There has been a lot of discussion and debate lately about the use of Flash on websites in the context of SEO.  The discussion was intensified last June when Google announced (again) that they had improved their support for crawling and indexing Flash content.

The conventional wisdom (and my personal opinion) is that if you are really focusing on SEO, and that is a high priority, Flash is still not way to go, for a variety of reasons discussed below.  However, there are many great reasons to use Flash, so you can’t just dismiss it. Flash is very effective for showing video, interactive applications and other rich media, and it just does things you can’t do with regular old HTML.

From a practical standpoint for many website, the question is not using Flash or not, but rather how to best use Flash on a website to meet user objectives, and still have that website work well for SEO.

Why is Flash an issue for SEO?

Flash presents some challenges for search engines, since most search engines have little or no ability to read and index content within Flash files as effectively as they can with HTML/CSS.  Flash files are not structured to present content directly, but are rather more like a program or script.  The information is structured for execution, not presentation.  This makes it much harder to process and interpret Flash from the perspective of a search engine. (more…)

Google recently released an “SEO Starter Guide”.  You can download it as a PDF from here.

 This is an interesting development, mainly because historically Google has wanted to minimize SEO as a factor in website design and promotion, so that webmasters would focus on quality and users rather than gaming the system for SEO rankings.  For Google to give specific advice on SEO is a real shift in policy, though you could see it coming based on other information such as Matt Cutts’ statements over the last couple years.

The guide actually gives some pretty good advice, although it is quite limited in scope and avoids detail guidelines.  There are really no revelations here — it is all stuff you will find in most SEO resources.  Areas covered include:

• Title tags — how they are used in search results, making sure they are unique, make them short
•  Meta description tags — use them, make them unique, keep them succinct
• URL structure — make them descriptive, use keywords (!), keep directory structure simple
• Navigation — use text links, create a good internal link hierarchy, use XML site maps
• 404 Not Found page — use a 404 page to handle bad links
• Quality content — offer good, fresh, relevant, unique content of interest to users
• Anchor text — use keywords in link text
• Headings — use headings appropriately, including use of <h1>, <h2>, etc tags
• Image tagging — use alt tags on images, and use keywords in image file names
• Robots.txt — use robots.txt to manage where spiders crawl in your site
• Use nofollow — use rel=’nofollow’ tag on links to sites/pages you don’t trust, or links you don’t control
• Promote your site — use blogs, social media sites, etc to publicize your site
• Webmaster tools — use the webmaster tools from Google and other search engine for diagnositics and information

All in all, some good stuff.  It is interesting to see Google validate some very standard SEO techniques, including keywords in anchor text, keywords in URLs, use of title/meta tags, <Hn> tags for headings, etc.  It is also interesting how Google recommends simple, non-dynamic URLs with keywords (which to some extent is contrary to some recent advice they gave — see the post on this here).

Of course, there is a lot that Google does not cover here that are important SEO techniques.  Inbound linking is a big one — they talk vaguely about “promoting” your site and using social media, but no specifics.  They also give no advice on keyword targeting, optimal content writing, keyword density, etc, nor does it cover more complex topics like use of Flash, AJAX, CSS, JavaScript, etc. 

One interesting comment I hear regarding this is the idea that “SEO is dead”, since if Google is giving SEO advice, who needs SEO specialists?  I don’t agree with this view.  While there are some basic “best practices” that have emerged for SEO, and these are being blessed by Google, there is so much more to SEO if you want to compete.  This is especially true if lots of websites adopt these basic practices.  For sites that want to stand out, they need to go to the next level — beyond these basic practices.  For that, they will need expertise from SEO specialists, which means we are not (yet) an endangered species.

John Erickson
www.leadqual.com

Recently there has been some discussion on whether Google gives special attention to links from .edu or .gov websites.  In a couple of statements, Google, through Matt Cutts, has stated they don’t. 

Does this mean you should give up looking for links from .edu and .gov site?  No way! 
You have to read between the lines here to see reality.

Here is a quote from Matt Cutts from a Google chat question:

TylerDee, TX: Are .gov and .edu back links still considered more “link juice” than the common back link?

Matt Cutts: This is a common misconception–you don’t get any PageRank boost from having an .edu link or .gov link automatically. Hah John, I beat you to it! If you get an .edu link and no one is linking to that .edu page, you’re not going to get any PageRank at all because that .edu page doesn’t have any PageRank.

JohnMu: We generally treat all links the same - be it from .gov or .edu or .info sites.

Here is another quote from Matt Cutts in an interview with Stephan Spencer:

Matt Cutts: Typically, our policy is: a link is a link, is a link; wherever that link’s worth is, that is the worth that we give it. Some people ask about links from DMOZ, links from .edu or links from .gov, and they say: “Isn’t there some sort of boost? Isn’t a link better if it comes from a .edu?” The short answer is: no, it is not. It is just .edu links tend to have higher PageRank, because more people link to .edu’s or .gov’s.

While it may be true that Google has no special logic for .edu and .gov links, look at that last statement:  “It is just that .edu links tend to have higher PageRank, because more people link to .edu’s or .gov’s”. 

Gee — that sounds special to me!  What they are saying is that links from .edu and .gov links are of higher value than many other links, simply because most of them have very high authority as link sources.  www.berkeley.edu and  www.stanford.edu are PR9, and most medium to large universities are PR6 or better.  Are those good places to get links?  You bet.  Also, .edu and .gov sites have good traffic, so you can also get real visitors over these links.

So, bottom line, look carefully before doing what Google tells you.  They have their own agenda and that is not necessarily helping you with SEO for your website.  As you do link building, by all means include .edu and .gov sites in your list of candidates.

John Erickson
www.leadqual.com

When creating a blog, a key decision is how/where it should be hosted, and what domain structure is used.

Typically, you have several options for hosting, which include:

1. Host the blog on your own website, or
2. Host the blog on some service, such as blogger.com, typepad.com, etc.

For SEO for the blog site itself there is not a big difference between these two options.  In either case you can promote your blog, have a good structure, and create great content so that it can rank well.

For domain usage, you also have several options.  These include:

1. Make the blog part of your website, such as at www.mysite.com/blog/
2. Make the blog a separate website, such as www.myblog.com
   Note that this could be hosted anywhere, including at a blog service that allows you to set up a unique domain.
3. Use a subdomain under your main website, such as myblog.mysite.com
4. Use a subdomain of a blog service, such as myblog.typepad.com
5. Use a directory within a blog service, such as www.blogservice/~myblog

If your blog is part of or related to your website, then it is generally better to use the first option, where the blog is part of the website and uses a directory within that website.  This is because all your blog content is part of the site, and that content and any inbound links benefit your site as a whole.  You can also get the best leverage from internal linking from your blog posts to other pages on your site (”internal page rank flow”).  Also, your blog immediately benefits from the page rank and link popularity of your website, enabling your blog posts to rank better, faster.

If your blog is not related to a website, the second option is generally best, where you set up your own domain name for your blog.  You can do this whether you are hosting your own blog or using a service (at least most services allow this option).  Using your own domain gives you much more flexibility for moving your blog in the future – you can more easily change hosting services and keep control of your blog.

The other options can work OK for SEO, especially if you pay attention to other factors such as good content, keywords, freshness, etc, but generally the first two options above are better.

One of the most common SEO recommendations these days is to use an XML site map file.  But how important is a site map file for SEO?

An XML site map is a file you place on your website that lists some or all of the pages in your site.  The idea is that search engine spiders can read the site map file(s), and locate all of your pages so they can be indexed.  You can also give some useful information such as the relative priority of pages for crawling.  XML site map files are used by all the major search engines, including Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.  For details on implementing sitemap files, see http://www.sitemaps.org/

So back to the question:  How important are XML site map files?

The short answer is, like in so much of SEO:  It depends.

The real answer goes back to the purpose of sitemap files:  To help search engines find and crawl the pages on your website, and to do so efficiently.  XML site map files do not have any direct impact on rankings.  They only help search engines find pages.

For some search engines, such as Google, sitemap files are used for one other purpose:  to help establish the “canonical” URL for content that is served under multiple URLS, and for deterining what URL to index when duplicate content is found.  This can be very important if your site uses session IDs or other parameters in URLs, or serves the same content under different sections of the site. 

Thus, the only time sitemap files will change your rankings is in how they help find pages sooner, or to find pages that can’t otherwise be found on your site by crawling links.  It may also speed resolution of which URL to index in cases of duplicate content.  It won’t actually increase rankings — it may just get them to rank sooner.

If your website does not change too often and is well structured, with HTML links that search engines can easily follow to find all of your pages, then using an XML site map file will probably make no real difference at all in rankings. 

So when should you use XML site maps?  Here are some examples:

1. If your site is very large, you might use XML site map files to guide search engines to those pages that are new or change frequently so they are indexed sooner.  This is useful even if your site is well structured for spidering.
2. If your site has pages that are behind a search function, login, or other barrier to crawling by search engine spiders, then a sitemap file can get all of your content indexed.  This is a primary purpose of site map files:  to help find content that can’t be found by crawling.  Keep in mind, however, that a major disadvantage here is that these pages will generally have little or no page rank, since there is no internal page rank “flow” to the pages.
3. If your site has lots of issues with session IDs, dynamic URLs and duplicate content, then an XML site map file can help search engines to quickly determine the canonical URL for the content.  This can speed indexing and ensure the canonical URL is shown in search results.  Of course, if your site has these types of issues, you should work on them, but an XML site map file can help in the interrim.
4. If your website has frequent new or changed content, you can use site map files to guide search engines to crawling those new pages first.  Simply use the priority field in the sitemap records.  Note that in this case you would only need to list new/changed pages.  Removing a page from a sitemap file will have no impact once the page is found and initially indexed.

In general, it is a good idea to have an XML site map file.  It helps search engines find all your good content, and you can use the priority field to help them discover and index new/changed content more quickly.  However, don’t expect a big change in rankings just because you use a site map file.  Think of it as a “best practice” that is part of your overall SEO strategy.