Flash is great for many purposes from simple animations to movies and web applications. It brings rich media to the Web and could enrich user experience. In fact, IDC and NPD Online Research says that Flash is installed and turned on in 99 percent of browsers.

The problem is, the use of Flash can be quite a pain for search engine optimization.

Just not so long ago, the best practice is to avoid using Flash entirely. Sometimes, this is something outside our “circle of influence.” The second best option is, of course, to find a workaround for it.

Why Flash is Bad

Flash is known to harm search engine visibility. The main problem with Flash is that it is a binary file format, so it is much harder to analyze than text and static content. To understand what’s in the file, search engine needs to understand the format. This is something that may or may not be included as part of search engine features.

Macromedia (and now Adobe) understands the this concern and work out a solution so that search engine could analyze Flash objects. Google, for example, currently indexes Flash pages, but with a catch.

Google indexes pages that use Macromedia Flash. However, our crawlers may experience problems indexing Flash pages. If you’re concerned that Flash content on your pages may be inhibiting Google’s ability to crawl your site, you may want to consider using a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site. If features such as Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.

While Google integrates the capability to index Flash pages, still textual content is what Google prefers over any other type of content.

The Rule of Thumb for Using Flash

The best practice when it comes to using Flash for web design can be summarized into three words: less is better.

It is best that in the same page as the Flash objects also include text content. There are many ways to achieve this, as you will see later.

Long Flash message forces visitors to wait. This is exactly the opposite of people’s behavior online. They may develop the same behavior as they have with banner ads, if not done correctly. This in turn will impact the ability of your web page to deliver the right message.

Another reason why you should keep Flash content at the minimum is bandwidth consideration. Although broadband penetration is going high, there are also a lot of dial-up users out there. So, consider this if they are your target market. At least if you are to publish web content, optimize it.

Use Flash to enhance the story instead of the only tool to deliver the message. Used wisely to complement existing content, Flash could bring great experience to web visitors.

In the next blog post, I will show you different ways how you can get the most out of both world, i.e. using Flash on a page and at the same time provide Google with the content you would like to be indexed.

A site map, in old days, refers to a page on your site that lists important, if not all, pages in your site, including short descriptions or summaries of the pages.

This is different from an XML sitemap, which is now introduced by both Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The latter is a XML file used to inform search engines about pages on your site that are available for crawling.

Both the purpose of traditional site maps and XML sitemaps are to help search engine spiders crawl your site better.

For web site visitors, site map provides a way for them to navigate your site and find the information they need. This is especially effective if you have a relatively small site so scrolling to find the pages is possible.

As you probably have known, search engine robots can’t read and process Javascript. No matter how cool or sophisticated your site navigation is, if it requires Javascript, search engines can’t see it. Robots, on the other hand, is extremely well in traverse through pages through hypertext links.

Adding text links for your navigation bar is helpful in this case because it provides another way for the robots to find your pages.

XML sitemaps are more complex. But, you can use software or plugins to generate proper format of the file.

Unlike the first type of site map, which just another page on your site, XML sitemaps need to be submitted to the search engines for them to be recognized.

Next, you may want to learn more about Google Sitemaps.

Images for web publishers and designers are important parts of the site. It can bring a whole new experience to web site visitors.

Search engines, however, cannot understand the content of the images on a page. The technology to read characters in images is here, but it is not yet as well implemented and as easy as text content.

The workaround for this in HTML page is by using the ALT tags.

ALT tags are text descriptions that are used to describe the image on the IMG tags. It actually is an attribute of the IMG tag. By default if the web visitors use a graphically enabled browser, they will see the image instead of the ALT text.

ALT tags look something like this:
>img src=”imagefile.gif” alt=”description of the image”/>

Unless they actually look at the source code, the content of the ALT tag will not be seen by the visitors.

If the web viewers use text-based browser or turn off image in their browser, the content of the ALT tag will be displayed instead.

This tag is especially useful for navigation bar, which consists of links otherwise not clear without description.

Some search engines will factor in the ALT tags, especially for those which serve as links. This provides another opportunity for web publisher to include important keywords and keyphrases on the page. This is beneficial — but not to a large extent — for search engine optimization.

From the accessibility point of view, ALT description provides users with information about what the image is about.

Note: ALT description should exist in all IMG tags. For images that are not important, such as those used for spacers in layouts, you can use null ALT, or empty ALT, as in alt=”".

As a user of Google Analytics, I just got an email announcing a new version of the Google Analytics reporting interface. Existing users are automatically upgraded without further action on our part.

To help you through a smooth transition, while learning the new interface, Google still is giving access to the old reporting interface for at least a month by clicking Previous Interface below the View Reports link for any profile in the account.

What is new?

• Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
• Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
• Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
• Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.

Google Analytics now uses the same geo-data source as AdWords. Expect a slight difference between the old and new interface, but the report should be consistent for both AdWords and Google Analytics.

The new version works best with Adobe Flash Player 7 or higher.

What is SEO copywriting? Is it worth the effort? What are the pros and cons? In this blog post, I am going to give a mild introduction to SEO copywriting or search engine optimization copywriting. This topic — which involves both art and science — is also referred to as search engine copywriting.

What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO copywriting is the technique to writing website copy in such a way that it serves its purpose for human visitors or surfers and search engine spiders.

The purpose of writing for the search engines is of course, to rank highly in the search engine result pages for the targeted search terms. At the same time, the page has to be interesting for surfer to click, proceed to visit and read the web page, and take action based on the response the web publisher wants.

Why SEO Copywriting Instead of Other Techniques?

The next question is why search engine copywriting? Why should we use it instead of other techniques to rank on search engines?

The answer is simple. The idea behind this concept is that search engines want real content pages, not cloaked or supplemental pages like doorway pages. Instead of “cheating” the search engines into thinking that a page is relevant to a keyword or keyword phrase, search engines want real pages and based on the algorithms, rank those pages accordingly.

The problem is, search engine algorithms are programs — although they involve human editor in part of the process. They can’t rate relevance like human being, although they are getting better over the years. For now, there are things web publishers could do to improve the chance that search engine rate the page as relevant.

We are not talking about the off-page and off-site factors, but more about in-page content that we should have control in.

The Benefits of SEO Copywriting

Done right, SEO copywriting could be of benefits to web publishers. Not only do they get higher rankings in search engine result pages for the key terms they target, but also make the surfers feel the information in the page is relevant.

Search engine optimization copywriting is a science because although we can’t guarantee what search engines want, at least there are proven places where we could insert keywords or keyphrases that make search engine spiders aware of what the page is about.

It is also an art because we have be careful not to do it excessively that it triggers a warning to search engines. Writing to human beings is also a different skill. The combination of both world is what makes it an art.

Different target market talks differently, the purpose of the web page is also to communicate in a way that establish trust and relationship with its surfers.

SEO Copywriting Weaknesses

Nowadays, we can’t really depend on on-page factors to rank highly on search engines, especially on competitive keywords.

There are a few weaknesses that SEO copywriting can’t cover:

• It’s not suitable for all sites. Sites with very minimal copy could possibly use it, but care should be taken not to spoil the design and main purpose of the site.
• Cost and other resource barriers. To write for the benefits of both world is not an easy task, not to mention that copywriter is not cheap.
• It’s not a one time effort. Search engine algorithms change, to get the most out of copywriting, you have to continually make adjustment. At the very least, you should add more relevant pages to support the entire site.
• No guarantee at all. There is no guarantee that your rank will improve, even by hiring professional SEO copywriter.
• Varied in difficulties. Depends on how competitive the keywords are, SEO copywriting may get you a better ranking immediately or not at all. For highly competitive terms, full SEO campaigns cannot be overlooked if you want to rank on the first page.

Conclusion

I couldn’t say if SEO copywriting is worthwhile or not. It truly depends on you, your time, budget, and strategies.

If you are to target organic search traffic and are willing to spend time tweaking copy, or if you are in a very competitive market where every little thing you do matters and contributes to the whole strategy, then by all means use it to your benefit.

In other cases, your time and money may be better spent on other strategies.

For small and independent web publishers, my recommendation is at least you should learn how to satisfy search engines but write with human visitors in mind. This way, usually the flow of content will be natural for surfers, with the keywords still in key places.