4 Solutions to SEO problems of using Flash

Here are 4 solutions on how to optimize your website well even if they are running Adobe Flash. Since Flash cannot be interpreted perfectly and consistently by search engines, you run into 2 main problems.

Ø  The important text content rendered in Flash cannot be read well by the search engines

Ø  Navigational elements within Flash cannot be crawled by search engine spiders.

Having this in mind, here are four tips on how to implement SEO successfully on a Flash website.

1. The Non-Flash Site Version for Sites Completely Made in Flash

Content: If your website is made all in Flash and has no other HTML elements except the code that embeds the Flash file(s), making another website with the exact look and feel (for branding purposes) but does not have all the bells and whistles of Flash will make the content readable by search engine. Since this is like totally having a separate website, you would really expect the non-Flash website generating the search engine traffic, which will then funnel visitors through the navigation leading them into the Flash website.

Navigation: Since there is a separate website with different pages targeted for different keywords, search engine crawlers will have the opportunity to see the links and follow them in the non-Flash plain HTML website and getting all pages included in the search engine index. With the nature of Flash, similar to AJAX, where each page view may not necessarily load a new HTML page with a new URL, it would still be best to create a unique URL for each "Flash view" that will be the entry point page from the non-flash pages. And once they arrive at the page, it can load the same Flash file and no need to reload a new page.

Advantage: You can design your Flash as intricate you want. No limitations since the SEO'd pages are on the non-Flash website.

Disadvantage: You need to spend more time and resources making the website. Having a Flash and non-Flash website is having two websites to maintain. More time, more resources, more money spent.

Quick Tip: Flash can input data from XML documents relatively easy. Server-side scripting languages such as PHP, JSP, ASP, etc. can also import data from XML documents. Creating a unified CMS should make life easier in the long run, but may take more time to set up.

2. Alternative Content and Navigation
   
   Content: On the same page where Flash is displayed, some equivalent content of what was found within the flash file is also presented outside of Flash as plain text within the HTML code.
   
   Navigation If a navigational element was made in Flash, similar to the content, adding another alternative navigation on the site will help get all other pages crawled and index in the search engines. A common implementation of this is having footer text links at the bottom of every page.
   
   Advantage: Unlike the technique above, you do not need to make another website. Just make sure whatever text content you have on your flash file. Have it available elsewhere on the page outside of Flash.
   
   Disadvantage: Cannot be done on a full Flash website, but generally any website implementing SEO should not have a full Flash website.
   
   Quick Tip: Flash should be used best here for areas where you want to attract attention. Perfect for your unique selling statement, current product or service promotions. Whatever content was found here should also found elsewhere in a plain text format for the search engines to read. The animation is mainly used to draw the attention (not to annoy) of a user to read and pay attention to the Flash and hopefully draw in the user to read and explore further.

3. sIFR for Flash Designed Text
   
   Content: Text font designs used on websites are declared either in the non-standard HTML <font> tag or in the declared font styles using CSS. Either way, these layout commands are telling the web browser to load the font file available on the viewer's local computer. In the absence of these font files, the browser will load it's default browser fonts that is oftenTimes New Roman. This limited web designers to use commonly installed fonts such as Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva, Courier, Times New Roman, and other common fonts decreasing the creative freedom of many web designers. So in order to design beautiful typefaces, you can either use an image or Flash but search engines had trouble reading these. Scalable Inman Flash Replacement or simply sIFR (many pronounce this is as sifer) is an effective use of Flash text replacement. This is similar to how CSS image text replacement is done, just done in Flash. What makes this even better than CSS image text replacement is sIFR can be used more effectively in CMS applications since both can be easily generated dynamically. Although an image with text written on the image can be done dynamically also with tools such as PHP's GD library, it is not as easy nor resource friendly as sIFR.
   
   Navigation: The text on any anchor link is important in SEO for this is what gives meaning to what the destination page is all about. The important keywords within the <a> tags are your targeted keywords. But if the link is applied on a image or a Flash file, you have to make sure the targeted keywords are still read by search engines. In images you use the alt attributes. Since sIFR is used to 'stylize' text and not for any other animated effect, sIFR is idea to add beautiful looking text links not sacrificing the crawlability of the links.
   
   Advantage: Ability to create styled text font faces that are completely viewable as plain text in the "eyes" of the search engines. sIFR is very lightweight and scalable. Relatively easy to implement and Google has expressed their acceptance of this method. sIFR also downgrades gracefully if Flash is disabled or not installed on a web browser.

4. Use SWFObject

Content: Probably something you have heard quite often if you have been keeping up-to-date with the latest SEO techniques and those who were not able to fully catch up may think this technology is so confusing. To explain this further, let's explain how Flash is added to a webpage. Normally, Flash will have HTML <object> and <embed> tags. Within these tags is the source of the Flash file with the .swf file name extension along with several parameters how this .swf file is displayed such as the height, width and more. The SWFObject is a Javascript function that detects if Flash is available.

SWFObject is a small Javascript file used for embedding Adobe Flash content. The script can detect the Flash plug-in in all major web browsers (on Mac and PC) and is designed to make embedding Flash movies as easy as possible. It is also very search engine friendly, degrades gracefully, can be used in valid HTML and XHTML 1.0 documents*, and is forward compatible, so it should work for years to come.

Since this is mainly a Flash detection script and it replaces HTML blocks such as a typical <div> tag, plain text HTML content can be placed within the div tag. And only if Flash is enabled will it display the Flash over the <div> tag. A simple code implementation would look like this:

In the section, the SWFObject is called.

script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"

Also in the <head> or optionally in the <body> you have the SWFObject call stating the .swf file to load.

script type="text/javascript"

var so = new SWFObject("flashfile.swf", "flashheader", "400", "200", "8", "#ffffff");
so.write("flashcontent");

This will then look for the element with the ID flashcontent and replace it with the .swf file flashfile.swf. And anywhere within the webpage's content, you can have:

div id="flashcontent"
Text here, placed within these tags are search engine friendly. And can be read by search engines.

This script mainly checks the browser's Flash capability, since search engine spiders are not Flash enabled, thus Flash does not run. Aside from that, JavaScript is used to invoke Flash and search engines are not JavaScript enabled either. But since the content of the Flash file is displayed as plain text beneath the Flash in a <div> tag, search engines are able to read the content you gave of that Flash file.

Advantage: Can work with full Flash sites and websites that have only portions of it in Flash. Full Flash sites can degrade normally into non-Flash sites without having the need for a visitor to choose which site version to view. Flash page URLs and non-Flash page URLs are unified into a single URL.

Disadvantage: Very easy to implement shady to dark blackhat techniques with keyword stuffing behind the flash that can get you banned in the search engine. Although this is easily avoidable by simply not putting any content on the plain text HTML code that is not visible on the Flash file. As long as you keep it clean, you are safe

How to Build Social Media Presence in Three Simple Steps

Even as more and more companies hire Community Managers to give them a social media presence, the general attitude towards social media is, "Everyone's doing it, so we need to do it too."  If this is where you're coming from, you're most likely to cover the tactics with little strategy and mixed results.  A better way to go about it is to follow these Top Three ways to build a kick ass social media marketing presence.

1. Have a strategy.

Having a Twitter account and a Facebook page does not a social media strategy make.  The first question is not, "What are you doing online?"  The first question is "What do you need to see in three years to know that your business is succeeding?"

Once you know the answer to this question you can look at the numerous tools and tactics available through social media to create a strategy.  This strategy needs to be based on your business goals and ideally will integrate your social media marketing actions with every department of your company. 

If a social media expert acts like a hammer looking for a nail and talks about what social media will do for you without first asking you about your business, RUN.  I'm amazed at the number of social media firms that don't practice offline what they preach about online. Listening isn't just a tactic, it's a way of operating that makes every person and every business better.

2. Define and express your brand personality.  If you don't know what your brand stands for, no amount of social media marketing will help you. Write down the three words that you feel best describe your company. Then ask your partners, employees and customers to tell you three words they think of when they think about your company.  

Chances are that they will tell you something different.  If so, then it's time to do further research on what your customers most want.  Then make sure your brand offers what they want.  This is much more important than what you think they want or what you think you should give them.  Listen to them and then deliver what they ask for.  It's a simple concept that most companies ignore.

The message that most companies think they are sending is usually not the one that the public is receiving unless they have millions to spend on broadcasting the message incessantly.  Volvo means safety, but what does your local ice cream store stand for?

Your brand personality is the foundation for your social media marketing actions and should be the foundation of how your company operates in every department.  If your message is unknown or not consistently practiced daily by every employee then it is false and the public will figure it out faster than you can Google comments about your company.  

This personality needs to affect what you tweet, who you follow, how you respond to people, what contests you do or don't run on your Facebook page, whether you make videos, if you ask fans and followers to make videos, what context you come from when you announce something, whether you have an online TV show, how you build relationships and alliances online, and much more.

3. Establish your social media presence with your goals and message in mind

Yes, I said presence, not campaign.  You can't do this short term.  Social media marketing is as essential to your business as customer service and good accounting practices. People live online now.  If you aren't interacting with people where they hang out, you will be left out.  No two ways about it.

Strategically decide if you want to be on Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, UStream or whichever social platforms you choose.  Depending on your company size, your industry, your budget, where your target audience participates and lurks online, and other factors, you will have to prioritize your online activities.  

Once you know where you want to be you can plan out when and how you will launch and develop your presence to meet your business goals.  Have realistic goals with grounded plans of how to reach them and always be anchored to your core message.

I have had clients who pull numbers out of the air like expecting 10,000 Facebook fans in a month.  Well, that's a nice goal in short time frame, so how do you expect to get there?  What are you going to give people to make them care about you enough to "Like" your Facebook page?  Why do you want 10,000 instead of 1,000?  How will you entice them to come back again or to tell others about you?  How does this number, or how you get to this numbe, represent and enhance your company goals?  What demographics do you want to make up this 10,000 number?  Do you realize that 100 rabid evangelists that love your company are worth more than 10,000 people who click "Like" and then don't pay any more attention to you?

Social media marketing, like all streams of marketing, is part art and part science. If you develop your brand and your communications in authentic ways with your goals and your customers in mind  you'll be thrilled with the results.  What other tips would you give companies just starting out on the social media marketing road?  What tips can you add for companies maturing in this space who are looking to improve their results?

This article was originally posted at Oxstein Labs.

10 Facts and Trends about Contextual Advertising

Contextual advertising is targeted advertising that typically occurs on a banner or pop-up ad on a website. Contextual ad systems target advertising to a specific user based on the keywords on the page he or she is visiting (hence, the context of the ad comes into play). Search engine advertising is also a form of contextual advertising, since the ads that appear in the results are based on the keywords the searcher uses. Publishers and advertisers bid for the use of keywords in an auction system run by a contextual advertising company. Publishers and advertisers only profit from the advertisement when a user clicks on the ad in what’s commonly known as pay-per-click or PPC advertising.

Contextual advertising has caused some alarm because of the potential privacy issues and the occasional installation of software onto a user’s computer through a process known as third-party hyperlinking. In this system, the software searches the context of the page, site, or the user’s history and then displays advertisements related to the content in the form of hyperlinked PPC keywords instead of regular banners.

Google AdSense is a contextual advertising program, as is Google Content-Targeted Advertising. This program was one of the first of its kind. The ads appear in search results and on websites within Google’s Content Network. Developers can accomplish this by adding lines of JavaScript code to their web pages. When the code is integrated, AdSense searches for relevant ads using Google’s search algorithm. Contextual ads will be displayed when the algorithm finds a match. The program also considers the location and languages of the visitors.

MSN AdCenter and Yahoo! Publisher Network are alternative contextual advertising companies that provide these types of services. These sites give small business owners the opportunity to advertise without dealing with each individual sponsor. Large sponsors often will not advertise on small sites on an individual level.

Here are ten facts and trends about contextual advertising to help Internet marketers stay informed:

1) Advances in Advertisement Relevance Software

Developers are seeking to improve the relevance of targeted advertisements displayed to the viewer. Currently, the relevance of an advertisement is determined by technology such as Googlebot and Mediabot. This technology works by inserting JavaScript into the webpage in order to display relevant advertisements to the user. The algorithms are currently being improved to more accurately match advertisements to the preferences of the consumer.

2) Message Customization and Contextual Advertising

Developers are devising ways to determine the ages of the individuals using a particular computer or the family groups associated. The French are currently using this form of intuitive digital advertising. Developers are seeking ways to customize the messages displayed to the audience. The advertisements, in the future, will also be able to gain more information from the audience to influence an individual buyer through message customization.

3) Software-Free Contextual Advertising

Some companies choose to work directly with publishers to include contextual advertising. These companies elect not to rely on software. About.com uses the Sprinks service to insert contextual links. Applied Semantics also solicits ads in this manner. Their AdSense program analyzes the content of their web pages and selects ads that seem most appropriate. This company has placed ads on USA Today, Excite, and iWon. The company expects to gain several more major customers within the month.

4) Contextual Advertising and Video Games

Developers have tried to insert contextual advertising in video games. Sony’s Wipeout HD was one of the first games to contain contextual advertising before loading. Gamers complained and immediately the advertisements were removed from the games. The advertisements were presented at a time that was more annoying to the gamer than helpful. Developers are seeking ways to integrate contextual advertising without interrupting the load time of the game and the user’s experience. The University of Luxembourg has created a game called AdRacer to test new advertising techniques. As the player is driving, advertisements will appear on roadside “billboards.”

5) In-Text Video Contextual Advertising

Adbrite was one of the first to market in-video text advertisements on YouTube. ScanScout uses General Catalyst Partners in order to place advertisements over the video before viewing. Video-on-video advertising is possible as well. The ScanScout technology works similarly to the AdSense technology. ScanScout scans the video for content and then provides advertising based on the content of the video.

6) Billboards and Contextual Advertising

Companies are making plans to embed cameras in billboards and scan the faces of people who pass by the billboard. The software will tell the advertiser how many people passed the billboard and how long they looked at it. Most individuals will have their gender read by an accuracy of 85%. Men and women could see different ads based on their gender. These campaigns intend to be “ultra-targeted” to direct advertisements only to individuals who frequent the area. This is another form of contextual advertising that may be available in the near future.

7) Viral Videos and Contextual Advertising

Viral video uses the participation of the audience to create user-generated media. Businesses will try to understand their audiences to solicit involvement from user-generated media. Consumers will become attracted to messages that are relevant to them as opposed to targeted at a general audience. Businesses no longer need absolute control with this software and consumer participation.

8) Contextual Advertising and Pricing

Publishers and advertisers are encouraged to work together to maximize the amount of money that they both earn. If they work together, they both will earn a profit. Advertisers enjoy the ability to set their own prices for their product. However, companies are trying to determine if a price can be set for all members of the network. Google introduced the Smart Pricing scheme that will allow prices to be dynamically set. Yahoo! has opted to set one price for each company rather than using software to determine a price for the product. The problem with this option is that most companies are compelled to set the price to the least valuable site in the network.

9) Contextual Advertising and Control

Publishers were excited about the ability of splitting the profits with contextual advertising companies when the idea was initially introduced. Publishers can now select more than one contextual advertising company. Publishers will gain more control when they are allowed to choose. Publishers may also have the ability to select specific ad categories. For example, a publisher may know that an individual that likes a certain type of music may also like a certain type of stereo speakers to accompany the music. This allows publishers the control to select advertisements that make these connections in their audience.

10) Contextual Advertising and the Migration Toward Behavioral Advertising

Behavioral advertising is expected to become the next contextual advertising. Behavioral advertising records the user’s behavior rather than just the user’s preference. Many people are uncomfortable with the privacy issues that surround targeted advertisements and tracking a person’s behavior on the Internet. Contextual behavioral advertising will be based on the user’s surfing behavior in prior sessions. Therefore, two individuals will see entirely different advertisements even though they are visiting the same site. The behavior is tracked via cookies stored on users’ computers. Many companies are interested in pursuing this practice, because experts have shown that the click through rate and, more importantly, conversion rates are higher with behavioral marketing than they are with other forms of advertising.

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-facts-and-trends-about-contextual-advertising/24098/#ixzz12hjLyCbX

Yahoo Rolling Out “Accordion” Search & Other Features

Yahoo is launching a number of search enhancements that start to deliver on the UI innovation that the company has been promising since the Microsoft search deal was announced. It’s part of Yahoo’s bid to remain relevant in search by spicing up the user experience and trying to bring more utility to page one.

Many of these new features were previewed at the recent “Runway” event last month. The two biggest changes or enhancements that users will immediately notice involve image search and a new “accordion” module at the top of search results (though it doesn’t always appear).

Do a search for “Toy Story 3″ or “Lady Gaga,” for example, and you’ll see this:

Users can flip through panes that contain different types of information. In the case of Toy Story 3 there are “overview,” “video” and “Twitter” tabs. The content types and number of tabs will vary and be relevant to the query. In the case of Lady Gaga there are additional “events” tabs and “album” tabs. The events tab contains a link to buy tickets. There are also horizontal tabs with related content on top.

Search SVP Shashi Seth told me that there will be more such transactional elements in search results going forward. It doesn’t currently exist but one could easily imagine an embedded OpenTable link tied to a specific restaurant query. And there are other scenarios in which this accordion module could enable actions or transactions. Travel is another category that quickly comes to mind.

I spoke to Seth about the potential appearance of display and rich media advertising in this area of the page. (Earlier today I moderated the SMX East panel on search and display, so it’s on my brain.)  He said that isn’t the case at launch but Yahoo has thoughts along those lines in certain commercial contexts.

This module also enables “discovery” of information in a way that traditional search results do not. There’s a mixture of push and pull going on here, which is very interesting. Accordingly it goes beyond the “smart box”/”one box” universal search approach favored in the past couple of years.

Consistent with the notion of making page one more “actionable,” Yahoo is integrating what it calls “quick apps” into search farther down the page. The first of these is a Netflix app that will open a window and enable “Netflix members to add movies to their Queue right from the Search results page.”  You could also watch trailers and theoretically stream entire movies in this window.

The philosophy behind all these moves involves taking search “from finding to doing.”

As mentioned, image search is being revamped. Image pages get a new more visually engaging and “immersive” environment. Yahoo is putting more slideshows (from Flickr and other Yahoo sites) in image search results that then lead to pages that look like this:

Beyond this, Yahoo image search will allow people to “view personally meaningful public Facebook albums from friends when they sign-in and connect their Yahoo! accounts to Facebook.”

Finally Yahoo says that iPhone and Android users will see faster and “more sophisticated” search results built on HTML5. The new Yahoo Finance app is an example of this.

This collection of new features and tools rolls out immediately in the US and then globally next year.

Yahoo has been promising UI/UX innovation for many months and these new capabilities represent something of a down payment. However the company says it will continue to do more and go further over the coming months. This “is just the beginning.”

source:Yahoo Rolling Out “Accordion” Search & Other features

Increasing Compeitition in SEO

SEO is eventually a race to the top with the top ten being just ten in number. Wikipedia takes up one or two positions in most searches and Youtube, Facebook or LinkedIn bring in a couple of results in the top ten. Add to this high profile news and media websites and directories and the top page of ten is really only five positions that we can aspire for. Therefore SEO is really about bring in a world-wide race to get to the top 5 positions for the first page and maybe top twenty-five positions globally for the first three pages.

Businesses need to appreciate that SEO takes time, is difficult and need a very structured and patient methodology. Since businesses require being very careful about reputations, good SEO practices must be applied at all times. Unethical practices are likely to be discovered in an age of increasing intelligence and speeds of robots and crawlers. More than this your own reputation as a strong, ethical and professional business is likely to take a beating.

In order to succeed in search engine optimisation in the current environment a few suggestions:
1. Ensure that your web designer understands the structure and importance of SEO and incorporates good practices into the design, content and programming of the pages.
2. Have a defined search engine optimisation strategy before you begin your new web design and define your content and website structure to make it very search engine friendly.
3. Hire a good SEO service provider who you can trust and who you are sure uses ethical and structured rules to improve ranking.
4. Set up short term and long term goals and define time frames for them. A short term goal could be bringing the website into the first few pages of ranking for select keywords in a period of two-three months and a long term goal can be bringing the website into the first page for one or two keywords with a year of work.
5. Use analytics to measure the net traffic that specific keywords bring to your website and weed out the keywords that do not generate traffic. There is no point in optimising for keywords and feeling proud of being on the first page if the keywords do not have adequate search volume that can translate into visits to your website.
6. Skirt the more popular and competition intensive keywords initially and take the lower profile ones to begin with and gradually build traffic with small increases.
7. Content is finally king and no matter what you do please do spend time to write content for your website, blog, press releases and articles.
8. A good SEO service provider should be able to write these for you and your choice of SEO provider should be one who is equipped with a good copy writer who can write out good content for you.
9. Assign all directory and article submissions to the SEO expert and stop doing them yourself as these submissions need to be done well and with specific formats and you can easily undo the work of your SEO provider by creating incorrect submissions that conflict and compete with those that your SEO partner has done.
10. Review the progress and further planning every couple of weeks with the SEO service provider and keep your focus on the numbers of traffic that are coming to your website. This should be your main metric for the performance of your search engine optimisation programme.

An Excellent Name With Google

Your domain name can contribute to your position in Google. A domain name can make or break a new online business. How do you get a good name?
Search Engines
Keywords are the words that you hope a visitor will search Google to find your website. Your domain name is one of several factors considered by Google when positioning your website on page one or page nine hundred in search results. Domain names containing keywords will rank higher if all other factors are equal. Here are some tips:
1) Keywords in a name
Create a name containing at least one keyword. Many keyword names may be already taken, but that should not deter an entrepreneur from being creative. If you are selling fruitcakes, but "fruitcakes.com" is already taken, then if you are in Albany "albanyfruitcakes" is a good name for you as it contains two key words.
Ideally, the domain name is created before an online business is started, so that business name and marketing identify with the domain name. If the business is already established at a street address, the ideal domain name may be different from the name of the street business. In that case the domain name can still be added to the signage of the business.
You get further benefits by listing a linked email address containing keywords, e.g. albanyfruitcakes. Keywords which are hyperlinks are viewed by search engines as even more important than plain keywords in the text.
Of course you can go to the technical maximum and have a domain name with sixty-seven characters full of keywords and hyphens. Google will love that. But then your visitors will forget how to spell the name and forget the hyphens. Here is what sixty-seven characters looks like:
fruitcakes-christmas-cakes-baking-in-albany-texas-online-orders-usa
The domain name needs to be easy to remember to give maximum benefit.
2) Beware of similar names
Avoid registering names that are similar to existing names. Lookup any whois site to check this. E.g., if the name you want is "fruitcakes.com" and that is taken, don't take "fruitcakesusa.com" because you will be giving "fruitcakes.com" a free source of visitors who forget the "usa" part.
Try to be distinctive, e.g., names like "albanyfruitcakes" or "starfruitcakes.com" will be more memorable. A qualifier at the beginning is usually remembered more than a qualifier at the end.
If there are plural and singular versions of a name, e.g. fruitcakes and fruitcake, it's wise to register both. You can be first with a name but may lose position to a larger corporation with a budget for thousands of web pages.
A name may exist without a website, but a whois lookup will show such names. These names may be for websites yet to be built, or they may be inactive and held for defensive purposes.
3) Same name different extensions
There are many extensions available, e.g. net, biz, us, info, org. If the.com version of your ideal name is taken, you can take another extension.
But for years we have been conditioned to think of the.com as the primary extension. If you choose another extension visitors may remember your name but not the extension. They will assume.com and go to your competitor.
Just be creative with a new distinctive.com name.
4) Country specific
If you want the country specific extension for your domain name, e.g. com.au for Australia, then make sure you can also register the.com version for your website. Otherwise, there can be a leakage of visitors to a competing.com website.
5) Ego
Don't let ego choose a domain name. In one example not only did the name contain no keywords, it was misleading. E.g., "LYN.com" (not the real one) in the mind of the Lyn the owner stood for "Learn Your Notes" (also not the real one). Even that was only slightly related to the product. Ego made her choose an ineffective name.
Of course if you have a brand that everyone in the target market knows, then the brand is a key word. But don't start from nothing with an unknown name that doesn't contain at least one keyword.
Summary
A good domain name:
(a) contains keywords,
(b) is distinctive,
(c) is easy to remember, and
(d) is not easily confused with another registered name.
If you have started with an ineffective name, you can always create a new name. That wastes the time you spent with the old name, but in the long term a new name containing keywords will pay off. You can park it on the hosting of the old name so that both names open the same website.
Do you have a good name?

Have You Heard These SEO Tips?

Within search engine optimisation, there is an abundant amount of useful information and a great number of tips and recommendations. It can often be overwhelming to begin exploring SEO because there is so much to learn and explore. However, there are some simple tips which are extremely useful when considering beginning an SEO campaign.

The first is to develop a sound knowledge of SEO. A lot of business owners do not really know much about the process and this is understandable. However, if you want SEO to make a difference to your business, you have to stop this being the case. Read recommended SEO books, visit high quality SEO websites, read posts in blogs and forums and generally aim to gain an overview of what SEO is about. Always be wary of the sources of information you use and double check any points of significance and particular interest you may come across.

Spending some time learning about SEO will put you in the ideal position for the future development of your campaign. Without this knowledge, you are putting yourself in a vulnerable position and this will not help you or your business.

The second SEO tip which you may find useful is to then make SEO personal to your business. When you have a basic idea of what SEO can do, decide what you want it to do for your business and what you are prepared to do to get it. In what ways does your business need help? Do you need better rankings in the search results? Is your website easy to use? Have internet users heard of your business at all? Explore the different ways SEO can help your business and identify the most significant ways SEO could potentially help your business.

When you know what you want from SEO, you have to decide how you are going to get it. If inexperienced in SEO yourself, it is most advisable to hire professional SEO consultants to run your campaign for you. This is the best way to ensure time, effort and money is spent wisely. Decide what you want your SEO company to do for you and how much you are willing to spend on their services.

It is then time to find an appropriate SEO company to suit your needs. Research is vital in this part of the process. Visit websites, ask questions, explore reputations within the social networking communities and forums and gather as much information as you can. Only consider ethical SEO firms and ask them to give you an idea of what they could do for your business and how they would do it. When you have the information you want and have found a white hat SEO company which can develop an SEO campaign suitable for your wants and needs, your business will be close to achieving SEO success.

Source:- seoconsult.co.uk

Introducing In-Page Analytics: Visual context for your Analytics data

When looking at Google Analytics reports, sometimes it’s difficult to visualize how visitors navigate on a given website page. To make this visualization easier, some users keep the website open in another browser tab so they can reference it while looking through reports, Others rely on the Site Overlay report in Google Analytics, .

But today, Google analytic is  releasing a new feature into beta: In-Page Analytics. With In-Page Analytics, you can see your Google Analytics data superimposed on your website as you browse. One can check out from the image below.

Take In-Page for a spin and let us know what you think. In-Page Analytics is still in beta, so some things in the report may not work perfectly yet. There’s a lot left to do, but there’s even more that we want build going forward. In-Page is currently available for all English users of Google Analytics.

source:http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/10/introducing-in-page-analytics-visual.html

How does Google instant impact your SEO

There's a lot of chatter recently about Google's latest addition-Google Instant. If you haven't heard, Google Instant is a new search enhancement to make your online searches quicker. Many forums are discussing whether it will be the end of search engine optimization and your SEO Optimization Company. In a word: No.
If you haven't visited Google lately, try it out. Simply type in your search terms or phrases, and Google Instant will do the rest for you. It will even make it so you don't have to press the 'search' button if you prefer. Like it or not, Google is making online searches easier and faster for the end-user. Google boasts that this new feature offers 'faster searches, smarter predictions, and instant results'. But, the real question everyone seems to be asking is how this will impact search engine optimization and SEO Optimization Companies?

Basically, there will be little to no impact on SEO and SEO Optimization Companies. Consumers are still searching on Google and clicking on the organic results. Essentially, it makes SEO more important than ever, because it's all about picking the right keywords. With Google Instant, it may search for keywords with less words before you get to the full word, so keywords will become even more important than ever. Not to mention, finding the correct keywords to target. This kind of expertise can only derive from experts who know it best: Your SEO Optimization Company.
This enhancement will be even better for your prospects searching the Internet. According to Google, it is estimated that Google Instant can save two to five seconds per search. That's why it is so important to continue or start with an SEO Optimization Company, so prospects can search, and more importantly find, your product or service, even faster!
If anything, Google Instant will only make the process faster, which means more people will get to your site over a period of time and more of them may avail of your products and services in that same shortened period of time as well. It's a win-win situation both for you and your SEO company. What you get from SEO efforts minus Google Instant will still be there. The only difference is, your SEO company and this new Google enhancement will combine to make the process of people finding your site easier. As long as your mind open to the possibilities, everything is worth a try.

When you hire an SEO company, Google Instant can inch you closer to your goals in much less time. So hire the best SEO company and get people started on finding you at turbo speed.