2008 July

This year, as we hit a milestone with SEO Audio, we pontification on an age old question — what does age have to do with anything? EXCEPT in this case, we’re talking about domain age, and how the reputation your site has gained during its life — or its newness to the world — impacts how well it performs in search engines.

SEO Audio: Episode 40

In fourth of July fervor, we debate the quality of various backyard BBQ foods while trying to make a connection between Americana and the effectiveness of your website. In a patriotic spin for SEO Audio, find out what YOU can do to make your website more like fireworks in your industry.

SEO Audio Episode 39

If the amount of press in the blogosphere is any indication, then B2B video marketing is soon to hit the same critical mass it has in the consumer sector. And we’re not talking about lonely girls and gigantic lego boulders here, either!

A DemandGen report this morning noted that more eyeballs are turning to B2B videos, and cited several examples of businesses using clever videos to increase traffic to their website and reinforce their brands.

But what to talk about in these videos? They had a few ideas, too:

Marketers should build around elements the company is already promoting online, such as newsletters and then migrate to topic-specific video vignettes that build on white papers or case studies. After measuring the response to those initial videos, he suggested marketers experiment with using speakers, roundtables or panels via online video.

While you’re not going to win any mind-blowing creativity awards by extending a newsletter or whitepaper series to the we, you WILL better impress those already opted into your campaigns, and likely increase the popularity of those campaigns. After all, are you more likely to forward a newsletter article about the trouble of e-recruiting, or a slick, 2 minute video that says every that article does and more?

So what’s your next move? I would be remiss in not pointing out that we have a new and rapidly growing online video department which can kick off your video campaign today. We’re taking all of our expertise with online marketing and SEO and combining it with newfound video chops, and helping deliver the most powerful and influential form of online media — video.

While conventional wisdom has been to avoid using Flash to build a website, Google has upended the search world yet again by announcing today that they have improved search indexing of Flash files.

What does this mean?

It doesn’t mean go out and build your entire site in Flash. Just… don’t.

But if you DO have Flash on your site, expect it to provide more value for your search results.

Which means, by proxy, spend a little time thinking about what it says in your Flash piece and tweak it with your site’s keywords in mind.

Our approach was and is to create Flash pieces that wow website visitors and lead to greater conversion — if that same approach helps boost search rankings at the same time?

Heck, we won’t complain.