We all know the feeling we had the first time we saw flash used on a website. How cool is that? Was probably the overwhelming reaction so what did you feel the second time you viewed that cool animation? Not quite as excited right? And therein lies one of the problems with using flash as the primary means to deliver a website, especially a business website.

Although flash allows a website to have dynamic animations, menus, effects including sound and video it also can create the opposite effect to the visitor especially when the business the website is trying to promote offers valuable information like white papers or listings. How can that be? Easy, for example, try and bookmark a page within a flash site, oh that’s right you can’t so if you want to get to a certain section within a flash site you need to start at the homepage or in a lot of case the “Intro” and navigate your way through the site to the information you are after. How many times do you think a visitor will go through that exercise if a competing website has the information they want on a static page that they can bookmark or create a shortcut to from their desktop? Not many would be a safe answer. Let’s talk about those “Intro’s”. They are really nice the first time you view them but again how about the second or twentieth time you view them? Not so nice and by the way you probably start getting frustrated when you visit the site knowing you either have to wait for the intro to finish (because the designer didn’t make a skip function available) or click on skip to move to the homepage. So as a business owner do you want a repeat visitor to show up at your front door frustrated? Of course not but that in essence is what you are doing when you have an intro page, you’re making the potential customer go through a hoop to get to your front door.

Finally a large obstacle to a site designed entirely in flash is your marketing efforts. If you are engaged in search engine marketing and specifically the organic side you have placed your company at a serious disadvantage. Sure, Google is getting better at spidering flash but the results are still very limited and if a site is competing for terms with serious competition that site probably doesn’t have a chance at seeing great results in search rankings without creating static pages to supplement their site which is equivalent to a punt in football. If you are participating in pay-per-click or other forms of paid advertising you have limited your site to developing landing pages to accommodate your visitors as there is again no way to send a person to an “interior” page within flash.

If you are going to use flash as a means to deliver your website be prepared for the hurdles you are creating to visitors and to search engines. If you are wanting to take advantage of the wonderful features flash can provide and yet want to make your site visitor and search friendly, compromise and use elements of flash within your site while allowing static pages and items that are visitor and search friendly to have a place within your design as well. Please stay away from the “Intro” page, if you feel your “Intro” is that great and the public must have the opportunity to view it then make it a link that visitors can access but don’t force it on them.

Everywhere I turn there is a buzz in the industry about pay-per-click fraud. I’ve posted on the subject and just took part in a SEMPO webinar dealing with the subject, so let’s talk about the benefits of using pay-per-click or ppc. There are many more than I’m listing here but this list should touch on the top level reasons to use pay-per-click and why it can be a very effective means of marketing or advertising.

• Small initial investment. The search engines don’t charge a fee to place or run your ad. You only pay for the users that click thru on the ad.
• Realistic for all businesses, regardless of size. Pay-per-Click campaigns can create a level playing field for small businesses, particularly if your campaign research results in the right keywords. With the right campaign management, your ad placement might be right above or below a larger competitor or national chain. This effectively puts you in a good competitive position without having to substantially out bid the larger advertiser.
• Immediate results. The research, set up and implementation cycle of pay-per-click campaigns can take place in just a few days, as opposed to natural search engine rankings, which require weeks or months to gain desired rankings. Pay-per-click campaign results are immediate: the day your ad is placed – the clicks to your website begin!
• Real-time tracking. Metrics such as: effectiveness of keywords and phrases, per ad traffic generated, per ad conversions, and many more measurements provide campaign managers with the data to alter campaigns almost in real-time. This allows you to respond very quickly to either good or bad performing ads. And unlike a printed piece or mailer, the lag time to judging ad effectiveness is hours not days. And modifying an ad can be accomplished in minutes.
• Targeted traffic. Print and traditional media generally reach a mass audience making it difficult to target your message. Pay-per-click campaigns utilizing geo-targeting, effective keyword research and demographic site selection allows you to target your viewing audience much more precisely. Thus, pre-qualifying your customers to a far greater degree before they ever land on your website.
• Branding. Top placement on Google, Yahoo or MSN has proven to be a very effective branding method.

With these benefits in mind it’s easy to just jump in and get started and the pay-per-click publishers have made it simple to get started but the learning curve involved is not free. Take the time to learn everything you can about tracking, keyword selection, targeting, fraud and become familiar with the tools that can help you with these tasks. Your other option is to hire a professional search marketing company like us. We’ve been involved with pay-per-click since the business model was invented and that experience serves our clients well.

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The Info Group is proud to have been chosen by debt settlement marketing company Christian Debt Relief to develop and implement their search engine marketing campaign. The campaign will employ both organic and pay per click strategies while adding relevant text and banner advertising opportunities in the mix. Welcome aboard!

We are happy to announce the signing of Imperial American Express Travel to search engine optimization services. Welcome aboard and please leave your seatbelt fastened while we take off!

Tempers flair in the SEO community when those for and those against square off in the big debate known as the “Google Sandbox Theory”. (this post is not to debate the theory which in a shortened version suggests that new sites are penalized by Google and must age before showing up for searches under their main keywords) Now valid points are made on both sides and while we fall on both sides within our own camp, there has long been some sort of waiting period to see rankings. That being said statistics from a new site we are working that launched less than 60 days ago back up stats from two previous site launches which indicate that an active blog can have a dramatic impact on rankings in Google for numerous secondary keywords and begin to generate very good organic traffic in weeks rather than months.

Shock of all shocks, right? It shouldn’t be as this goes to a basic tenet of search engine optimization … content, content, content. Combine that with the rss feed which allows other sites to link back to this one and you have a second basic tenet, links, links, links. Now it helps that the blogger in question writes quality content that is of value to members of his industry but shouldn’t that be anyone who is serious about succeeding online?