SEO Advice

Google launched a custom search engine this week that allows you to define what web sites you want to have included in the search and some other nifty features. From Google:

• Specify the sites you want to include in searches
• Place a search box and search results on your website
• Customize the look and feel to match your website
• Invite your community to contribute to the search engine
• Make money from relevant ads in your search results

Google accounts for approximately 50-90% of search engine traffic. On sites that I have been involved with, this number seems to average around 75-80% of total search engine traffic. Based on these numbers, I would focus exclusively on optimizing your web site for Google and not pay too much attention to Yahoo or MSN.

Its not like we’ve solved any big mysteries here, it is a well known fact in web development circles that using flash can negatively impact search engine traffic because search engine crawlers cannot read or spider flash content.

If you must use flash, make sure you have a text based navigation if you are using a flash based navigation system. If you have flash based content, create an alternate html version and block the flash version from search engine spiders using your web site’s robots.txt file.

Here is another neato web tool brought to you by Text Link Ads. This serves two purposes, first of all its an interesting tool that shows how your blog ranks to top blogs in your blog category (or a blog you specify). Secondly, its a great example of link baiting in getting other sites to link to you.

As reported by The Register, there is a new worm that infects Yahoo Instant Messanger and causes fraudulent clicks on web sites containing adsense advertisements. The adsense ads focus on mesothelioma, a rare cancer caused by asbestos exposure that also happens to have very high cost per click values. My guess is that its unlikely the worm creators will ever get paid.

During my normal Monday morning surf-a-round I found a great post at TLA that discusses the dreaded Google sandbox and how to climb / crawl / punch your way out of it. As you may have guessed, the article focuses on building trust with backlinks from authority sites, blogs or other sites that you can beg, steal, or cheat your way to getting a link. There is also some good discussion on link baiting; overall a good read.