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There is no industry consensus regarding the use of Flash on a web site when it comes to the issue of SEO. The general problem with Flash is that the search engines don’t see the text embedded within those files so they can not rank these files. But Flash has can produce beautifully and highly usable websites.

So the designer, SEO, and site owner have to work together to deal with this issue IF it’s important to “solve” this issue. Here are the major of choices one is faced with. However what technical solution you should use will have a lot to do with the present design of the site.

The big question is the site 100 percent Flash or does it have Flash as an insertion within an HTML file(s). It’s the 100 percent flash file that represents the bigger challenge. Here are some of the major approaching to dealing with SEO for Flash enabled sites.

Redesign complete in HTML. Some designers feel that a complete redesign is required. They feel that Flash is a complete disaster and should not be used at all. These designers point to a number of issues:

• In Bound Links are a problem because you have to decide where to send them; the HTML alternative page or the Flash page.
• If you don’t redo your pages you can only add a limited amount of keyword rich text to the metadata like the title and description tags.

Here is this is a link presenting this perspective:

http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Tips_And_Techniques/Flash_SE-Ashley_P-1360/index.php

On the other end of the scale are those that advocate the use of the MacroMedia Flash SDK. Using the Flash SDK you can see if how the search engines will see you files. Macromedia developed this SDK because it realized the search engines weren’t reading their .SWF formats. They offer the SDK to the Search Engines to encourage them to be able to index .SWF files. Here are some details about the limit of this approach:

• Flash search won’t read traced text or text that has been broken apart, so don’t make the letters a shape even if you’re temped do this is for letter spacing, which designers tend to do for critical text titles.
• It will also ignore dynamically loaded text. Be it from external files or dynamically generate from the myText.text function.
• HtmlText — any URLs assigned using this function will be pulled while the rest of the content will not.
• It should be remembered that each Search Engine may be using the SDK or do their own implementation, so mileage with vary.

Here is an article that talks about taking this approach:

http://www.straightupsearch.com/archives/2006/02/flash_and_seo_s.html

IP Cloaking – This method of serving up different content for the search engines spiders vs. end-users has long been considered a black hat, unethical, SEO tactic. This is accomplished by keeping a current list of the IP signatures of all the known spiders on the web and comparing it to the IP header information as HTTP requests are received. If the IP is on the list then the text version is sent to the spider. If the IP isn’t on the list then the Flash page is sent.

• There are legitimate uses of cloaking. For example the New York Times uses IP Cloaking to send full content to the spiders so it can be indexed. The regular reader doesn’t have access to The Times achieves because they have to purchase individual articles or subscribe to the service.
• If the content of the Flash and HTML versions of the pages then the use of IP Cloaking wouldn’t necessary be considered a misuse. However, in the past IP cloaking has been used as a bait-and-switch technique so it has a bad reputation with the SEs.

Another approach is to use the free Javascript script called SWFObject() which detects when browsers has the Flash Plug-In. If SWFObject detects that the Flash Plug-In is present then the code assumes that this is a real browser and serves up the Flash version of the file. Since most search engine can’t deal with Flash, they’ll only see the primary content. This content is regular HTML content; like links, text, headers, images, etc. coding that is normally added to an ordinary HTML page. It is this part of the file that is edited and styled to be SEO friendly.

A good reference for SWFObject can be found here:

http://www.jehochman.com/articles/seo-friendly-flash.shtml

Not everything has to be a technical solution. The site may have been designed with a high income audience in mind right from the start. So the “solution” may have nothing to do with ranking well in the organic listings. Do a PPC campaign instead of trying to build organic traffic may be a better approach.

None of these methods address the problem that you have to do the site twice, one for Flash and another for the HTML version. So if you do any of this after the fact you will undoubtedly have created more work for yourself.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new site we have developed.My Home New York is a full service remodeling and general contracting company right here in New York City. They have been featured in Forbes, Queer Eye, The New York Times, as well as others. They are also members of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), The Better Business Bureau (BBB), and other associations.

Thanks team for another feather in the ECommercePartners cap.

We are proud to announce the launch of the new Anthony Logistics online store. Anthony is a leader in the men’s skincare and grooming market. This is another feather in the ECommercePartners cap! Congratulations to the ECP team on another site well done and congratulations to Anthony on your new online store.

The three major search engines have endorsed a new XML based standard for sitemaps under a new organization, www.sitemaps.org. This is great news for the search industry and shows that the three major search engines can work together to the benefit of the whole industry.

If you have been involved with SEO for the last couple of years you know that making a sitemap part of your site is an accepted SEO method to make sure the search engines spiders find all the pages on your site. The next step the search engines took was to provide a format, again in XML, that you create and give the search engines access to; you can find information about Google’s sitemap in their Webmaster Help Center.

Using the Sitemaps.org protocol doesn’t guarantee that web pages will be included in search engines, however it will give the web crawlers a better chance of finding more of your pages. You can also be sure to see the software vendors of sitemap generators quickly add support for this new format. If you have an active Ecommerce site the format may also prove to be a good way to help the search engines keep up with product line changes.

I’ve noticed a trend lately that I find to be pretty interesting… As technology improves and the masses buy better computers and more up-to-date monitors, we as web developers make a decision to either grow with the masses or stay safe and design to strict low resolution standards. For anyone unaware of what I’m talking about, Jennifer Krynin at About.com does a nice write up on the subject in “A New Resolution”

So, how does this relate to advertising? The trend I’ve noticed is interesting to me because many High Traffic news sites and other high traffic sites looking to monetize their freely given content seem to be bucking the trend of upgrading with the times… Instead of making the decision to design for a higher resolution, they are sticking with their fixed width sites built for a minimum 800 X 600 user and using the extra space outside the right and/or left borders for advertising and branding. I’ve noticed this happening for a little while now, and the trend seems to be growing.

A few examples:

Here we see sportsillustrated.cnn.com taking advantage of the extra screen space and utilizing it to further push the brand Miller Lite wants to portray. In the top banner advertisment you’ll notice a grainy wood background behind the images and text… this wood background is then used vertically along the left and right borders to further seer that image into people minds. I’ve also noticed SI doing this when banner ads go up for movies. The latest example I saw was for the movie “Invincible”. Unfortunately, I wasn’t bright enough to get a screen shot of it at the time…

In this example we see MSNBC doing much of the same, except this site is fixed to the left and only has space to do so outside the right border. But again, notice they are using the ‘outside the width ad’ to compliment an ad that exists within the fixed width site. This reinforces the ad and brand a great deal.

So there we see two example of the trend I’m talking about… I hope to add more to this post as I find them. Have you seen anything similar to this? If you do happen to come across an example, take a screen shot and send it on over. It would be much appreciated.

What are your opinions on such a tactic? Is it worth the extra ad revenue to give this the new found real-estate? Would it be more effective to design to a higher resolution and utilize the extra space within the borders? Or is this a reactionary tactic taken by these big name sites because a) re-designing is a huge task and b) they are fearful that by increasing the design parameters they are not taking into consideration all of their users. Maybe this is just a happy medium for now…

Either way, I find it very interesting and a potentially powerful way the give their advertisers a value added service and an extra branding push.

technorati tags: white space ads | fixed width advertising | online marketing | off border ads

Sometimes when you code a page you might want to have one color for the link and a different color for the underline.

There’s a simple solution to that. You need to add a span inside the link, span that will contain the actual text of the link:

<a class="link" href="http://www.ecommercepartners.net/blog/wp-admin/yourlink.com">yourlink.com</a>

Now in the css you will apply one color for the “a” element and another color for the span:

a.link {
color:#FF0000;
text-decoration: underline;
}

a.link span {
color:#000000;
}

And your link is good to go with a brand new underline.Of course you can have a few variations of that playing with the hover states.

CSS Styles that Crash in IE but not FireFox

Recently on a site i was working on here, i came across a problem with absolute positioning and IE (internet explorer).  We had to position absolute a “search” div on the right side of the page. so, my styles looked as such:

#search {position:absolute; top:51px; right:100px; z-index:101; width:262px; padding-top:5px;} – the all div

#search_input {width:190px; float:left;} – the search text box div

#search_btn_div {padding:1px 0px 0 0; float:left; width:30px;} – the search button div

Things worked fine in FireFox, Netscape and SAFARI… but in Internet Explorer things were crashing after few seconds.

when i switched the position status from right to left as such:

#search {position:absolute; top:51px; left:500px; z-index:101; width:262px; padding-top:5px;}

Everything worked fine!!!

I thought this CSS tip might be helpful to anyone who comes across an issue with IE (internet explorer) crashing while firefox and the rest seem Ok.  So, if the layout is not as it should be check how you postioned your divs and pay specific attention to the floating and clearing styles. they can be very sensitive!

When it comes to Internet Solutions, Big is No Longer Better

If you are doing business on the Internet you soon learn that the only constant is change. For a long time, companies that were making big investments in their e-commerce infrastructures only felt comfortable dealing with big established companies. They felt that there was too much at stake to take a chance with smaller vendors who offer more customized solutions.

This attitude is now changing. Companies are slowly realizing that a large entrenched provider may not provide the best solutions. Yes, standardized solutions work but because they have been designed to meet the needs of a broad range of companies, without really focusing on the specific needs of any one client.

This is what happened with Essential Apparel (www.essentialapparel.com) a big online provider of women’s and men’s underwear and active wear. They started out using a big enterprise solution called Market Live (www.marketlive.com) but soon discovered that the company which was reluctant to use unified code in their site was not providing them with the bottom line results they needed.

So essential turned to Tribeca (NYC)-based E-commerce Partners, a shop that has earned a reputation as an effective marketing street fighter for its clients. With their eye on the company’s bottom line, E-commerce partners re-designed the Essential Apparel site to make it much more search engine friendly, thereby boosting rankings and significantly increasing traffic to the site. They also added enhanced e-commerce functionalities to the site.

But the key to providing the best solution for Essential Apparel and the reason they dumped Market Live for a small more active provider, is to benefit from the ongoing attention of an experienced, flexible, knowledgeable e-commerce specialist. Search engines change algorithms and companies who want the best ROI on their websites need to work with vendors who are willing to make the extra effort to provide customized, high end solutions.

Google has shown us the way; simple clean layout with just the necessary amount of information to get what you’re looking for equals success online.  Not that this has not been done before, but Google showed us that a company can follow the clean look aesthetic and become hugely successful.  Myriad of websites have caught on and followed the path to a cleaner, more Usability-oriented design.  Now most of the major players on the internet are paying close attention to usability over mere design.  Perhaps it’s time for banner advertisers to take the plunge.

A vast majority of banner advertisements on the internet aim to distract the user from the content of the page with flashy graphics and annoying animations.  Sure, that’s the main purpose of a banner add – get the surfer’s attention and get her to click on the banner, right?  The problem is that most web users have learned to recognize what part of the page is a banner add and what is content, and will simply ignore the advertisement.  Given this scenario, a new strategy needs to germinate in the world of banner advertisement that is more in tune with the Googlesque philosophy of favoring content over visual stimulation.

When looking at a new website, and trying to determine its chances of becoming a success, one should pay close attention to its design.  Invariably, sites that pay more attention to allowing the user to get to the information outperform those that give way to gratuitous design.  Less is more – this is the new model of successful web design.  Does this mean we can do away with web designers altogether? On the contrary, it takes a seasoned and sophisticated designer to present the information in the most clear and readable manner possible.  A successful design will allow the information to shine while offering the viewer a pleasant and fulfilling browsing experience.

Much like makeup should emphasize a woman’s natural beauty, not the makeup artist’s skills, and like spices should mix gently with the inherent flavors of the meal, rather than showing off the skills of the cook, so too should good web design make the information appealing and enjoyable to take in, rather than draw any attention to the designer’s skills.

There will, of course be exceptions, and once in a while it will be necessary to make things pop more.  When designing a site for teenage girls, one would want to apply methods of design that would otherwise be frowned upon.  For the most ecommerce websites with conversion in mind, however, it holds true that a transparent design will deliver better results.

But getting back to our friends in the banner design business, how can they benefit from the philosophy of more is less?  One path that is very popular, is to ignore the shifts in web design trends, and to continue to pump out ads that are more obnoxious, and more distracting, in hopes that with most pages getting cleaner and calmer, the banner will stand out even more.  Well, I will be the first to say, that this strategy is working, although not to the advertisers’ advantage.  Banner ads are becoming easier and easier to spot, and thus to ignore; obviously not the results that banner advertisers are looking for.  So what would Google do?  For a long time now Google has been integrating paid, text-based advertisements into web pages in an unobtrusive manner that actually serves as a useful tool.  Google uses its superior search algorithm to insert just the right type of ad into a page that will be related to the user’s quest for information.  But these aren’t really the same as banner ads.  It doesn’t exactly take a designer or a flash artist to come up with a Google adword box.

For the answer to banner ad dilemma, let’s look to the advertising world outside the web.  In the early days, CocaCola used to give out free awnings and signs to bodega owners that sported their logo.  These were unobtrusive, useful tools for building brand awareness.  There are countless examples of other campaigns that utilized imprinted coffee cups, umbrellas, pens, etc., to build brand awareness.  The method is simple – Get people to know your brand, and associate it with the product or service you provide.

Surprisingly, few banner ad campaigns utilize this philosophy.  A banner can have one simple purpose – build brand recognition.  Try this for your next banner ad campaign.  A clean, concise banner designed to simply associate your logo with the service you provide.  Don’t make it flashy, don’t even put a click here button.  Try to make the banner integrate seamlessly with the site where it is to be published.  Submit this banner to a site that charges per click rather than per impression.  Since you only pay every time someone clicks on the banner, you will get massive amounts of free brand awareness.

I will be the first to admit that his proposition has a very selfish hidden agenda.  Much like many other web users, I hate annoying banner ads, and would like to see them wiped off the face of the World Wide Web.  My only hope is that some banner ad gurus will take this suggestion and turn it into a superior banner ad campaign that succeeds by enhancing our web browsing experience rather than annoying it.  Perhaps it will be so successful that others will follow in their footsteps, until in the distant future, we might experience a web browsing experience that is free of annoying banner ads.

I was attempting to create ROR Sitemap for Ecommerce Partners website and I noticed interesting phenomenon. In the article SHTML Makes Updating Website Easy, I have added some example of the code in the content:

& lt ; a href – “index.shtml” & gt ; home & lt ; /a & gt ;

You will notice that after href I have a “-” instead of “=“. Initially, I had “=” after href but the link was not clickable as I had replaced “>” with “& gt ;”. I didn’t ever think that the link can still be spidered until I discovered it while creating ROR sitemap. I noticed that search engine spider was trying to crawl it and since it’s relative URL, it was getting in a loop. To avoid it, I had to replace “=” with “-”. If anyone has a more sophisticated solution to this problem, please let me know.

I tried putting the code inside a text area in a form. Also, I tried to insert it between <code> HTML tag. No success! The only way it was possible was by changing “=” to “-” after HREF. Any thoughts?

Same isssue was going on with the codes in this article, How to Add Alternate StyleSheets?