photo credit: tj scenes

Just how important is your search engine ranking? Well consider that in 2002, about one-third of all users typically searched for something each day. Now in 2008, a new high of just under one half (49%) are searching daily for something on the Internet, according to the latest study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

If you don’t know, or want to rank better, feel free to contact me. I would love to talk with you about your web site, and how it can be more effective on the web.

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In the past, the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, et all) couldn’t really search Flash files that well. Well Adobe has been working with the search engines to allow them to search the Flash sites, widgets, buttons, and more.

This is good news on the surface, but still requires one digging a little deeper before trying to get a nifty Flash site. Here are three quick take aways to know about, before

The first thing to know, is you still have to use text, as text, to be searchable. Many Flash developers convert the text into something known as shapes so that they can manipulate it easier to look nice on your screen. While your site will look nicer overall, it will cause the search engine to fail to read that part of you Flash site.

Second, most search engines cannot run JavaScript. Because of a software patent issue, Internet Explorer needs JavaScript to write the Flash file to the webpage. So now, in many cases, your Flash site is no longer searchable.

Flash screens, are not the same as web pages, and that means it will be harder to isolate a topic and rank for it, when looking at the overall site with all of the other text working along with it. Add upon that, that most Flash developers are inexperienced at Search Engine Optimization, and lack good tools to build a search optimized site (links, individual pages, helpful page elements, etc) they will most likely not be able to help you rank like a good HTML based website could.

Overall, I would hold off on developing your all Flash based sites if you are interested in long term Search Engine rankings. (Besides, most developers charge more for Flash sites - use that money to make more content which can rank in the search engines, it will be money better spent.)

SEOmoz has more information on his views on why Flash and Search Engines still don’t mix.

Occasionally I have found sites that on their home page you would have to select a company or product from a drop down box, and then enter the site from that information. Until now, Google could not access those pages without being provided direct links. Sites with these types of pages were often called the “Deep Web” or the “Invisible Web”, because search engines could not access them. Google has said in the past that they believe that 80% or more of web pages are “hidden” to them because they require a form to fill out to find them.

Now, if you had hired a good Search Engine Optimizer, this would not be an issue as they would know how to provide links to those pages so all search engines could access them appropriately. However, sometimes the advice of your SEO expert is ignored, or you didn’t include one on your team, and thus search engines can’t access those pages.

In April Google announced that it could begin search pages which required a user to fill out a form. This has all types of interesting applications, both good and bad. You need to understand what this means, as well as what this can do. So without further ado, I present The Good, The Bad, and The Truth.

• The Good:
  • Now more pages will be accessible.
  • Simple “categorical” search forms will no longer cause Google to stumble. For example I recently built a simple movie web application. In it people could search by genre. I had to devise ways to not use a drop down when possible so Search Engines could find the reviews.
• The Bad:
  • If you tried to “hide” pages, you need to rethink your method. Consider the use of the robot.txt file or robots meta tag to properly ask search engines to not process certain files.
  • Some people fear that this means Google will explore or try to hack restricted access sections of your site. (Remember your robots.txt file in these instances.)
• Some Truth:
  • Only Google has announced this feature. While other search engines will probably have to follow suite, as this time they don’t and they still account for 35-45% of all search traffic.
  • Only simple forms are filled out. Google is not (currently) entering information into text boxes, so many forms cannot be processed.

As blogs make it easier to publish more information, the process of finding information becomes more difficult. This makes keeping up with the Blogs harder than keeping up with the Jones!

Consider one of two options to keeping up with the feeds:

1. Check and read every blog/web site of interest to you all the time (daily), wasting all of your time and energy doing so.
2. Ignore the blogs and use a search engine when ever you need information - but now you don’t keep up with things as they happen.

Neither of these are good things. The early developers of blogs knew this, so they create a way to let people automatically know about new postings. This is done through Really Simple Syndication, often referred to as RSS. RSS is a special file format that can be read by RSS Readers to alert users of updates.

RSS readers come in several forms. They can be a like a normal desktop application, built into most modern browsers, or web based services.

What they do is periodically check RSS feeds that you “subscribe” to, and alert the user when changes occur. If the Blog post a full feed, you don’t even have to leave your reader to view the post. Partial feeds give you a summary of the posting, or the first few paragraphs and require you to go to the site to see the full article.

You will find that different RSS reader applications provide different levels of usage. I used the built in feature to the Firefox browser at first. I was able to track 10 - 12 blogs that way. Unfortunately, it didn’t show me which posts I’d already seen, and it only lets you see titles, no summaries or full postings. This created a lot of wasted time.

Then I switched to Google Reader. Now I track over 120 blogs, and can even share items with others, because it lets me operate more efficiently. I track things that help me to do my job better, (Web technologies, database feeds, web analytics, search engine information) as well as news, cartoons, historical notes, and Feakenomics. Like most reader software, it allows me to mark items as being read (so I don’t continue to see them) star them for importance, and share favorite postings.

Because RSS can be used for many different purposes, I’ve been able to track regular postings, as well as meeting announcements, on-line classes, and more.

May 1^st is RSS Awareness day. While a week and a half away, it is a good time to learn about how it can help simplify your life.

photo credit: Chesi - Fotos CC