Personally I’ve seen some Flash sites that have just been breathtaking. I think they can really add a touch of elegance to a site and they can even showcase a webmaster’s creativity. Still, I never advise my clients to use entire flash pages, or rather splash pages, as part of their sites. This is one of the basic SEO errors and should be well known by now, but some people still persist in wanting to include such elements.

So what’s the big deal about splash pages? Oh nothing really, just that for the most part they’re not recognized by search engines. I’d say that’s a big deal. What’s the point of having great content when it’s embedded in a Flash website and can’t be indexed? Not only are you going to be invisible to the search engines but also to potential customers. Even if visitors do make their way to a splash page, chances are they’ll leave just as quickly. Very few people have the time and patience to sit through a long, drawn out introduction. I know I don’t. Even if you include a ‘skip intro’ link, you’re still asking visitors to make one extra click to get to your site.

If you absolutely have to use Flash as part of your website, use it sparingly. This is best done as headers or within small areas of your content. Too many animations can be annoying and can also drastically increase the page’s loading time. Take my silly advice and rely on quality content to entice visitors, not flashy graphics.

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We have been continuously tackling branding here at SEO tops. And we did for good reason. Even if we tried to deny it, branding is now evolving and may become the next ‘big thing’ in the upcoming years. We have seen Twitter expand and how brands have utilized social media for marketing. We have seen Google update its algorithm with the new focus on branding. We have also heard news from major networks that online television and radio advertising will take its toll in the next months. But what is branding anyway?

Branding is not the name nor is it the logo. It is the very essence of the company’s products and services. It stirs emotions, perceptions and impressions. It creates a perspective and triggers the imagination of its target audience. It is way more than having the right domain name or the right image. It is the shared meanings and associations people create with the brand.

As Martin Lindstrom, the author of “Buyology:The Truth and Lies about Why We Buy” said.

Effective branding leverages emotion, interaction, experience, desire, ritual, faith, and our senses (the more the better). The brain scan results from study after study showed that subjects’ brains reacted to strong brands the same way they react to emotional or even spiritual experiences.

So branding is so much more. It is not enough that you get your name out there. You must tell the people what your company stands for and how your products and services will affect their lives. Of course, since you are not perfect, you will not be able to please all. But if you instilled in their minds that you can please them, they will be convinced by that and believe it.

But what does branding have to do with search? As Lance Loveday said in his post in Search Engine Land entitled “Search:Too Boring for Branding“, search is just way too different from branding. He illustrated this through a commercial of Starburst which he saw on television.

It was easy to imagine being the funny-looking guy, chewing the candy yourself (touch), savoring the flavor (taste) and inhaling the aroma (smell) with your llama-esque nose.

But on search, everything is different. All one gets is this advertisement written in plain text. No emotions, no images. Although search have been proven by some people to contribute to the power of branding, it merely strengthens and does not establish the brand. The brand is only established after the click. As Lance Loveday puts it,

It’s what you do “after the click” that really counts

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One latest update from the world of Search Engines is that Google has changed its policy when it comes to the matter of conversion optimizer. Conversion optimizer is simply a tool of Google which helps the users in automating the bid management stuffs. The use of conversion optimizer is more pronounced when you think about the manual works you need to do when you are bidding. If you are not using this optimization tool, you will have to manually make changes on your bids whenever you want to increase your bids or decrease your bids. The increasing and decreasing of bids come to picture when you change your budget plans in the short or in the long run. Here, conversion optimizer helps you a lots setting your targets.

The update of Google regarding the lowering of conversions was happily welcomed by millions. Till last month, Google wanted you to make 50 conversions to make yourself eligible to use the tool. From this month onwards, the conversion count is lowered to 30, which makes users relieved. Now onwards, the users should not be bothered about their lesser number of conversion rates, as a number of 30 conversions would prove to be good to continue the journey.

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One of the latest updates from the SEO industry is the fact that Google simply is not admitting the reported number of click frauds. They claim that the numbers are just exaggerated and that doesn’t reflect to the original stats. Against the statements of Google, Click Council experts have come forward to state that Google is just trying to resist the facts.

As per legitimate calculations from reliable sources, the fraud rate in clicking and paying industry had a tremendous growth which hit an average rate of 17.4 in the last quadrant of the year 2008.  But, when investigated among the giant search engines including Google, the fraud rates have gone as high as 28.2 percent in the later quadrant of 2008. In the same period of time, the facts state that the United States stand top in the list of countries from which most number of fraud clicking have originated. The percentage rate is 7.4 and Canada rates second with a click rate of 3.

It was surprising to hear the Google’s response through a senior analyst which even suspected the legitimacy of “Click quality Council”. Anyways, some efforts have to be put forward by the giant search engines including Google to stop or reduce the click rate percentage.

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The very recent update from the world of Google is that YouTube and Google are going to join their hands together to explore the unseen opportunities of online videos which could enhance all sorts of interests of Search Engine Optimization. Till this time, Google has been trusting Google videos to link online video clippings to the web pages. Eliminating the limited capabilities of Google video, Google signed up with YouTube which could bring tremendous improvements in video quality, Search engine results and lots more.

First and foremost objective of Google-YouTube interaction is to send a link from the YouTube to your web page to run the video associated content. The second objective seem to be the obvious reason behind the Google-YouTube thinking which helps the search engine optimization objectives of a web page to broaden the horizons in its long run.

The practice of Search engine enhancement through YouTube starts from the inclusion of a video site map which would be extremely different from that of an inclusion of HTML site map or SML site map of the web site you are trying to promote. This practice demands you to have a different landing for each and every video clippings you include which would increase the chances of search engines to find your video fast.

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The webmaster tools of Google have been absolutely helpful in determining the crawl rate of your web sites. The customizable options presented by the web master tools of Google, helped the users to increase the crawling rates of their web sites which in turn, provided supreme assistance in getting high approachability and accessibility of web sites by different search engines.

  But, there were some recent reports and postings from various users around the globe that those customizable options were not optimally working. The easiest way to do it was after signing into the web master tools of Google, after clicking on the “setting” tab, desirable options to increase or decrease the crawl rates can be selected.
 
      Users reported that, this option was not accessible for them from the web master tools. Some had the concern about the minimal functionality of web master tools which dint enable them to fix the rate to a desirable value. Some other felt that they only had the option to drop down the crawl rate value, which is obviously, a contradiction to the basic principle.

   Google has come up with answers saying that, the users won’t be able to up the rate if their servers do not support that rate. The answers were sensible as Google said that they have assigned appropriate crawl rate to the sites which can be supported by respective servers.

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A recent study conducted in the area of browsing has shown that web technologies impact the consumption of energy in the client side. The Flash rotating ads are considered to be the most power consuming elements in the website.
When users browse different websites through search engines, a major power drain occurs. This was the main reason behind the measurement of the energy consumption when visiting many popular websites.

Researchers used various tools including Windows Task manager and other applications for measurement of the amperage for tests. The study concentrated more on the use of Flash in websites. It was not clear whether it is the technology of Flash or the way it is implemented in the website that makes this high energy consumption.

This study has revealed that it is still possible to surf the internet in the greenest manner. This power consumption will in fact increase over time. When this study will throw light to green manner of internet browsing, it is expected that this will be a beginning for the most advanced testing in this area. Websites might come to a place wherein they will start using less power consuming items in their web pages, thereby helping users and search engines.

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When a searcher bounces back between the search results and the pages displayed as search results for queries, this is referred to as search pogosticking. This will be useful for the display of results in the future for the same query. The search engine will effectively keep track of these activities in the log files or in the search toolbar. This information will be later used as a part of re-ranking the web pages while displaying results for the same search word.
 
Yahoo, in a recent patent application has mentioned what information will be saved by the search engine, when the searchers click on the search results. They have mentioned that pogo sticking information will be used along with the ranking system used by Yahoo for various searches.

Most searchers will have the tendency to look for those links which seem to be attractive enough for them, after they get the search results displayed in front of them. This will in fact inspire them to visit the page. This pogo sticking and the use of the relevant information to provide better search results will of course be helpful for the searchers, when they rely on search engines more and more.

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Back in June 2008, Yahoo and Google have planned for an online advertising marriage. This was an attempt initiated by Yahoo as a tactic to keep away from the grasp of Microsoft. 

But as per the latest news from the number 1 and 2 search engines, this marriage is now dead. Even when they walk away from this agreement, Google agrees to the fact that, this association will be beneficial to the parties involved, in online advertising. Yahoo will be able to show more ads for the queries which generate no advertisement in the current scenario. News ads will be highly useful for the users as well as advertisers. This will be valuable for the publishers as well. 

In June, when they decided to have a join venture, they announced that the implementation will be done after four months and by this time, they expected to receive green signal for the launch. After this period, Google is now moving away from Yahoo without trying to face the legal issues. They abandoned the agreement altogether. On the other hand, when Microsoft offered shares to Yahoo in the beginning, they denied this, going after Google.  As per Google, their success lies on what they offer to customers, their products and features.

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As a webmaster, you want to find the best sources to back link and populate. As a surfer, you obviously want to find just what you need within the shortest possible time, rather than have to open multiple pages on a new tab just trying to locate what you need. One would think what a waste of time. Of course all the information you need is online, but do you know how to look at it. Make search engines work for you and reduce the time spent looking for what you need.

When you key in keywords, instead of typing in multiple keywords that will result in too many finds, use your target search terms in quotes. As such, if you are looking for SEO news in the business niche, type in “SEO news business”, instead of SEO news business, because the results will be far too many for the latter.

If you are looking for information on light but not electric supplies, your search input should look like light -bulb. Of course, you’ll have to use average intelligence to get to the right search times but this will save you a lot of time and guarantee a larger degree of search oriented finds rather than random finds.

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