Flash RIA and SEO

Adobe announced today that they will be working closely with Google and Yahoo to improve rich internet application - RIA search indexing. What this means is that rich media content developers will be able to create more engaging experiences without losing search engine visibility. This is very good news for the RIA community. The only concern I have is where the content will rank relative to content that exists on a normal "static" web site. Also, now that Flash technology will be indexed, how does that fare to technologies such as Microsoft's Silverlight RIAs?

Powerset Semantic Search

Powerset recently released a "natural language" search engine for Wikipedia. The goal of Powerset's technology is to make search more intelligent. Over the next few weeks, I will be testing out this new technology just to see how accurate the results appear compared to other search technologies.

SEO Friendly Web Design on Squidoo

Posted a new lens today on Squidoo, a user generated content site. The focus of this page is to spread the knowledge of web standards and its effect on search engine optimization - SEO. Clean code in your web design is a major factor in how the search engines view your web site from both a relevance standpoint and user experience.

SEO Benefits of Blogs - EvanCarmichael.com

Posted an article recently at EvanCarmichael.com on the benefits of blogging as it applies to Search Engine Optimization. This article provides a high-level summary of blogging, how to get started and how to leverage blogs to gain search engine visibility.

I'm a new author to EvanCarmichael.com and hope to post more articles here in the future. The site is a great resource for small to medium size business owners looking for advice directly from industry professionals.

SEO Tips : LSI Explained, take 2

I've decided to go a little deeper in the topic of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) by offering resources on the discussion as it applies to search engine optimization. I've complied a list of links to help you sort out fact from fiction. Enjoy!

http://www.seo-blog.com/latent-semantic-indexing-lsi-explained.php

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623571

http://lsi.research.telcordia.com/lsi/LSIpapers.html

SEO Tips : LSI Explained

Recently, an article on SEO and LSI from MSNBC surfaced that I feel does a fairly good job of explaining all the factors that go into gaining search engine visibility on the web. This article makes a good case for why your business should rank on Google for terms related to your products or services.

The article also does a good job of explaining a phrase called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). This is where a search engine looks for terms related to the keywords people might be searching for and displays the pages that are most accurately "themed". This is often the area where many novice SEOs fall short. They tend to focus on the keywords (or meta tags, gasp!) and not page content. Writing great content that is themed for your given product or services is the best way to reach your target audience.

While these are great words of wisdom, there is a deeper issue that web site owners must address, that there is no quick or easy way to drive a site to the top of search engine results. Much of what ranks a site well in search engines takes weeks or months to develop. Being bottom line driven, many business owners will address this by using paid search advertising. In the short run, paid search is an effective strategy but expensive one. Focusing on organic search is the best way a business can gain long term visibility without spending all of their marketing budget on paid search ads.

Blog SEO - New Life to Old Blogs

After a few years of posting on this blog, I've noticed that the same topics begin to resurface over time. This can actually be to a bloggers benefit and help build their Blog SEO strategy.

By referencing past posts within the copy of your blog, a blogger can reflect on old thoughts. By linking to these older posts, you are giving the search engines fresh content, a link to relevant content and a link to content already in their index. For instance, by linking to an post from 2005 on email newsletters and blogs, I have referenced both a relevant post and brought new life to old copy. You can begin to see blogs the same way search engines see sites.

SEO Tools and Paid Search ROI

I've complied a list of helpful web based seo tools to aid in measuring your paid search effectiveness and search engine ranking. Use these at your own risk.

ROI Calculator (Yahoo) - Use this tool to help measure your spend.

SEO Quake (Firefox) - Be careful not to overuse this one. Google tends to quit after a handful of searches. Plenty of good stats all in one on-page listing.

RankQuest Tool Bar (Firefox) - This tool can help you make improvements to your web site that can make an impact on your overall visibility.

Page Strength (a slightly different metric than Google's page rank) - This gives you a real time view of your site's web footprint based on a variety of metrics.

Attention Cleveland Web Design and SEO pros in Ohio

Do you live close to Akron or Cleveland, Ohio?

Do you love to code web pages and have a keen eye for design?

Do you enjoy ranking web sites in major search engines, or would like to learn how?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, please email me.

The company that I work for, Brulant, is looking for experienced search engine optimization pros and talented web designers in the Cleveland, Ohio or Akron area. Please email me if you have skills in the these areas and would like to learn more.