SEO

Great news from Adobe is that they are making Flash searchable and have teamed up with Google and Yahoo to make this possible according to ReadWriteWeb.

“Until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe.

The main problem with Flash sites are that search engines cannot crawl them for information to determine exactly what they hold. If they can't be crawled, they can't be ranked which means no search engine traffic no matter how good the content.

Adobe Flash Player is now installed on 98% of machines so this development might see Flash appearing on more sites in the near future.

This is good news although we wait and see exactly how this turns out.

Companies that only deal in local business need ways to attract people to their site, not from Outer Mongolia, unless that's your niche market, but from the surrounding area. Other than optimising your website what options do you have?

The first option and most basic is to adjust your Google account in Webmaster Tools and Set Geographic Target. This isn't necessary if your site ends in .co.uk as it's already associated with the United Kingdom, but is required if you have a .com domain.

Next you can utilise the free service from Google called Local Business Center. Here you can provide your business address which is displayed on a map and pin points exactly where you are.

Other information that you can also provide are opening hours, photos, description and most importantly a category which will help Google identify exactly what your business provides.

An algorithm is a set of mathematical equations. The search engines use the algorithm to rank pages to try and show what they deem to be the best results for a particular search.

To explain a little further lets take a good example from the great book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink.

A must read for anyone interested in psychology and marketing in which he highlights how the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, the inspiration for the hit show ER, used an algorithm to cut down on admissions to its' Emergency Department (ED), saving huge amounts of money and time.

One problem for the build up of patients within this department was down to doctors incorrectly diagnosing symptoms that could lead to a heart attack.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the execution of optimising a website to improve its' rankings in the search engines. The primary search engines of use being Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. The end result should see improved traffic and a more accessible page.

Now Mr Confuser would tell you that SEO is a highly complicated matter and should only be attempted by professionals. He would say that, a bit like a dodgy plumber might say "coh this job's gonna take a while, not straight forward this one!" Don't let Mr Confuser do his best to put you off SEO, if he's worthy of your business then you're worthy of a frank explanation.

Makakman is here to help explain Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and the right way to implement it. A real superhero you can actually talk to and get clear simple answers from. SEO can be a complicated matter, mainly because the evil ones out there make it so.

According to research by Nielsen/NetRatings 40% of online Britons receive news feeds, 67% of you do not know that the term for this service is Rich Site Summary (RSS).

Those same people are no doubt getting hood winked by dastardly people trying to baffle them with SEO jargon.

This is where Makakman will help slay those that try to confuse, harm or undermine website users and owners.

His enemies are:

Mr Confuser – his traits include talking very quickly, using jargon instead of plain English and deliberately tricking clients.

Do you experiment with SEO? Do you try things that ruin the design of your site? Have you stuffed so many keywords into your content that you need an enigma machine to be able to decipher it?!

If you've answered yes to some of these questions then either you don't much care for the look of your site and its' users or you're so desperate to rank at No.1 in Google you'll try anything to get there!

Now you're No.1 in Google, the money and the work will come rolling in, right? Oh dear, you've fallen into the trap of getting a high ranking in Google at the expense of your users who visit the site. What happens when a user starts to read your page and gets fed up with reading your keyword for the 10th time within the first paragraph! Yep you guessed it they run a mile.