Google, a major search engine company, has enabled personalized search for signed-in google account users as well as signed out users. A personalized search is a search that uses one’s previous search behaviors to produce more relevant results. Previously, only signed-in Google account users can use the feature. Now all users can either turn the personalized search on or off. A “View customizations” link appears on the page. If you click on it, it will show what customizations have been made to your search and it will also allow you to turn off the personalized search feature. Read more about this feature on Google’s Official Blog.
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Video SEO
I read this article about a new study that shows that videos that are properly optimized can dramatically enhance search engine rankings of a site. The study was done by Spotzer Media, an advertising agency that specializes in making high quality videos. In the study, they found that businesses were 30 times more likely to receive customer attention if they distributed videos that were created and distributed using Video SEO.
What exactly is Video SEO? According to Gordan Henry, President of Spotzer Media:
Video SEO helps businesses get found on the Internet. It is a new technology in which a video first gets associated with relevant data and then the video plus data gets distributed across the Internet to be picked up by Google and other search engines.
How does one do Video SEO? The following video shows how to do it.
SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Optimizing for Video Content from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
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Using Social Networking Sites to Boost Traffic
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are tools that can be used to boost traffic to one’s site. These sites have millions of subscribers that can potentially visit your site. For example, on Facebook, one can create a fan page or group page to let people know about one’s website. If people like the website’s facebook profile, fan page, or group, they will more than likely visit the website. With a twitter account, one can interact with current customers and potential visitors with short 140 character messages. The more interactive one is with the social networking sites, the more potential visitors one’s website will get. To be more interactive, one should try to respond to visitors as much as possible. Try to post interesting topics or tweets.
Check out this video that shows how one can get more followers on Twitter:
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Link Building
So you’ve finally built a website, but how can you get more people to visit? One way to do that is through link building, or getting people to link to your site via their own websites, blogs, word-of-mouth etc. There are several ways to build links, but make sure you do it in the right way (white hat). Doing it the wrong way (black hat), could get you in trouble. One could get banned from search engines if caught using black hat techniques. Luckily, I’ve found this article that discusses the do’s and don’ts of link building.
One good tip that I found in the article is that one should create content that lists things. Like for example, “Top 10 Things to Do When You’re Bored.” People like to link to such things.
Another good tip is to trade articles or content with other respectable webmasters. One can put each other’s links on each other’s pages.
In terms of bad things to do to build links, almost every form of spam is frowned upon. It is not good to spam people’s e-mails, websites, etc. with links to your site. This type of behavior could get you banned.
For more tips on how to build links, please visit here.
Other resources:
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Flash and Findability
There is a myth that Flash websites cannot be found through search engines such as Google and Yahoo. That is not true. There are several ways in which one can search engine optimize a flash-based website. One way to embed flash content and still have it searchable is to use the swfobject model <object> instead of <embed> like so:
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="c.swf?path=[name of swf].swf" width="400" height="300"> <param name="[name of swf]" value="c.swf?path=[name of swf].swf" /></object>
One can also add the swf inside of a <div> and add meta data to make it more searchable. One can also use SWFObject, an easy-to-use and standards-friendly method to embed Flash content which utilizes one small JavaScript file. Here are some additional resources:
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Google Analytics: Traffic Analysis
Google Analytics is a free online service/tool that collects detailed statistical data about the visitors to your website. It tells you how many people visit your site, it tells you what browsers your visitors are using, it tells you which pages on your site that people visit most, and much more. Knowing such statistical data will help you to build and maintain a site better suited for your visitors. Above is a picture of the Dashboard of one my blogs that I’m tracking using Google Analytics. Below is a video showing a great tutorial on how to use Google Analytics.
Installation is very easy. All you have to do is register with Google Analytics and then embed the provided code into your website template. So what are you waiting for? Install it on your site today!
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404 Error Pages: Customization
The 404 Error page is basically a page that shows up whenever someone goes to a page that isn’t available on your site. One can get that error for a number of reasons. The page could be missing on your server. The site’s server could be down. The page looks ugly and might push users away from your site. But it doesn’t have to be that way. One can actually design and customize the 404 Error page so that it keeps users on the site. Web hosts usually give a customizable 404 page that one can edit using normal code (html, css, php, etc.) editing programs. The Internet Digest has some great guidelines for setting up a 404 page:
You can design your custom error page using the same editor you normally use to create your regular web pages. There are a few things you can take into account when designing your error page, to provide your visitors with the best possible user experience:
- Brand your error page with your logo and the look and feel of your site.
- Provide your visitors with a link to your main page (homepage).
- Include a link to a site map, or display links to the main sections of your site.
- Include a search box for those visitors who don’t want to take time to navigate your site to find the information they need, so they can just type-in their selected keywords, and immediately get a list of all the relevant pages within your site.
Smashing Magazine has some great examples of customized 404 Error Pages. Check ‘em out here.