SEO, Flash, and AJAX. How can they work together?

Effective design and SEO are both contributors to the success of an effective website. However two effective design means, Flash and AJAX, both conflict with SEO. Flash and AJAX are both in nature not friendly for SEO. Flash and AJAX cannot be read by search engine spiders, so websites purely based on Flash and AJAX will not do well in search engine results. However, a website that lacks an effective design will not engage your audience, and thus create a bigger chance of losing potential clients. So, how can you make a website that utilizes Flash and/or AJAX while possessing the ability to achieve high results in search engine traffic?

The most important thing would be to make your key content in plain text. Search engine spiders are very much like a text-based browser, they cannot read text embedded in flash or an image. Making sure your key content (which is the content that is relative to your website and search queries) in text format will allow search engine spiders to access your pages and index your content. Somewhere in your design should be text based links as well. They may not be the greatest design elements, however search engine spiders cannot read buttons that are images, Flash, or AJAX, so text links will allow spiders to explore your entire website. Limiting your use of AJAX would be advised as well, since content created by AJAX is created dynamically, thus not allowing spiders to index content created by AJAX. Overall, Flash and AJAX would be recommended for certain design elements while leaving key content in a text format, thus allowing great search engine results for your website.

Social Media-“Brandjacking”

As a form of proactive reputation management and protection, we recommend that clients claim their company name on the most critical social media properties. Similar to buying domains related to their company, claiming the company name on these digital outposts will ensure that you control the brand and reduce the risk the competition or an unhappy customer from “brandjacking” your identity. We recommend this step first in the social networking environment.

Just search the internet for complaints and customer feedback. A few of these unhappy customer have become dedicated to expressing their feeling about numerous brands. Don’t waste anytime, go protect the brand!

An example of unhappy customers (http://www.ihatestarbucks.com/).

Link Building Tips

Search engines place a high value on links from quality sites and use these links as part of their algorithms to determine how high in the rankings a site will appear. For this reason, it is a crucial part of the overall SEO effort.

We recommend the following methods for link building:

1. Ask webmasters to post direct links to pages of relevant content.

2. Offer webmasters text-based content with embedded links for inclusion on their own sites.

3. Requests upgrades of existing for association, affiliates, and partners.

4. Upgrade your directory listings with your URL.

Blogging Can Help Your Business!

Search engines have put high emphasis on blogs that tend to stay on a specific topic or subject matter. We recommend that our clients leverage all of their news worthy information onto their blog. It may establish a pattern of posting and help keep the search engines coming back on a regular basis. It’s also a good idea to take the time to optimize the blog. Most blogs do not have many pages so it would take as much work as the website. The blog postings should grab the reader’s attention, but are easy to identify in the archives. Remember blogs are a tool to drive traffic and build your brand in order to communicate to customers and prospects, and to get their feedback on products, services, and company information. Most importantly, leverage the information that your organization obtains via the blog and communicate the comments to sales, R&D, and marketing. Your organization may discover some useful information. Listen to what your customers and prospects are saying. Then take action!

Negative Keywords

In Search Engine Marketing, the most underutilized tactic is the usage of negative keywords. We have noticed that numerous clients neglect to use negative keywords in the pay-per-click campaigns. According to Google, negative keywords are a core component of a successful keyword list. The adding of negative keywords to an ad group or campaign means that the ads will not show for search queries containing the specified negative term. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help marketers reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI.

There are several reasons to make a keyword negative such as zero conversions, bad brand association, not relevant to a user, or to improve search quality. Most search engines will allow 250 up to 10,000 negative keywords per ad campaign or ad group. There are a few tools to help you identify negative keywords such as WordTracker, Keyword Discovery, and Epiar Negative Keywords.

Be sure to implement negative keywords in your next ad campaign. Let us know how these tools work for your campaign.

http://www.dabrianmarketing.com/

Paint the Picture for Your Online Marketing Programs

We are continuously surprised by the lack of measuring and testing of online marketing campaigns. We’ve worked with organizations of all types and it continues to be a reoccurring theme. As marketers, it is up to us to “paint the picture” of how our campaigns support the business objectives. It is just as critical to demonstrate that value of online marketing campaigns by tracking, recording, and measuring the effectiveness of our campaigns. Without measuring our campaigns, it’s difficult to implement A/B or multivariate testing to improve marketing efficiency and reduce the cost over the long-term. Be sure to translate how your online marketing programs equate to management or ownerships metrics. Remember to KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid), not everyone in your organization is a search engine marketing expert or understands web analytics.

Paint the Pictures, Demonstrate Value, and Translate the Implications on Business Objectives!

DaBrian Marketing Group

http://www.dabrianmarketing.com/

2009 Web Analytics Snapshot

Check Out the Latest 2009 Web Analytics Outlook provided by the Web Analytics Association.

About the Survey Participants
Total of 653 web analytics users

Job Functions:

1. Online Marketers (25.4%)
2. Web Analyst (20.7%)
3. Other: Product Management, Business Development (11.4%)

Company Size:

1. 5,000+ employees (15%)
2. 1001-5,000 employees (11%)
3. 501-1,000 employees (7%)

Finds:

1. 52% of organizations are planning to increase their investment in web analytics in 2009.
2. 38% of the companies surveyed are planning to invest in consulting.
3. 44.3% of organizations use more than one web analytics solution.

Organization’s Purpose of Web Analytics

1. Optimizing web site functionality/conversion
2. Analysis of past performance
3. Optimizing marketing performance/conversions

Areas Organizations What to Improve

1. Measuring Web 2.0 Technologies
2. Targeting and Segmentation
3. A/B and Multivariate Testing

Top Initiatives

1. Business Decisions Driven by Analytics
2. Best Practices Implementation
3. KPI Development

Challenges in 2009

1. Funding
2. Executive management awareness and support of web analytics
3. Business Decisions Driven by Analytics