tell, thousands of people have been tricked into sending payment information and being charged hidden fees by questionable operations.



Even as we're taking legal action to try to cut these sites off at the source, we're still working constantly to remove scammy URLs from our index, and we'll permanently disable AdWords accounts that provide a poor or harmful user experience, whether or not they use Google's trademarks illegally. That said, we can't guarantee that schemes like these won't pop up, like the proverbial "Whack-A-Mole", someplace else online — either on a different network or under a different name.

We can solve only part of the problem — the rest is up to you. Just as you should be careful about giving out financial information in the real world, you should be skeptical and review any offers online before sending any information, and always be on guard when presented with an offer that seems too good to be true. Below is a significantly abridged list of some names that we know are suspect. For more tips on how to spot a scam online or what to do if you think you or someone you know has been tricked, check out this earlier post.

Although there's no secret kit that can guarantee riches, many people really do make money online. In our experience, the best way to build a business on the web is to really serve users — offer useful products and services or write about something you have a passionate interest in. If you are wondering if a particular program is legit, Google's business and advertising programs can be found from our home page, and the best place to find real jobs at Google is google.com/jobs.

Names to be wary of: Google Adwork, Google ATM, Google Biz Kit, Google Cash, Earn Google Cash Kit, Google Fortune, Google Marketing Kit, Google Profits, The Home Business Kit for Google, Google StartUp Kit, and Google Works.

HTML Sitemap or XML Sitemap – Which is more valuable?

Google software engineer Matt Cutts answers a question from a SEO in India about whether it’s better to build a HTML sitemap or XML sitemap.

An HTML sitemap is basically a good old fashioned landing page that contains links to all the pages on your website. It’s very useful for users trying to locate specific information. Larger sites may require several HTML sitemap pages but for smaller sites, they are a perfect resource for visitors trying to figure out what’s on your site.

Check out SEO Advantage’s HTML sitemap here…as you can see, all of our important pages are linked from this page. A visitor looking for SEO services can go here and easily find what they’re looking for.

An XML sitemap can have several files but is only visible to search engine spiders.

So when asked which one to prioritize, Cutts says an HTML sitemap since it’s viewable by both site visitors and search engine spiders.

Remember, Cutts is a software engineer not a SEO professional but he is correct in his assessment of the workability of each type of sitemap.

Creating an XML sitemap is very easy once you create an HTML sitemap according to Rusty Brick at S.E. Roundtable. Therefore, he suggests making both so you can be sure all of your pages are properly indexed.

Watch the quick video to learn more.

How to Install wordpress in Local System with XAMPP

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to install and configure XAMPP for the desktop. Once that’s out of the way, we’ll install WordPress so that you can have your very own professional, light-weight PHP and WordPress development environment.

Introduction

To sum it up in one sentence: XAMPP, which stands for Cross-Platform (X) Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl, is a popular, free and open source web server package that you can use to install a web server onto your desktop.

XAMPP allows you to develop PHP and Perl-based server-side scripting applications without the need for a remote web server, offering you the opportunity to work faster, develop stuff more securely, and work on your apps without an internet connection.

In this tutorial – you’ll see exactly how XAMPP can do splendid things to your development cycles.

We’re going to use a simple xampple (sorry, I had to get that out of the way, been thinking about saying that for a long time): we’re going to install XAMPP and WordPress with some test data to have WordPress right on our desktop.

This tutorial is for Windows Vista, so you’ll have to tweak the steps involved depending on your operating system. Here’s what you’ll be doing in this tutorial:

Objectives

• Downloading and Installing XAMPP
• Starting up your Apache and MySQL services
• Installing and configuring WordPress locally
• Creating a MySQL database for WordPress
• Creating a MySQL database user for WordPress in phpMyAdmin
• Importing some test data for WordPress using an XML file

This tutorial covers installing XAMPP in Windows Vista, so you’ll have to tweak the steps a little bit if you’re using a different operating system.

Obtaining XAMPP and choosing a version

1 Obtain a copy of XAMPP for Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X at the apache friends XAMPP web page.

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

2 Choose the package you want: for normal web development, just go with the Basic Package.

The Basic Package comes with a host of useful applications, libraries, and extensions such as phpMyAdmin (which we’ll use to set up WordPress later on) and eAccelerator (a popular PHP caching application to optimize and improve PHP script performance). For this tutorial, choose the Installer version.

Download it (Save File) onto your computer.

3 Open up the executable (for Windows users, it’s called xampp-win32-1.7.1-installer.exe).

The following figure shows the first dialog box; it asks you to select which language you want to use.

The next dialog you’ll see is the first page of the XAMPP Setup Wizard.

4 Pick a destination for the installation.

Note: XAMPP suggests not to install it in the Program Files folder (i.e. C:\Program Files\xampp), so just install it in the root of your drive (C:\xampp)

5 Configure your options in the XAMPP Options dialog box. For this tutorial, just go with the default installation options.

That’s it for the installation, quick and painless wasn’t it? Let’s fire up Apache and MySQL.

Starting up your Apache and MySQL services

6 After the installation, you should’ve been presented with an option that asks you to open the XAMPP Control Panel. If you didn’t get that option, do one of the following:

Option 1: Navigate to it using the Windows interface

Start > All Programs > Apache Friends > XAMPP > XAMPP Control Panel

Option 2: Open the XAMPP Control Panel directly

If you didn’t select the "Create Shortcut" option in the installation, then navigate to the XAMPP installation folder and open the file called xampp-control.exe.

7 The XAMPP Control Panel should look like the following figure:

8 Click the Start button beside Apache. If you’re on Windows, you’ll get a Windows Firewall warning: choose Unblock.

9 If all goes well, you should see the XAMPP Control Panel log updated with "Apache Started", and "Running" with a green background right beside the Apache service.

10 Start the MySQL service using the same method as step 8.

Testing to see if it works

11 With your Apache and MySQL services started, open up a web browser and navigate to localhost using the following path:

http://localhost

12 You should see the following screen:

Congratulations, you now have your very own locally hosted (localhost) web server!

Depending on your operating system, you’re now the proud owner of a WAMP (Windows users), MAMP (Mac OS X users) or LAMP (badass Linux users) server right there inside your computer.

Now let’s move onto installing WordPress on your machine. First, we’re going to set up your WordPress MySQL database and create a MySQL database user for it. That’s the topic for the next section.

Setting up your MySQL database for WordPress

The easiest way to create a MySQL database using XAMPP would be to use phpMyAdmin, which comes with the Basic Package that we installed.

13 Navigate to phpMyAdmin through your web browser. The URL is:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

14 Create your WordPress database by entering in a name and pressing the Create button.

In this tutorial, we’ll call it wordpress_db. You’ll need to remember this value for a later step when we configure WordPress.

This is what the following screen will look like:

Creating a WordPress database user

In real-world scenarios, you should never use the default root user because it has all privileges and you don’t want a simple WordPress bug or vulnerability taking down your entire MySQL service.

This isn’t necessary if you’re only testing locally, but we’re going to do this right to promote best practices.

15 Go to phpMyAdmin home by either clicking on the logo on the top left or clicking on the home icon.

16 Click on the Privileges tab.

17 Click on "Add a New User"

18 For the User name field, type in any name, this tutorial uses wordpress_user for simplicity. For Host, select Local.

For Password, type in a value, but it’s highly recommended that you use the Generate Password button to randomly generate a password for better security.

Once you hit the Generate Password button, click on Copy button right beside it to copy it automatically in the Password and Re-type fields.

Important: take a note of the User name and Password you used, we’ll be using it later on.

Here are the settings used:

19 Set the Global Privileges of wordpress_user. Typically, you should try to limit the privileges of your database users to a minimum to improve security.

For this example, since it’s a local installation – just check all of them. When you go into production, pare down the privileges!

Hit the Go button to create the database user.

20 If everything went well, you’ll see a confirmation that you’ve created the user successfully.

Adding your newly created user to your database

21 In the next screen, in the Database-specific privileges fieldset, in the Add privileges on the following database field, select wordpress\_db.

This will add wordpress_user as a database user of your wordpress table, wordpress_db.

22 Check that wordpress_user has been added to the database by entering your database.

To enter your database, click on wordpress_db in the left-hand navigation.

23 Click the Privilege tab to see all users that have access to your WordPress database. You should see wordpress_user listed in the Privilege section.

Alright, you’ve just learned how to create a MySQL database user using phpMyAdmin. Give yourself a pat in the back before moving on!

Installing WordPress on your computer

If you’re not familiar with the process of installing WordPress, you should take a look at the following guide on the official WordPress.org site first:

• Installing WordPress

This guide will get you up and running with the general process that we’ll be taking. Please take a moment and read it – I promise, it’ll be quick and painless.

24 Download the latest version of WordPress, save it on your computer.

25 Open your xampp folder. Navigate to the htdocs folder.

If you used the default installation destination, the file path is:

C:\xampp\htdocs

26 Open up the WordPress ZIP file you downloaded. Extract the entire contents in the htdocs folder.

Configuring WordPress: entering your MySQL database information

27 Inside the wordpress folder, open wp-config-sample.php file using your favorite text editor.

Fill in the information with your database information. If you followed along and used the same values as this tutorial, you can use these values:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress_db');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'wordpress_user');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'typeyourpasswordhere');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

28 Once you’re done with the configuration file, save it as wp-config.php in the same folder.

Note: You have to save it as wp-config.php and not wp-config-sample.php.

Running the WordPress install script

29 To finish the installation of WordPress, navigate to the install script. Here’s the file path:

http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

30 If you did everything correctly, you should be greeted by the following screen:

31 Just hit the Install WordPress button, and follow the steps. If this is your first WordPress installation, read the steps of the installation dialog carefully as we won’t be covering it here in detail.

Testing to see if your WordPress installation works

32 Navigate to the home page of your WordPress installation. The file path is:

http://localhost/wordpress/

If everything went well, you should see the default WordPress home page:

Important: take a note of the auto-generated password or else you won’t be able to log into WordPress.

WordPress local installation completed!

Woot, you just installed WordPress on your computer! No more FTP’ing or live web development! You can now test your themes or test site updates before going live.

At this stage, you can log into the WordPress administration section:

http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin

Alternatively, you can continue in the tutorial (because we’re not done yet).

Next, we’re going to import some test data which you should do when you’re developing WordPress themes to be released to the public.

Importing WordPress test data

33 Download the WordPress XML file from the official WordPress.org site. You can get it through the Theme Development Checklist (which is a great guide by the way), under the Theme Unit Test section.

Here's the direct download link:

http://svn.automattic.com/wpcom-themes/test-data.2008-12-22.xml

34 Log into the WordPress administration section:

http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin

35 In the WordPress admin section, go to Tools > Import (using the sidebar navigation on version 2.7).

36 In the Import page, click on WordPress.

37 Browse to the XML file we downloaded (test-data.xxxx-xx-xx.xml).

Hit the Upload file and Import button.

38 Assign the authors of the post. The XML file created a testing author named Noel Jackson for you.

If you don't want to assign the test posts to Noel Jackson, use the or map to existing field and select the author you want. For this tutorial, assign it to admin.

Click the Submit button.

39 You'll be presented with a log of all the changes made by the import process. Examine it if you want to see exactly what happened.

40 Check to see if the import went according to plan. Easiest way is to go to the home page of your WordPress installation (http://localhost/wordpress).

41 In the home page, you'll see that there's now content for your WordPress installation. This way you can easily check and test your theme for public release.

You're done, you professional PHP/WordPress developer!

Now you can develop WordPress themes and test changes locally on your computer, just like the pro's, not only speeding up your development cycles, but also being able to securely test updates to your existing themes.

Where to go from here

Here are things you should try and do to explore XAMPP:

Try to install a free WordPress theme

Go to the WordPress Themes section for themes you'd like to try out. Alternatively, check out our lists of free WordPress themes: Excellent Free WordPress Themes and Beautiful Free WordPress Themes.

Create a new site

Create a folder under the xampp > htdocs and put some test PHP scripts in it. As you can see, you don't need a web server anymore, you have a fully-featured MySQL and PHP server right there in your computer. Go develop some cool web applications!

Explore additional XAMPP add-ons

There are a good number of XAMPP add-ons for you to extend your local web server. Check them out and install the ones you need. Go to either the Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X download pages to see a list of add-ons you can install.

Summary

In this tutorial, you just learned how easy it is to install XAMPP to the desktop so that you can have your very own PHP web development testing server. More specifically, this is what we did together:

• Installed XAMPP
• Started the Apache and MySQL Services
• Created a MySQL database
• Created a MySQL database user
• Installed and configured WordPress
• Imported some test data

Has your site ever dropped suddenly from the index or disappeared mysteriously from search results?

• Have you ever received a notice that your site is using cloaking techniques?

Unfortunately, sometimes a malicious party "hacks" a website: they penetrate the security of a site and insert undesirable content. Sophisticated attackers can camouflage this spammy or dangerous content so that it doesn't appear for normal users, and appears only to Googlebot, which could negatively impact your site in Google's results.

In such cases it used to be very difficult to detect the problem, because the site would appear normal in the eyes of the user. It may be possible that only requests with a User-agent: of Googlebot and coming from Googlebot's IP could see the hidden content. But that's over: with Fetch as Googlebot, the new Labs feature in Webmaster Tools, you can see exactly what Googlebot is seeing, and avoid any kind of cloaking problems. We'll show you how:

• Let's imagine that Bob, the administrator of www.example.com, is searching for his site but he finds this instead:

• That's strange, because when he looks at the source code of www.example.com, it looks fine:

With much surprise Bob may receive a notice from Google warning him that his site is not complying with Google's quality guidelines. Fortunately he has his site registered with Webmaster Tools, let's see how he can check what Googlebot sees:

• First Bob logs into Webmaster Tools and selects www.example.com. The Fetch as Googlebot feature will be at the bottom of the navigation menu, in the Labs section:

• The page will contain a field where you can insert the URL to fetch. It can also be left blank to fetch the homepage.

• Bob can simply click Fetch and wait a few seconds. After refreshing the page, he can see the status of the fetch request. If it succeeds, he can click on the "Success" link...

• ...and that will show the details, with the content of the fetched page:

• Aha! There's the spammy content! Now Bob can be certain that www.example.com has been hacked.

Confirming that the website has been hacked (and perhaps is still hacked) is an important step. It is, however, only the beginning. For more information, we strongly suggest getting help from your server administrator or hoster and reading our previous blog posts on the subject of hacked sites:

• My site's been hacked - now what?


• A quick security checklist for webmasters


• Message center warnings for hackable sites


• Best practices against hacking

If you have any questions about how to use the Fetch as Googlebot feature, feel free to drop by the Webmaster Help Forum. If you feel that your website might be hacked but are having problems resolving it, you might want to ask the experts in our "Malware and Hacked sites" category.

Keyword research is one of the most awaited topic of discussions on this blog. Tons of techniques, articles & tools are already available to help you zero in on the keywords that would bring high rankings for your website on search engines. Now, we are not going to talk about all that crap stuff today because that is really not something that a person with little or no SEO knowledge can understand anyways. So we will just stick to our motto of “It can’t be explained simpler than that“.

• Let’s take the example of an online perfume store. The owner just started his business and the first thing he will do is set up a website. Then he starts wondering how can he get natural traffic from search engines? (Natural here means traffic for which you are not paying a dime). The answer is obvious – by getting his website to rank higher on search engines for the relevant terms that are most searched or most popular. But the catch here is – the more popular the term is, the more competition he will have! Finding the popularity of the search terms is very simple. I always use the Google Keyword Tool to find out an estimated search volume of terms over last month.

For e.g., the keyword “perfume” was searched for a whopping 16.5 million times in the last month. And at the same time there are ~ 50 million search results for the same. So if our website owner targets the keyword “perfume”, he will be competing with as many websites for that coveted ranking. Now that doesn’t sound like a great choice for your target keyword. Its very likely that your SEO campaign will outlive your website if you follow targeting a keyword with such immense competition.

Let’s assume that our website owner sells perfumes by Giorgio Armani as one of his products. After doing a quick lookup, we can find that “Giorgio armani men’s perfumes” was searched ~ 15,000 times which relatively less as compared to the term “perfume” but it has considerably lesser competition, just ~ 500,000 as compared to 51 million. Now this looks like a good keyword to target. We call it a ‘long tail keyword’ where instead of using 1-2 word phrases, you try to go for longer, 4-5 word keywords as the competition grows.

• Oh, and yes, while we are talking about perfumes today, I would like to share a very nice & low priced perfume store I recently purchased my armani from – Spritzworld.com. Do check it out.

How to Start a SEO Campaign?

Several small & mid size businesses contact us daily for SEO consultation and helping their websites rank well on search engines. One common question we always hear is:

• “Where and how do I start my SEO Campaign from?”
  

We thought it would be a very good topic for our blog post & should help all our readers.

A couple of points to note before we start -

• We are assuming that you already have the domain name because finding a good domain name would be a separate topic of blog.
• This list is far from complete because there are still several other factors that affect your website position.

So, here are some of the most important steps that you can yourself take care of before going to any SEO company to manage your search engine marketing campaign.

1. Find your targeted keyword

The first and most important step is to determine what are the most important keywords for which you want your website to appear on search engines? You know your business more than anyone else. You know your target audience. So find out 10 phrases which you think that your prospective customers will search for.

It is much more complicated than it sounds. We just wrote about a simple tip on keyword research that a beginner should always do.

2. Set the title of your website pages right

After you have decided on your keywords, the next step is to set them up properly. The title of your web page is the very first thing that any search engine crawler will read and take as a factor to rank your website. Your homepage’s title should contain your targeted keyword. All the other pages of your website should have title related to the content of that respective page. For e.g., the title of the registration page should be “Registration”. Keep in mind that you are not promoting your “registration” page. The idea is to “set things right”.

3. Set up meta keywords and description

Though Google has said they do not read meta tags content but we still advise to put your targeted keywords in field and one line description of your website in field in your header tags. Many other search engines will still read them and Google won’t give you negative marks for that.

4. Unique content for the home page

Your website’s homepage should have a unique content describing your business. This introductory text should have the phrases that are in the title of the page. Experts say that you should use your targeted keyword 2-3 times in every 200 words so as to not get caught up for keyword stuffing. If possible, put your local business address and phone number on home page & contact us page to get noticed on “local business results” on Google.

5. Business Blog

Google loves to blog and so does the other search engines around. Having a business blog pays – and this is something you should always remember. Whatever business you have, you must write 1-2 blogs every week about your business. The articles can be about an industry news, a website update, a new recruit in your company – anything that relates in some way or the other to your business. It would be an icing on the cake, if you put these blogs on the homepage, just like what we have on KPMRS.

We recommend using wordpress because they are easy to set up and the come up with various SEO Plugins that help in optimizing your blog for search engine rankings.

6. Install traffic analyzer

Once your website is up, you would definitely want to monitor your traffic. Any analytics software will show you how many visitors come to your website daily, where are they coming from and which keywords do they use on search engines to get on to your website. These are the most important metrics.

We suggest using Google Analytics for 2 reasons -

1. It is free & provides everything you would want.
2. Our website discovery tool works very well with Google analytics to help you find the new keywords that bring you traffic. Read more about it on our previous blog post here.

7. Monitor your website rankings

• Of course you are just starting your campaign. You might not be in top 100 on Google but sooner or later if you do the right things at the right time, you will find yourself in top 10 for that elite group of your targeted keywords. We, at KPMRS, offer this service for free. You can register your website with your targeted keywords and we will monitor your rankings on daily basis. You can be rest assure to get notified by email as soon as your rank has changed for Google, Yahoo or Bing. This will even help you track the work done by whichever SEO company you have chosen for your campaign.

8. Setup business profiles on social media websites

Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious are some of the buzz words today in social media industry. Setting up your business profile on these & similar websites are must for a starter. Maintaining & optimizing them is again a different topic of discussion about which we will soon post here.

We hope that you found this list as a good starting point to help you in setting up your SEO Campaign. We also advise our clients to educate themselves by spending 30 minutes daily in reading latest news in the SEO world. You may not be professionals but you sure don’t want to appear dumb when you talk to a SEO Company. Official blogs of Google, Bing, & Yahoo are good starting point but there are hundreds of freelance bloggers that can provide really valuable information as well. A few ones that we love

• http://www.dailyseoblog.com
• http://www.seo-theory.com
• http://www.seomoz.org
• http://www.webmasterworld.com (Highly Recommended)

In a recent query session on Google’s Webmaster Central channel on youtube, a Google spokesperson was answering the question – “Why doesn’t Google validate according to the W3C (Markup Validation Service standards)”? Google had a simple, logical and a well rehearsed response -

• “While Validation may be good internally (for your website/organization), we have to make sure that the number of bytes returned to the users is as small as possible”, and added, that “Google does NOT provide any boost in ranking to pages that are validated”.

Now, those two sentences probably sum up the interview, and require some explaining, notwithstanding how casually they have been quoted. But first, a background check. The W3C validation is a service provided by the World Wide Web Consortium that prescribes a set of HTML coding standards for web pages. The service also allows coders to check for any markup errors in the pages authored by them. The objective of the HTML validation standards is similar to the objective behind traditional accounting practices or programming conventions – to produce Web pages that are:

1. Neat (user-friendly)
2. Accessible (from different devices)
3. Compatible (with different multimedia formats)
4. Manageable
5. Universally understood (similar displays on different browsers), and
6. Easy to update.

Despite all the apparent advantages, a majority of web pages on the internet are not validated. In fact, w3c and wikipedia confirm that less than 20% of the major search engine and browser websites are validated and error free.

Reason: What Google says in the interview.

If you were to design a web page, the most primary of your targets will be:

a) to keep the page loading times as low as possible; and

b) to ensure that your page is compatible with all common browsers in the market.

And the prospect of tweaking with your optimized HTML coding to even slightly increase your page size or decrease compatibility with browsers, is something that is generally seen as avoidable, in spite of however form of validation that may bring to your page. Also, the SEO benefits that are often stated in support of W3C validation are indirect and unquantifiable, at best, and validated pages receive no special attention from Search Engines; as affirmed by Google. The spokesperson also went on record saying that, “We would love if a Googler would spend 20% time trying to make sure we validate, and I think we can validate and still have a small page size.” Clearly, Google thinks of validation as frivolous or something that occupies a secondary priority at best.

Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking

The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog says, in a post published earlier this week, that the famous tag does not affect your search engine rankings. Google says it’s a waste of time and should be ignored. Doing this, you can actually save a dozen-or-so bytes per pageload! It has also mentioned in the post that it is possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it’s very unlikely since they have ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently see no need to change that policy.

Google says that it disregards the meta keyword tags in SE Rankings. Image Courtesy: wipeout44.com

So, is there a need to keep the “meta keywords” tag or should we start removing them? Einstein had famously said “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot!”

Lets see what bing has to say about “meta” tag on their webmaster blog? Rick DeJarnette from the Bing Webmaster Center Team writes

The tag’s keyword attribute is not the page rank panacea it once was back in the prehistoric days of Internet search. It was abused far too much and lost most of its cachet. But there’s no need to ignore the tag. Take advantage of all legitimate opportunities to score keyword credit, even when the payoff is relatively low. Fill in this tag’s text with relevant keywords and phrases that describe that page’s content.

When creating keyword text, remember the following:

• Choose words that may be secondary keyword terms (save the primary keywords for use in the description tags), and even include a few, commonly seen typographical errors of primary keywords, just for good measure.
• Limit your keyword and key phrase text, separated by commas, to no more than 874 characters.
• Don’t repeat a keyword more than 4 times among the keywords and phrases in the listl

That leaves us in a fix. Google Vs Bing. Who should we go with?

Google, which has more than 65% of market share in the search industry.

OR

Bing, which was recently reported as fastest growing search engine.

My personal opinion would be that you should keep meta keywords tag and populate a couple of your most targeted keywords while making sure that you DO NOT overstuff it. This means you are adding not more than 100 bytes of data in your web page which will take less than few milliseconds to load. Plus Google never said that this will have negative impact so there is no harm. And since they left it open that their policies may change in future which means, if they do, you do not have to start filling in again. You will be already prepared. And at the same time, you are following the guidelines by Bing and making sure that your web page is optimized for that as well.