It seems as though the 1st April has seen the much anticipated Page Rank update take place by Google. The last updated happened on new years eve last year (31st December 2008) and signalled the start of the extended period between updates. What was once a monthly occurance is now only going to take place an estimated 3-4 times a year (quarterly basis), and so many Google dance takes hold!
Some people have seen increases as a result of the change, while others have seen dramatic decreases. Most people have seen little or no change at all. There can be some ongoing fluctuation as Google updates the algorithm across all it’s servers which can take several days to complete.
To find out more about increasing your Page Rank and why it is important, contact us.
HTML is an acronym for HyperText Markup Language, and HTML 5.0 is the fifth version of the programming language used to create web pages. This begs the question, what is going to be the effect on SEO? From an initial look, it appears as though the changes are going to be very beneficial through the addition of techniques such as ’segmentation’. Segmentation will allow search engines to break down a page and then analyse each part on an individual basis.
So why is this important? Well, ultimately it will enhance a search engines understanding of the page and enable it to more accurately decide upon it’s relevance. This will make it much easier to prioritise the content of your website by showing the search engine where your content is, which is especially useful for complex websites that are very code intensive.
So how does the segmentation work? It’s very easy to implement. There are a host of new tags including:
- <article> for articles
- <nav> for navigation
- <header> for the header
- <footer> you get the idea…
- <audio>
- <video>
- etc
Once HTML 5.0 starts to become more popular with websites, search engines will be able to use segmentation on websites which will change the way you search engine optimise a website. It may be sometime before these techniques come into effect, but it is very important that SEO companies start planning for these changes and are aware of the potential effects and benefits. However, although HTML 5 looks very interesting it is still really in a draft stage (and probably will be for several years) and IE 8 and Firefox 8 have mostly no support for it! Safari and Opera also have some support for it, but given how small their holding is it will be a long time before anyone uses it in a production environment.
There has always been a dislike for Flash for many SEO companies over the years. In many cases, most SEO companies will recommend against the use of all rich media, or changing it in such a way that you actually lose the impact of the original design.
At Elevator SEO, we understand the importance of Flash and Rich Media in a website. It serves a different purpose to standard HTML and CSS pages, and we employ a number of techniques and methods to make sure that it is accessible as possible to the Search Engine Robots to allow the content to be indexed.
In order to help people optimise their Flash sites for search engines, and to encourage developers and designers not to be put off by the burden of SEO, Adobe has launched a new Search Engine Optimization and Technology Centre. The purpose of the site is:
“Ensuring that search engines can crawl and index your rich Internet applications (RIAs)—so that your content can be found by others—is of critical importance to building and maintaining an online presence. While Adobe and the leading search engines are making significant strides in making SWF content more searchable, you can take additional steps now to improve your search ranking positions further. The SEO Technology Center helps explain what the challenges are and provides practical steps, examples, and best practices that you can follow to overcome them.”
This is yet another turning point for Flash and SEO. In the future we hope it will be possible to maintain the look, design and interaction of your Flash websites without having to sacrifice the benefits of SEO.
With so many SEO companies to choose from, it can be very difficult to distinguish between them and work out which SEO company is best for you. When times are hard, and the recession tightens its grip around the budget of most companies, it is often very appealing to go for the cheapest option. Companies are also tempted to take on the job of SEO themselves, which can lead to disasterous consequences as we wrote about in our post on the dangers of DIY SEO.
So why not go for the cheapest option? Well there is certainly no harm in trying to get a competitive price, although when marketing budgets are limited, SEO companies generally thrive as they are a cheap and cost effective method of marketing your product or business online. However if a company is offering prices that are too good to be true, then you would be right to be suspicous. Here are just a few things to look out for:
- What are you actually getting for your money? Is it just a homepage optimisation, or are you getting a full service for your whole site including an on-page and off-page strategy?
- What are the associated monthly fees? Are you getting a cheap deal upfront, and then being hit hard by a monthly cost? If so, what are you getting each month and how much time are the SEO company actually spending on your site?
- If you’re getting a report such as an on-page optimisation report, is it a generic report based on a template? In order to save costs, SEO companies offering cheap services normally have templates for all their reports which are simply filled in by a junior web programmer. These reports are normally non-specific containing quite general information about your site. In a lot of cases, these are recommendations and best practices as opposed to actual issues with your own site, and as such involve quite a lot of analysis from your side to check all the points listed in the document.
- Additionally, these reports can lack the crucial amount of detail required to optimise your site properly, and can often miss elements of your site that might infact get you penalised or removed from the search engine index (normally a naive mistakes as opposed to any kind of black hat intent).
- Finally, you may find it very hard to get hold of the company once the invoice has been paid. The account managers might have 100’s of clients each and so the proper amount of time isn’t being invested into monitoring your site’s progress and reporting back to you. For a successful campaign, it is imperative that the traffic is analysed and your site is adjusted as required.
To find out more about a full service SEO company then check out the information provided on our website or get in touch to speak to us directly. Remember that the success of your website / online marketing campaign can have a huge effect on the success of your business, so think carefully before investing your money.
