I’ve been doing this SEO stuff for a long time, long enough to remember search engines like snap, hotbot, lycos, etc.  Things have greatly evolved when it comes to search since the good ole days, one evolution in particular is how we tell search engines about your new content or brand new web site. Back in the day, we had a whole list of places (URL’s) to submit a clients web site to. We would go to snap, hotbot, lycos, google, etc. and hand submit the URL, sometimes choosing categories, demographics, etc.  Fast forward about 12 years:

I laugh every time I see an alleged SEO company selling the dream of submitting your web site to thousands of directories and search engines (especially when they still have some of the non-existent search engines in the list.) The truth and reality is this: we do still submit web sites, sort of.  We build an XML sitemap and make certain that this sitemap is available for the search engines to digest.  For example, Yahoo has an area where we submit our clients XML sitemaps to, Google has the same. It is up to us to keep that XML sitemap fresh and updated. The search engines crawl this sitemap and are aware of any new links / pages we have created, thus helping us to get those pages indexed quickly and efficiently.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring in terms of search, but it is critical to stay on top of what the search engines are up to and how they are crawling / and / or indexing web sites.

Many SEO and Internet Marketing companies recommend their clients get a blog installed and that they begin to blog.  On Target also recommends this, BUT, here’s the typical disconnect….. Many clients start to blog and then give up after a few weeks.

Like everything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it.  If you write three blogs and walk away for three months, guess what happens? NOTHING. The more that you contribute RELEVANT and INTERESTING content that is SINCERE and GENUINE, the more that you will thrive.  Here are some blogging mistakes that are commonly made:

1.) Blogging about your pet goldfish Jake.  No one cares.
2.) Blogging about your recipe for creamed spinach.  Unless you sell creamed spinach, POINTLESS.
3.) Blogging once a quarter.  Nope, not enough.  We recommend three blogs a week.
4.) Don’t try to sell something every time you blog!  A call to action is important, but DON’T push your products down people’s throats.
5.) Don’t just write blogs for search engines.  The goal here is to get live, breathing, actual human beings to read your stuff.

The internet is all about contributing.  Use your blog to contribute to the Internet and the search engine karma will follow.

One particular element that helps SEO or at least aids the search engines in finding your web site is an XML sitemap.  Many people have doubted the value of submitting a sitemap to Google, but Google verifies that it does indeed help Google understand your web site better and helps it crawl your links better.  IMPORTANT: Google does not guarantee inclusion to it’s directory by submitting a sitemap.

Check out the article from Google on their  webmaster blog and make certain that your web site has a site map uploaded. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/06/update-on-sitemaps-at-google.html

There are many web designers who for whatever reason feel the overwhelming urge inside of them to create an entire web site in Flash.  Flash is typically used to animate and create some pretty cool graphical motion related effects, however, if used to create the entire web site,  you have a potentially difficult up hill climb when it comes to organic search engine optimization.  Flash is essentially an image. When your web designer takes all of your brilliant copy and puts it  inside of flash, that copy turns into an image.  An image that is unreadable by Google bot. An image that says nothing to the various search engines that crawl your web site seeking unique content. Search engines do not read images, so they have no idea what your message is, therefore, your web site would not come up under keyword searches relevant to your web site.

I have no issues with using elements of Flash on a web site, in fact, I think it can polish off a look and can be used to polish your message. Use flash in conjunction with actual copy and words though so that those search engine spiders can have some meat to bite into. No copy, no rankings. It’s that easy.