Adobe Flash is a programmable format that allows designers to illustrate using interactive multimedia elements  to create things such as: movies, buttons, banners, games, maps, and more.   It’s a popular way for web developers to add animation to a project and build interactive, visually appealing websites.

Many web developers LOVE flash animation and use it in all of their website projects.  They design entire websites using Flash.  This is because the websites look nice, and have various animations, moving graphics, cool audio effects and vector graphics, etc.  The problem is however, that Flash is a poor substitute for HTML and some search engines are unable to crawl and index websites made completely with Flash. Flash movies also often take a long time to load so you are potentially loosing customers who don’t want to wait.

In June 2008, Google announced that they improved their indexing of websites containing Flash files. Has this really helped?  Randfish over at SEOmoz did a great post on Flash and SEO.  He outlines the following reasons as to why he believes that Flash and SEO don’t mix.

1. Different Content is Found on the Same URLs
2. The Way Text is Broken Down
3. Flash Can Get Embedded Resulting in Low PR and Link Juice
4. You Can’t Earn External Links with Flash Like You Can With HTML
5. Basic SEO is Often Missing with Flash
6. A Lot of Flash is Not Crawlable by Search Engines

Why We Like Flash:

As for web designers, animation and moving graphics look really nice on websites.   It also works well for banner ads and advertisements as compared to GIFs.

Why We DON’T Like Flash:

Flash movies are slow to load.  Oftentimes when a Flash Home page  is visited, it takes many seconds (sometimes minutes) to load.  This can potentially result in lost business.  When people are online, they want to get to their destination quickly and not wait for fancy graphics to pop-up before they can go anywhere on your website.  They will click OUT of your website and go to your competitors’ site before waiting for your movie to load.

Flash animation is also not great for SEO – not yet at least. It doesn’t harm your SEO as far as penalties with Google but it does not allow for proper optimization.  Google has made some improvements with how they index Flash, but there is still a lot to be done before search engines are able to fully index Flash and have it compare to an HTML website with proper SEO implemented.

Bottom Line:

Flash is great for advertisements, banners, etc., but not so much for SEO – not yet.  This is bound to change in the near future.  If you currently want to use Flash on a website – do so with caution.  Keep it to a minimum and don’t have your entire website built on Flash animation.  This can harm you in the SERPS.

Start brainstorming and come up with a list of keywords that are associated with your business and the types of services you have to offer. Try and come up with a list of around 5-10 keywords to start.  Here are 11 things to consider when choosing a domain name for your new website or blog:

The Shorter The Better

You can have a domain name that is up to 67 characters long but in my opinion, this is way too long.  Short names are easier to remember and easier to type in.  7-10 characters is optimal but harder and harder to come by these days so do your best. Try and choose a name that’s under 3 words as well.  Longer domain names with too many words are difficult to remember and if there are too many keywords, the search engines may see it as keyword spamming.

Use Your Business Name

If you have a off-line business with a real world presence, you’ll want to use your business name in the URL if possible.  Many commonly used business names are already taken, especially the shorter ones but try and get at least a portion of your business name in the URL.  This will help with branding purposes and it’ll help your customers remember your company’s name. For instance, there’s a Sacramento company called “Liberty Bell Alarm and Home Theater” that chose the domain name www.libertybellalarm.com.  They didn’t use their entire name in their URL – which would be too long – but they got the first portion of it which is good.

Use Keywords

If you are starting an online business, try and choose a domain name that has some of your keywords for SEO purposes.  You don’t want to use TOO many keywords though since the search engines may see it as keyword stuffing.  If you owned a web design company in the Sacramento area called “Sacramento Web Design and SEO Company”, you wouldn’t want to use the entire name in the URL.  If the name was available, you could use http://sacramentowebdesign.com.  This would be a good URL since you have your location, part of your business name, as well as keywords for your services “web design” and “services” all in the URL.  Keywords in your URL also help with incoming links to your website.  When someone links to your site from an outside source, your keywords will be listed in the URL which is an SEO advantage.

Easy To Remember

When choosing a domain name, find one that’s easy to remember.  You want to avoid getting crafty and clever with your name.  A name that seems easy and obvious to you may be difficult for someone else to remember.

Easy To Type

You also want to choose a domain name that’s easy to type in.  Avoid words that are difficult to spell such as: ache, calendar, and conscientious.

Endings – .Com, .Net, .Org

There are split views on what’s the best ending for a domain name.  Many people will ONLY choose .com domains since people are used to typing this in.  The argument is that people naturally assume that a domain is .com and will always want to type this in.  Other people believe that .org and .net are very suitable endings as well.  .Org for instance has the connotation that you belong to an organization or non-profit outfit which can be beneficial for your  company’s image. Many of the .com domains are already taken as well so settling for a .org or .net may be your answer.  Personally, I always look for the .com domains first but will take a .org or .net name if the .com is unavailable.

Hyphenated vs Non-Hyphenated

There are pros and cons of having words hyphenated in a URL.  One of the benefits of choosing a hyphenated domain name is that it helps a lot with SEO.   Search engines are able to easily pick out your keywords and separate them where keywords in a non-hyphenated name are sometimes melded together by the search engines.   You may also find that a name you really wanted to use is already taken in the non-hyphenated form so in order to get the name you want, you may need to get the hyphenated form. The downside of hyphenated names is that they are difficult to type in, tricky to remember, and often left out when someone is referring a website via word-of-mouth.

Get a Unique Name

Choose a domain name that is unique.  A name that is too similar to another website may result in lost business when people type in the other website instead.

Avoid Abbreviations and Acronyms

Business name abbreviations for the most part are hard to remember.  Since there are only letters and no keywords, this is also not good for SEO.

Don’t Use Trademarked Names

This may seem obvious, but avoid using trademarked names in your domain name. There is a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) which protects trademarked names in URLS.

Ask For a 2nd Opinion

When choosing a domain name, before settling on one that you like, ask a few other people what they think.  A name that seems easy to remember and simple to type in to you may be obscure and for someone else.

There are different types of meta tags including title meta tags, description meta tags, and keywords meta tags. These are discussed below.

These tags are not visible to the user unless they look within the source code of a website. Here’s an example of what meta tags look like within the HTML portion of a website:

This may look a bit confusing at first but we’re going to explain what this means below.  Now here’s what meta tags look to the user when they do a search within Google. The title tag is displayed on top and the meta description tag is the displayed beneath it.

Meta Title Tag - The HTML title tag is the title of your website’s page.  In the images above the title of the web page is “Sacramento Website Design | Web Development | SEO | NeoVetta.com“.  It tells search engines and Internet users what your web page is about. It should contain specific keywords that are found within the web page and it should be concise.  Google displays 66 characters (including spaces) for the title of a web page so try and keep it around this number.  Each page of your website should have a unique HTML title tag.  When you visit the actual web page, the title of the page is also displayed at the very top of your browser window in blue. Here’s a HTML meta title tag:

<TITLE> This is the page Title </TITLE>

Meta Description Tag - The meta description tag is a short description of the web page. Each page of your website or blog should have a different concise description of it’s content.  Again this should contain keywords found on the page. The meta description is only visible to users when they do a search within a search engine.  The 2nd image above displays  what users will see for a meta description. Google displays 150 characters for meta descriptions but you can have a description that is longer.  The question of meta description length is answered at Google’s Webmaster help here: http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/7c5dc8cbb5f07dcd. You also want these descriptions to be in complete sentence form.  Make it enticing and relevant to draw in more clicks. Here’s a HTML meta description tag:

<META NAME = “Description” CONTENT =”content”>

Meta Keywords Tag - The HTML meta keyword tag is where the keywords for your web page are entered.  These are not visible to users unless they go specifically searching for them within the source code of your page.  Keywords tell search engines what the web page is about and it is recommended that you only enter around 2-5 unique and relevant keywords per page. You can enter more but less is always better.  You can then focus the keywords on your page around a limited number of words to keep it focused. Each keyword should be separated with a comma (keyword1, keyword2, keyword3).  Here’s a HTML meta keywords tag:

<META NAME = “Keywords” CONTENT=”keyword1, keyword2″>

Keywords used to play a much more important role in search engine placement but due to webmasters abusing them, they are not used by many of the major search engines anymore.

Not sure whether or not your website has HTML meta tags? To tell whether or not your website has title tags, go to the page in question and simply look at the top of your browser.  The very top of your browser will be highlighted in blue and this is the title of the page.  You can also go to the website and type in “Ctrl” + “u” to look at the source code.  You should see something that looks similar to the first image above with HTML contained within <HEAD></HEAD> tags.

Be sure that each page of your website has unique HTML meta descriptions.  This does not guarantee you top search engine placement but it will definitely help users find your website.  It will also increase the the likelihood of users clicking on your web page. If your website has a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress or Joomla, you will be able to easily modify your website’s HTML meta tags.  Also, if your descriptions are well written, relevant, concise, and enticing, users will want to click through to your website and learn more.

What exactly are meta description tags?  Here’s an image of the meta tags for the Home page of NeoVetta.com.

A meta tag description is a brief descriptions for a specific page on your website which is placed within the “head” area of your individual web pages.  This is either done by you or your web designer if you are unfamiliar with writing HTML.  Content management systems such as WordPress or Joomla make it easy for most anyone to add in their own meta tags.

Each page, post, or article on your website should have a unique meta description tag.  Since the above image is a  description for the Home page of NeoVetta, we cover all of the services we offer in a nutshell.  Just as a note, the top part that says “Sacramento Website Design | Web Development…” is called the “title tag”.  We will discuss this at another time.

When you type in a specific string of words into a search within Google (or other search engine), relevant websites appear that contain the words you typed in.  For instance, in the image above, you will see that the keyword string “Sacramento Website Design” is highlighted within the meta description tag.  This is because I typed in “Sacramento Website Design” into a Google search and NeoVetta was one of the results that popped up.  Meta description tags increases the likelihood that a person will click on your website since it contains specific relevant keywords.

Meta descriptions do not guarantee top placement in the search engine ranking pages (SERPS) but they do help.  Since webmasters have abused the use of meta descriptions over the years to increase their rankings, search engine creators have had to de-emphasized the importance of these tags.  They are still an important factor however since they help people decide whether or not to click through to your website.  When writing your meta description tags, be sure to write short, concise, relevant, descriptions which entice the user to click through to your website.

If you are unfamiliar with HTML, and not be using a Content Management System (CMS) be sure to ask your web designer to add this information in for you.  If you DO have a CMS such as WordPress or Joomla installed on your website, then you be able to easily change the meta tag information without typing in any HTML.  There will be sections labeled “Meta Description”, “Meta Title”, “Meta Keywords”, etc. where you will be able to make each page of your website unique.

The HTML title tag for a page of your website is also displayed when Internet users type in specific keywords.  For example, below is an image from a Google search for the keyword string “Sacramento website design“.  As you can see, these words are highlighted within the meta title tag and the meta description (the sentence directly below the title tag).  This is important since it draws the eye of the Internet user who typed in this specific keyword string – also called a long-tail keyword string. After reading the title of your web page, the user has the chance to decide whether or not the content on your web page is what they are looking for:

The HTML title tag is also displayed at the top of a web browser when a web page is visited.  For instance, if a user clicked on the title tag above after entering in their keyword string “Sacramento Website Design | Web Development |  SEO | Neovetta.com” they would be taken to the home page of NeoVetta.com.  Here’s what the user would see at the top of their web browser when they got to NeoVetta’s home page:

This title meta tag is displayed at the top portion of your browser, followed by the  type of web browser you are using i.e. Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.

If someone bookmarks your page, the title meta tag is also displayed within their bookmarks section:

HTML title tags are important since they allow search engines and users to determine whether or not the content on your web page is relevant to specific searches made using a search engine.  It is also important for the purpose of bookmarking.  To optimize your meta tags, make sure that each page has unique content with unique titles and descriptions.  This will help your search engine placement immensely.