In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines.

…understatement of the year! So now all the designers will be jumping for joy since they will have a comeback to the old SEO speech they’ve been getting for years. While we’ve always sustained that Flash and SEO efforts can be harmonious, this news certainly takes it to a whole new level.

So I hear you asking - “doesn’t this put the SEO’s (YOU Josh!) out of a job?” Not hardly. It basically makes our lives a bit easier in that we can focus our SEO conversations on important stuff like content and links, and perhaps set aside the whole Flash vs. HTML religious war. Hallelujah!

However, one important point to remember…

At present, we are only discovering and indexing textual content in Flash files. If your Flash files only include images, we will not recognize or index any text that may appear in those images. Similarly, we do not generate any anchor text for Flash buttons which target some URL, but which have no associated text.

Also note that we do not index FLV files, such as the videos that play on YouTube, because these files contain no text elements.

The old best practices around having well-written, keyword-rich text information on your site still apply folks. Only now the text can sing and dance too!

Twitter is a tool whose functionality is somewhere between blogging and instant messaging. It’s the ultimate in fast (short) and easy communication between you and thousands of your friends. And once you have a group of people talking together, they are sure to start bitching about the products and services that they come into contact with in their daily lives. The smart companies are now joining the conversation.

I was able to find the following Twitter profiles that represent large, well known corporations..

• Zappos - online shoe retailer
• Southwest Airlines
• Comcast Cable
• JetBlue
• Delta Airlines
• General Motors
• Dell Computer
• Carnival Cruise Lines

If you dig into some of the conversation strings linked above you’ll see that these firms are doing three main things with Twitter…

• Promoting products and services to the Twitter community
• Reacting to negative customer situations in a friendly, personal, and helpful voice - if not with a solution, then at least with a sympathetic ear
• Proactively interacting with customers to improve their products/services, or avoid situations that will ultimately require them to react to negativity

I have to admit that I’m a bit of a newbie to Twitter, and at first I had no clue what was going on or why it was worth my time to participate. However, as more and more of my friends and business associates started Twittering, the more interesting and fun it became. In just the past few months Twitter has “crossed the chasm” - gotten past the “tipping point” - gotten through “the dip” - or whatever business B.S. phrase you want to use to say that it is being widely, adopted by many, and business is getting on board the train.

http://blog.mahindrausa.com/

The company is Mahindra Tractor, makers of various types of farm tractors. I read through a lot of the postings and I think it helps do what blogs are supposed to do…

• Identify with the customer: not only does Mahindra build tractors, they know what their customers are going through. Bad weather, back breaking work, less than stellar harvests, etc
• Spread the word: as a farmer - I’d much rather read about how this customer of Mahindra’s (that writes this blog) gets by working with their equipment than I would read their marketing and sales copy. It just feels more honest to me to hear it from a fellow farmer
• Gives me a reason to interact with the brand even if I don’t yet own a Mahindra: I want to come back and check in on the farming family - are they going through the same issues I am? The blog is obviously sponsored by Mahindra, but they don’t beat you over the head with it

I’m not sure if their ad agency put this together for them or if it was an in-house idea, but its a great one.

Microsoft has tried repeatedly to build, rebuild and optimize the various incarnations of their own search engine product and its associated pay per click market tools. To date, in my opinion, they haven’t come close to being successful and remain the third tier player after Google and Yahoo! in the lucrative paid search engine advertising market. So it makes a lot of sense that they would buy the number two player to combine forces and get a bigger piece of the market.

However, beyond just search, Yahoo! also has massively trafficked and advertised upon content properties like Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance. So they bring more to Microsoft’s table than just search, they are also a major competitor to the MSN content network.

But, in my mind the underlying theme in this potential transaction is that Microsoft seems to be saying “I give up” in trying to compete with Google on its own. By buying Yahoo! they can get a jump start in the right direction and get away from the “software company” stigma. As Google continues to build out web-based (and FREE) tools and applications for the enterprise (which we use here at Accession Media and love), Microsoft needs to remain relevant in this reshaped market - buying Yahoo! could be a big help.

Of course, since this announcement the big question to Google has been “are you scared?” I’ve seen at least two interviews with high ranking Google execs where they were polite - but you could tell they were holding back laughter. My feeling is that, if Microsoft does pull off this purchase, and THEN manages not to totally screw up Yahoo!, the combined entity will still just be second best in the paid search market. A little closer to Google, granted, but still second best.

By the mid-1990’s some of them were noticing that their websites were static and useless cost centers - unless they were going to put in the time and effort to get some honest to goodness consumer friendly content onto them on a regular basis. That thinking is now taken for granted.

In the past 3 to 5 years the revelation that if your site can’t be found in the major search engines it could have a massive impact on your business has also come to fore of the average marketers mind. Now when sites are built or rebuilt, the fact that they need to be “search engine optimized” has ALMOST reached the point of being taken for granted. Most developers and agencies have finally realized what a critical piece of the pie SEO is and it is included in projects as a matter of course…for the most part.

Next up was blogging. Every marketer keeping up with the latest buzz words knew they wanted a blog, but they weren’t sure why. Now every news site worth its weight has a blog, and several blog-only “media networks” have sprung up and are experiencing some success with advertisers.

So what’s next? Social media of course! This WebProNews article (thanks TJF) by Matt Bailey encapsulates the current thinking on social media like no other I’ve read to date. Every time the new buzzword comes about, marketers see it as an “easy” way to get traffic, get recognized, etc. Nothing is easy - just new/different. Just as blogging well takes time, effort and work - participating well in online social sites takes time and effort too.

The key here is that in order to benefit from social sites you actually have to PARTICIPATE, and not just attempt to play your TV or radio spot in the social environment. It’s not a broadcast medium (just like the rest of the web). You actually have to take the time to become part of a community and give more to it than you actually take. I’m just not sure marketers will ever truly get this concept. Come to think of it - doesn’t this lack of understanding finally make marketing as a “department” or “function” within a company pretty much obsolete? Is it time for a new “department” or “function” to be the voice of the product/service inside of the corporation? Or is that the point really - the voice of the customer is the only one that matters and the voice of the product/service have just been talking to itself for quite some time now…

Regardless - why, it has been many years since the Cluetrain Manifesto was written, yet most marketers STILL don’t get it?

“Should we use HTML or plain text email?”

“Should I advertise on Google or Yahoo with my pay per click dollars?”

“How can I get page XYZ to come up in Google for the search phrase ‘ABC’?”

“I want a Flash animation on my home page, is that bad for usability?”

While these all may be great questions that justify detailed responses and explanations - the way we go about getting to what we believe is the best answer is to back up…way up.

Web marketing is just an extension of your overall marketing/advertising/selling tactics. We think it is critical that when our clients go about making web marketing decisions, those decisions are made with their customer’s demands in mind. It’s about getting back to basics and asking the simple questions:

• Where does my customer shop?
• What about my product/service satisfies their needs better than my competition?
• What about my product/service makes them happy…and willing part with their hard earned dollars?

The inspiration for this musing is an online (FREE) marketing 101 lecture I just reviewed from my teacher and friend Dr. Neil Hair, a Professor of Marketing at my alma matter the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Saunders College of Business. If you are currently confused, lost, stuck, or befuddled by what your next move should be in your marketplace, let Dr. Hair get you back to basics and clear your head.

Excellent job Professor!

No, this posting is about moving your website - or rather, redesigning it. If you have an existing website that you are planning on rebuilding or redesigning, make sure you consider what your regular sources of traffic are. Especially if your site is larger (10’s to hundreds of pages) and depends on advertising revenue! Ask yourself these questions as you prepare to launch a new version of your website:

1. Is one of your major sources of traffic the search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc)? What percentage of your monthly traffic comes from these sources? (Hint: check your web analytics referring traffic or acquisition reports to find out.)
2. When you launch the new version of the website, will the URLs of some or all of your sites pages change? Meaning will this http://www.yoursite.com/olddirectory/oldpage.html change to http://www.yoursite.com/newdirectory/newpage.aspx?

If the answer to #2 is “yes” and the answer to #1 is “a lot” or “about 40-50%” then you need to be sure to take a few steps to mitigate a looming problem after you launch your shiny new website.

What problem you ask?

The old assumption was that a new website launch would increase traffic. The shear beauty and usability off the revised site would inspire more visitors to stay longer. The press releases around the rebuild would drive far more traffic than was already coming on a daily basis. However, this was before the skyrocketing use of search engines in the past 7 or 8 years (I’m looking at you Google).

In that time search engines went from being a novelty that didn’t work so well to being the place to start your online session when you are looking for anything from new pressure gauges, to info on Multiple Sclerosis, to a local Indian restaurant, to a new car. This was in no small part due to the rise in the amount of content on the web, and the ever increasing ability and efficiency of the big search engines to index it all and present users with relevant results for their queries.

So where does this leave us today? Most websites (especially ones that have been around for a few years) that don’t have registration or for-pay login functionality will find that traffic from the search engines make up a big portion of their monthly traffic - usually anywhere from 40-80%! Once you launch that pretty new website you have officially broken all of the links that Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others have in their indices. When users perform relevant searches and your old pages come up, people will click on them and most likely get a 404 (”Page Not Found”) error. In short order the old pages will fall out of the index, but it may take a while for the new pages to get indexed and rank as well as your old ones did. The result can often be a significant dip in traffic post-launch.

So what can be done to mitigate this? Three critical things:

1. Make sure you look at your stats and see which pages are bringing in traffic from the search engines. Make a list of those URLs - say the top 100 - then 301 redirect (301 is important!) those old pages to the URL of the same or similar pages on the new site.
2. Look at backlinks in the search engines. Which of your site pages have attracted lots of links from other sites online? Make sure those pages are also 301 redirected to appropriate new site pages if they weren’t caught in step 1. Then attempt to contact the webmasters of the sites that link to your pages and get them to update their links. This can be arduous, but depending on the value of those incoming links may just be worth the work.
3. Make sure your new site’s 404 page is friendly and helpful. There will probably still be pages of your old site that weren’t caught in steps 1 and 2 above, and 404 pages are a fact of life online. However, if you make sure your 404 error page offers users options, you can help keep that traffic on the site. Example: “The page you are looking for couldn’t be found - use our search box above or click here to go to our site’s home page.” This is a basic example, but you can take this even further with 404 page functionality that senses the referring keyword of users hitting that page from search engines, etc. (You may find this book helpful in this area)

While these three techniques seem like basic, common sense “webmastering,” I’m constantly seeing many site owners forget about these basics in the flurry of activity that leads up to a new site launch deadline. These items are often left at the bottom of the project plan as a “nice to have,” but if not addressed before the launch can come back to bite you.

While there are no guarantees that these mitigation techniques will get your new pages ranking well very quickly (this is still going to depend on the other traditional SEO factors), they will help stave off a big post-launch traffic dip for sites that owe much of their traffic to the major search engines.

If you have any questions about this posting, or would like help analyzing your site traffic in preparation for a new site launch, we are always happy to help.

Without pause the answer was: “it has to be backlinks.”

High quality, regularly updated content has the most influence in search engine rankings - but what is the measure of high quality content in eyes of Googlebot? Backlinks, a.k.a. inbound links. These “votes” for the quality of your site from other site owners are the most important key to increasing your natural rankings in search engines.

Put simply, backlinks are links from other websites to yours. Search engines consider many factors when analyzing your inbound links. Google and other search engines will analyze the number of inbound links your website has, and also the “quality” of the sites that those links come from, and use this as an indication of how it should treat your pages in the listings. The name of the game is to get as many quality inbound links as you can. The site linking to yours has to be relevant to the keywords and subject matter of your website.

How does your site currently stack up in the inbound linking department? To find the number of links you have to your site, you can go to Google or Yahoo! and do a search for “link:www.yoursite.com”. Click here to see an example of this for our favorite auto racing site. This will bring up a list of sites that link to yours. Google and Yahoo both have tools that show the quantity of inbound links and which pages on your site have the most links. If you want to get really deep we highly recommend Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer.

Building your site’s portfolio of quality inbound links can be tough…perhaps we can help!

The new interface, features, and functionality are simply fantastic. We work with several clients who have various levels of analytics need. Our larger clients rely on detailed user segmentation that tools like HBX and Omniture can provide. But packages of that caliber come at quite a price…five figures a year and up usually. So the common question from our smaller clients is “what do these large, expensive platforms offer that Google Analytics doesn’t? What makes tools like HBX and Omniture worth all that money?”

Our usual answer focuses heavily on the availability of ad hoc analysis features, virtually limitless and sometimes instantaneous data segmentation, and data portability (being able to pull the data via feed or API into other applications). Also, HBX’s Report Builder tool is worth its weight in gold. However this new release of Google Analytics really pushes the envelope into a few of these areas, namely ad-hoc analysis and segmentation.

The ability to slice, dice and filter data in the new interface is enhanced and the mostly-Flash-based application is incredibly fast. The new layout of key metrics, with a big focus on “key performance indicators” like pages per visit is a huge nod to the works of Stephen Few and Eric Peterson (two people of which we are big fans!). Additionally, the “spark lines” for quick trend visualization and super clean interface overall are a literal nod to the modern godfather of graphical representation Edward Tufte.

You can also set up auto emailed reports that are delivered to your (or your bosses) email inbox at whatever frequency you wish (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly). This feature is huge for busy executives and business owners who don’t have the time to login to an analytics tool everyday and check on their traffic. With this feature, the info you need is sitting right in your inbox as often as you need it.

Finally, with the new Google product it is possible to segment your analytics data by user type, or a user behavior. For example: if you can get users to tell you their occupation via a web form, you can segment your traffic on that information - show all your stats for just the doctors, or just the landscapers, etc. You could segment your data by those visitors that purchased and those that didn’t. Those that filled out a contact form and those that didn’t. How are their behaviors different? How can you encourage the more desired behavior? There are a million and one possible things that can be done with this, too many to list here.

There is a lot more to say about this new release of Google Analytics, but the bottom line for our clients is: Google just got you get even closer to the high-end analytics tools, with a much lower investment. The product itself is still FREE, the only cost is the time taken on setting it up and customizing things to track your sites conversion goals, funnels, etc specifically.

Please contact us if you would like to talk about how implementing Google Analytics can help you understand your online customers better. If you’re in the NYC metro area, the coffee’s on us, you bring the questions