OrangeSoda Internet Marketing Blog

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As an SEO I often cringe when clients use extensive Flash on their web sites. Many times whoever is in charge of the web site (VP level or higher often) believe using Flash will make them seem more cutting edge and savvy. However, Flash can often hamper your efforts for be found online, and if your web site is found, chances are greater that people will quickly click off your site within seconds.

I worked at a web design shop in the 90s and most of our sites were built entirely in Flash and they were slick then. There are still pros and cons to using Flash. Today Google clarified how they index Flash pages.

Benefits of Using Flash on Your Web Site

• Flash can convert better because it can provide a better user experience and can give more control over the look and feel of a site.
• Many CMS (content management systems) utilize Flash. While clients can more easily manage their web sites through a CMS they may lose some ability to customize their site. Flash may be built in by default.
• Photographers, designers, and other professionals can display their work more elegantly with Flash.
• Ads created in Flash are often more effective.

Drawbacks of Using Flash on Your Web Site

• Flash hasn’t been searchable by search engines. Search engines read text not images and that can hurt your search engine rankings. Also, you may just get listed for your home page and not for other content on your site. This means lost opportunity to get rankings on each page of your site.
• Flash can increase how long it takes for your site to load (load time). This can affect bounce rates - people leave the site rather than wait for the Flash file to finish loading. Even if the Flash file is cached, you may lose first time visitors.
• Flash is entertaining or interesting the first time you go to a site. After that it can get tired. It can also be overly busy and take up valuable site real estate “above the fold.” Here is an example of a site that uses Flash and is quite busy. To me, one of the worst offenders I’ve seen recently is Noodles & Company (but I like their food). Note how long you have to wait and search in order to find a restaurant near you.
• If you use JavaScript to load your Flash file, you may not be found by Google. From their blog: “Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.”

Google Indexes Certain Elements Contained on Flash Web Sites

Google is improving their ability to index Flash web sites so they’ll come up in search results. Google is developing a new algorithm for indexing the words in Flash files. This includes indexing menus, buttons and banners made in Flash. It also applies to entire sites made in Flash. It doesn’t mean that Yahoo or MSN will index these elements, but since Google gets the majority of traffic, this is a good start.

Unfortunately though Google’s algorithm cannot doesn’t index images or video and you are limited in how you can apply search engine optimization principles.

“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.”

In most cases I’d still steer clear of Flash except in limited applications. However, OrangeSoda does work with companies who have Flash on much of their site and some, especially larger companies, can still rank well even with Flash-heavy sites. The Google Webmaster’s blog has a helpful Q&A to further satisfy your curiosity.

Don’t tell anyone, but until now, OrangeSoda has probably not kept the fire code! We keep growing until we literally ran out of space. We got very close with our coworkers as we tried to accommodate new employees. The SEO team ended up taking over a conference room that made it look a little like we worked at a bank. We almost ceded into our own company.

Today that all changed. OrangeSoda moved offices about 5 minutes north or Orem to American Fork, Utah. We have sparkling new cubicles which are so roomy. There are balloons, the walls are painted orange, and the atmosphere this morning is festive as we set up at our new office. When we started planning the move, the office was much bigger than we needed. Now we almost fill it.

It’s great to be a part of a company that is growing!

OrangeSoda is pleased to announce a strategic marketing alliance with Google as a Google’s AdWords™ reseller. Google works more closely with their resellers help them optimize Google AdWords accounts for small or local businesses.

We manage paid search advertising for our clients on Google (answer to what is Google AdWords?), Yahoo, and MSN. This is one of the most efficient ways to advertise because your ad is shown when people are actively searching. Managing a campaign is a lot of work and to perform well you must constantly test and advertise (more on this in a future post).
To become a reseller, a business must meet Google’s requirements, including:

• Employ a direct sales force that sells to local businesses
• Have existing relationships with at least 500 customers
• Demonstrate experience servicing and supporting local businesses
• Share Google’s desire to provide a high quality user and advertiser experience

OrangeSoda is already a Google authorized company and this is a level up from that designation. Our clients will benefit from the extra resources we can utilize to maximize their campaigns.

According to Search Engine Land…”The level of support once one becomes an AdWords Authorized Reseller is fantastic…”

I’ve noticed a trend with clients - some have news and new information coming out all the time. Others struggle to come up with ideas. For search engine optimization and to establish yourself as an expert in your industry, you need quality content. One of my favorite methods to get new traffic to your web site is through an online press release.

Online press releases are press releases released online. Instead of just posting them on your site, your news is distributed through sites like Google News, Yahoo News, and on related sites and blogs. The best sites charge for this service.

Before you can release news online, you have to come up with something newsworthy. If you can’t come up with a news angle, your story is better distributed as an article - or else an advertisement.

“What makes a story newsworthy? For the media to consider your announcement newsworthy it must have a strong news angle and be interesting. The angle (or news peg) is the story hook; the news event; the controlling issue; the reason for the media to publish your story. Your news release needs tell people your story.” - PRLeap blog on “writing a press release”

There are usually newsworthy things happening in your business all of the time, but you’re not used to recognizing it. Look at your stats, sales, and what is happening in your business or industry and why. That’s usually the start of a good story.

First: brainstorm. Are you hiring more? Less? Are you involved in a good cause? Were you featured on a TV show, popular web site, or magazine? Is there something unexpected in your business?
Tips to Get Ideas for Newsworthy Stories:

1. Tie into the season or time of the year – like if you installed heated driveways, you would note how summer is the time most people plan for a heated driveway.
2. Tie into larger stories like politics, trends, social developments (like gas/energy prices, housing prices, credit slump or even trends and hot topics in your industry. You can look at industry magazines or web sites for ideas on stories that you could put your take on).
3. Human Interest – create news around how a client or person was personally affected by your business, etc.
4. New Development – a new feature for your product or web site, a new site or blog, trends in your industry or business, new hire, new investment, awards, partnerships, speaking engagements, events, contests, sponsorships, etc.

If you still can’t think of anything to write about, find news stories from your industry and give your unique take on the news.

The biggest affiliate marketing conference - Affiliate Summit - was held in Las Vegas in February. I’ve attended several Affiliate Summit conferences as an affiliate, but I missed this one.

OrangeSoda had a booth there and we were interviewed. Jon talks about the niche that OrangeSoda fills in the marketplace. Watch the video here:

The Local Search, SEO, and Rants blog by Stephen Espinosa has some helpful tips on how local businesses can get higher in search engines. Yahoo actually indexes the text of local business reviews.

So if you have reviews, there are more ways people could search and have your business show up at the top of the list.  This is important for local searches (a local search is when someone searches for a city and/or state along with a phrase, such as “dentist, orem, Utah”).  Google pulls reviews from other web sites and takes reviews into account when deciding where to rank sites.

Yahoo Local Business Reviews

Yahoo local business searches actually search the text of reviews. Example: Someone types in the words “cavity, needs filling, Provo UT.” They get back a list of dentists in Provo, Utah. If you’re a dentist that has reviews written about your practice, the chances are better that you’ll show up near the top, if you have some reviews written about your business.

Let’s say someone wrote a review that included the words, I had a cavity that needed filling” and this dentist fit me right in…the words “cavity” and needs “filling” will be bolded and that dentist will probably be at the top of the list.

Google Local Business Reviews

Google takes reviews on other sites for their results. They value reviews. Here’s a trick: Go to Google Maps, and type in your business name. Look for the competitors who rank above you. Click on the reviews tab, see what sources the reviews are coming from (Google pulls reviews from other sites). Other places Google gets reviews are from InsiderPages.com,  CitySearch.com, Judysbook.com, and Tripadvisor.com. They get other details (such as details about a business) from a variety of other sites.
Local Business SEO Tip: Ask your clients or customers to write an online review of your business. It’s one of the best tips your customer can give you.

I interviewed one of our PPC account managers, Ryan, about what makes a paid search campaign successful. Here are his answers.

What are the most common misconceptions new PPC clients have?

If a business has never done PPC before, than they may have ROI expectations that are not line for their competitive landscape. It’s important to work with a new client to set realistic goals and timelines for a PPC new campaign.

How long do you need to run a PPC campaign to optimize it effectively?

To optimize a campaign, you need enough conversion data to see trends. Usually, the size of a monthly budget will determine how fast we can gather enough data for optimization purposes. A $20,000 budget generates many more clicks in one month vs. a $500 monthly budget.

What are the main factors that affect the success of a new PPC campaign?

The main factor is clear communication and expectations between client and agency. If both parties are aware of the challenges and work involved to obtain results, than a solid workflow is created that generates results quickly. The remaining factors include linking existing accounts (if available), creating compelling ads, and implementing tracking codes on the website.

What advantages does the OrangeSoda PPC team have over managing a campaign yourself? How about compared to other companies?

Our years of experience. Our core management group has been working with PPC campaigns since 1999, which is a long time with regards to the internet. Also, the OrangeSoda technology enables us to manage both large and small advertisers, and give both groups competitive results.

Describe your ideal PPC client.

I aim for all my clients to be ideal. The most important piece of work I do is making sure they are clear on what results they want to achieve with their advertising. I then give them realistic expectations as to the work involved to reach these results.

How does a larger spend account differ from a smaller spend account?

A larger spend account requires more attention vs. a smaller spend. The amount a client spends, can affect results. This is especially true for competitive verticals like Travel and Retail.

This just in today, from Degreesearch.org:

“We are starting to see an increase in the number of users coming to the site through organic search. Google and MSN are running particularly strong relative to what we have seen in the past. Nice work!”

Chandler Horsley, CEO of Lead Media Partners

On line Degrees - Degreesearch.org

If you’re a new business of any size, that has a web site, your business and marketing plans need to include SEO (search engine optimization). SEOMoz has a great rant about how often startups don’t even mention SEO as part of their strategy.

SEO is how you make sure you’re in search engines and that your site is found for words that relate to your business. Most people find web sites through a search engine, they type in words, usually starting out vague and getting more specific as they go. For any business online optimizing for search engines should be a paramount concern.

But even before that, you’ll want to do some keyword research to see that people are actually searching for or interested in what you plan to sell.
The author, Rand Fishkin, says: most never even examine the possibility that there might already be people searching for the product/service/website you’re creating, and that by getting in front of their eyeballs right when they ask for it, you might have a good chance of succeeding.

What you can learn from keyword research:

• What terms people are searching for
• Demand or popularity of those terms
• How much competition there is on each term
• Get ideas by looking at related keywords

When you’re at the top of the list when someone types a term that is related to what you sell, you are getting very targeted traffic - people already interested in what you offer. The results last for years and the ROI for SEO tends to be the highest over other types online marketing.

This is a common question - how do you reconcile the differences in web stats. It seems like every analytics program comes up with a different number, which can be frustrating for businesses of all sizes. It’s also a problem with paid search because the numbers you see from your PPC analytics may not match up with the numbers in Google.

OrangeSoda recently hired Clint Eagar who worked for web analytics firm Omniture. I asked him to write a post to try to demystify the discrepancies that are common between different web analytics tools.

I get a lot of questions about why there is a variance between how different web analytics packages report traffic results.

It’s All About Cookies
This has to do with how an analytics vendor uniquely identifies a visitor. Most analytics providers uniquely identify a visitor by a persistent browser cookie. When a visitor comes to a website the analytics code checks to see if the cookie exists. If the cookie does not exist it attempts to place it.

If it cannot place the cookie many analytics providers will ignore the entire visit. A large portion of the discrepancy between analytics providers comes into play when a web site cannot place this cookie. Some vendors will build a unique visitor cookie by combining user-agent and IP address. Some analytics vendors use third party cookies to uniquely identify visitors while others set a first party cookie and some visitors have their browsers configured to not accept third party cookies.

Establish Analytic Metric Definitions
The next thing you need to understand is how each analytics vendor defines a page views, visits and other metrics. One vendor may define a visit as a user session that lasts for at least one minute. Others will count an additional visit if the visitor views a page and then leaves the page idle for more than thirty minutes.

So, for example, say you’re reading a news story at CNN.com and get about half way through the article then you head out to lunch for thirty minutes and then come back to your open browser, finish the article and then click to read a new article. This will count as two visits – not one. Some analytics vendors will count this as only one visit. How does your provider track a visit?

How is a unique visitor defined? Is it a daily unique visitor (a visitor that is unique to the site today)? Is it weekly (a visitor that is unique to the site this week)? Is it monthly, etc? I think you get my point.

Tracking Code Execution
Other obstacles to having perfect harmony between analytics vendors could be loading time of site and the location of the tracking code JavaScript, does it load before page content or after. Did the visitor close the browser or click back button before the JavaScript had time to execute?

Web Analytics Is About Trends
Trend is king when analyzing web analytics data. More important than squabbling over a ten percent difference in how Google Analytics or Omniture reports a visitor you should instead be questioning: How many visits to do I have this week compared to last? How are different referring domains driving conversions over time?

Ultimately the differences between analytics vendors is just noise and you should never (did I say never?) attempt reconciliation.