A few of you have recently written to Wix Support stating that when you search for your Wix in Google, you see your URL but with /noflashhtml or /sitebackhtml at the end. Instead of pointing to your beautifully crafted Flash website, these links direct visitors to a page stating that Flash must be downloaded. It leaves you wondering “Where did my Wix go?”

/noflashhtml and /sitebackhtml

Both the /noflashhtml and the /sitebackhtml are necessary components of your site. They contribute to the successful presentation and functioning of your design elements and Flash content. It’s the search engines who do not need to see these files. This issue seems to only occur when performing a search with Google. The crawlers of Bing, Yahoo! and the other search engines don’t seem to cache these pages. So, Wix has created a fix preventing Google from crawling these two specific files inside your Wix.

The Fix

We have added a robots.txt, as well as a no-index tag to the source code of all Wix sites. These are like signs telling Googlebot to scram when it encounters the /noflashhtml or /sitebackhtml URLs.

The Caveat

Google is not a person. It is a robot. Robots have limitations. As stated in Google Webmaster Tools:

“Note that because we have to crawl your page in order to see the noindex meta tag, there’s a small chance that Googlebot won’t see and respect the noindex meta tag. If your page is still appearing in results, it’s probably because we haven’t crawled your site since you added the tag.”

So, if you are still seeing those pesky links when you search for your site in Google, it’s probably because your Wix has not been recached since before this fix was implemented. And since Google only displays search results based on the info it obtained from its last visit to your site, the old version of your site may still be inside Googlebot’s memory.

You can check to see when Google last crawled your site by typing “cache:yoursiteURL” into a Google search. In order to refresh this memory and restore your proper Wix URL to Google searches, you need to wait until Google crawls your site again. This may take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

All Good Things Come to Those Who Backlink

This motto should be burned into the SEO section of your brain. Not only does link building raise the ranking of your site in a list of search results, but it affects how often your site is crawled by all the search engines’ crawlers. It all boils down to how many backlinks you have as well as the quality of those links. The more backlinks you have (links on other websites pointing to your Wix) the quicker Google will come visit you. Then, it will take a new snapshot of your source code, and refresh its index. In all likelihood, as soon as Google spots your site again, the proper URL for your Wix will show up in a search.

Get Re-Crawled:

1. Visit the Yahoo! Site Explorer to see what sites are linking back to you.

Type your URL into the window at the top and click Explore URL

2. Obtain more backlinks to your site

3. Submit your site to Google

Be Patient

We’ve seen plenty of users whose sites were showing the /noflashhtml and /sitebackhtml links in Google, only to be restored to their proper listings once the sites were crawled again. The same will hold true for your site. Follow the suggestions in this post and the related articles on link-building, and restore your Wix to its seat in Google glory.

You should also check out Where Did My Wix Go? – Part 1

With a good backlink to your site from an important directory, your site is considered to be more important by Google. And when Google says “jump”, everyone on the internet asks “how high?”

Using DMoz to Charm Google

Submitting your Wix website to the Open Directory Project, also known as DMoz, can help in your quest to woo Google’s search engine crawlers. DMoz is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited web directory. It’s purpose is to provide a list of websites arranged by category. Unlike a search engine, this web directory does not rank or promote the sites it includes.  However, Google, AOL, Yahoo and other search portals definitely have search engine crawlers that prowl DMoz to learn about new, relevant and worthy websites. And then they duplicate this data in their own “clone” directories. Why?

The Humans

Websites listed in DMoz were approved by volunteer human editors, who are experts in their fields of interest. Sites listed under a certain category actually do contain information relevant to that category. In addition, it is free to submit sites to DMoz, and only DMoz. So, the websites of large corporations and small business owners (like many of you!) all get the same treatment in DMoz land. The individual attention given to each submitted site is why search engines like to look at DMoz’ data. So, while it’s entirely possible to perform well in Google without getting listing DMoz, it helps a lot to get listed.

Submitting Your Wix

• Make sure your Wix site is completed. At least make sure all your pages have content and all your links go somewhere. Incomplete sites with broken links or graphics get “Under Construction” notices and generally aren’t listed.
• Do a search in DMoz for your Wix website, to make sure that you are not already listed. This step could save you time.
• Select the most relevant category for your website
• Scroll down to make sure that category has a category editor, and not a “Volunteer to edit this category” link.  Submitting a website to a category without an editor decreases the likelihood of your site getting listed. Try the next most relevant category if your top choice has no editor.
• Click “Suggest URL” link on the top of your category’s page.  Some categories are too general to accept submissions, in which case you should find a more specific category.
• Carefully follow the directions on the submission form. Submit your site only once.

Here’s a short video on How to Submit Your Site to DMoz.

While You Wait
It can take some time before a site is included in this directory, but it is worth the wait. DMoz’s editors review each site to make sure that it is completed, and relevant to the category under which it was submitted. It can take two weeks to a few months to get approved. To see if your site was included, check back on DMoz’ homepage in a few weeks and do a search for your site. Be sure to only submit your URL to the Open Directory once, as multiple submissions can result in your site being automatically excluded.

Other Directories

You could also submit your site to specialized directories based on your site’s area of interest. There are many free website directories on the web, but the key is to find ones that will give you valuable links, from reputable sources. This means PageRank. Directories with low-level PageRank won’t do much for your site’s linkability. The paid directories will require payment over the phone, a personal e-mail and even a pitch as to why you should be included in their listings. The harder the directory is to get into, the more link value it probably has.

A few good general directories (some free, some paid) include: ProLinkDirectory, Directory-Free.com, WhitePages.com, HotvsNot and DataSoftSystem

Getting your site listed in directories such as DMoz won’t guarantee that your Google ranking will improve, but it definitely gives you a solid push in the right direction.

Backlinks (also known as incoming links, inbound links and inward links) are links that point at your website, on other websites.  Gaining backlinks to your website is an extremely important aspect of boosting your site’s rank in Google.  Backlinks are like votes of confidence for your website; the more votes you have – from quality sites themselves – the better your site appears to search engine crawlers.  In this blog post, I’m providing some good ways to increase the amount of organic (unpaid) backlinks to your Wix website.

Contribute to the Community

Make a name for yourself as a good source of information, by answering questions in forums or on blogs.  Build a positive reputation for yourself (and your website) by offering something useful to those within your industry or community.  This will increase your level of recognition by others, and will make it more likely that they will include a link to your website in the future.

Social Media

Building a profile on social media is a surefire way to increase awareness of your website.  Everyone knows of the big-wigs such as FaceBook, Twitter and MySpace.  Post a link to your website in any of the social networks you’re already a part of.  In addition to these general networks, you might want to become familiar with the myriad of niche social media networks that exist.  These targeted networks will put you in touch with others interested in the same things you are.  DoshDosh provides a list of more than 50 general and niche social media websites, while Social Media Answers neatly lists major social networks, according to category.

Blogging

Present yourself as an authority figure within your niche by creating and maintaining a blog. Blogs are easy to update and maintain, by commenting on relevant news articles or posting an interesting photograph.  Linking your blog to your Wix website is simple with the RSS widget found inside the website builder.  You can also provide tutorials or how-to guides on your blog (or your website itself) that provide information not offered elsewhere.

Share Something Cool

Offering visitors something useful that they can benefit from will make them remember your website, or even bookmark it. Write a tutorial or a how-to guide describing something that isn’t explained elsewhere. Share your experience using a new product or a tip offered on someone else’s website.

(Weaker Yet Effective Techniques)

Controversy

Draw attention to your site, and compel others to comment and post links, by making a statement that will stir the emotions of those visiting your site.  Make a statement that goes against conventional wisdom, challenge prevailing industry opinions, or even say something positive about something deemed unpopular according to mainstream belief.

Lists

Presenting information in list format is very appealing for readers to easily digest information, but this tactic should be used sparingly to retain credibility.  Lists should be the sugars and fats in your website content’s well-balanced diet.

A Word About Spamming

Signing up for blogs or forums to add spam entries that have links to your website is a great way to damage your website’s reputation.  Doing this runs the risk of being noticed as a spammer by search engines, which are smarter than you think and are well-versed in spamming practices. Practice “honest techniques” when attempting to gain backlinks.  Remember, it’s not just the quantity of links you receive, but the quality.

Checking Your Site’s Backlinks

You can determine the number of back-links to your website.  Yahoo! is widely recognized as the most reliable source of back-link data.  To discover how many websites contain back-links to yours, simply enter in the following text to a search in Yahoo:  linkdomain:www.yourwebsite.com

Google’s Thoughts on the Matter

For some more backlinking advice, here’s a short video tutorial provided by Matt Cutts, Google’s head of Webspam. (Notice that Matt recommends “creating a video” as a way to gain links pointing to your website, injecting a little ironic humor into the discussion.) For increased user comprehension, captions are provided.

Good luck putting these techniques into practice, and gaining solid backlinks to your Wix website!

Why isn’t my site listed in Google?

This is the most popular question that we get asked by you, in our Wix Forum and our Wixpedia Help Center.  Creating an attractive website is great, but it doesn’t matter if no one finds out about it.  For those of you who want your Wix website to do its work FOR you, there are a few things you’ll need to do on your end first.  The indexing process can be a tricky one to master, but our Wix team is here to help.

It is also worth noting, that while the debate continues over the SEO compatibility of Flash websites, Flash websites created with Wix are SEO searchable.  This is what makes Wix stand out.  Wix is the only website builder that enables search engines such as Google and Yahoo to read Flash websites.  Want proof?  Wix.com was created using Wix.  Do a search in Google for “free website design.”  Look who it is!  Wix.com – a Flash website created using Wix – proudly pops up as the #1 result according to Google.

As long as you do your part, and make sure your ducks are in order, your Wix Flash website can and will be indexed by Google.  Here’s how.

Tip #1    Check Your Settings

You know the feeling when you think your internet is messed up, but then you realize that the cable was not plugged in?  You should feel exactly this way if you have not made sure your Wix website has its “List in Search Engines” box ticked.  Without this step, all the rest is pointless.  Click on the Settings button at the top of your Wix editor menu, and make sure that box is checked.

Tip # 2   Take Advantage of Metadata

Metadata is text that describes what is on your website.  It is extremely important to search engine crawlers when they are indexing a new or updated site.  There are two types of metadata:  Title and Description.  Both are easily added through the Wix editor’s Settings menu.

Title: Include the name of your website/company/self.  Use no more than 70 characters, spaces included.
Description: Include relevant keywords. Do not exceed 190 characters, spaces included.

The keyword settings box is also provided, and you may enter 5-7 keywords here.  However, keyword metadata no longer carries the SEO juice it used to.  Still, it doesn’t hurt to use this feature.  Just make sure that your keywords actually appear in your website’s text.

There are a few other places you can insert content, and relevant keywords, in your Wix website.  Alt Text is text that describes images.  This text won’t appear on your website, but it is crawled by Google.  Add alt text to a photograph by clicking on the image and selecting Manage Photos.  You can also add page titles to your website’s pages by clicking Manage in the upper right-hand corner of your editor.  (Mini-page titles are the labels you used for your menu.)

Tip # 3    Build Solid Content

Search engine crawlers crawl on words – not images, music or intentions.  Include thoughtful, relevant and useful content.  There should be at least 400 words on your website’s homepage, and at least 250 words on every other page.  Where appropriate, use your keywords.  Google knows what spam is, so make sure your keywords fit organically into your text.
Headers hold more SEO juice than general text. In Wix, headers are known as Titles, and can be added from the Text button in your Wix editor.  Use Titles to introduce sections of text.  Your readers will digest your information much better, and Google will take note of your Titles.

Tip # 4    Link Up

Your Google ranking is partially determined by how many other sites contain links to your site.  The first rule of thumb for gaining another site’s vote of confidence in you by linking to your site is to create quality content.  Make your site a place where original and valuable information can be discovered.   The goal is to have someone visit your website, and appreciate your content so much that they want to share it with others, through a link. Blogs can be a fruitful source of back-linking.  Participate in discussions on blogs, earn the trust of others, and eventually work your way into a mention in that blog’s content.  Posting links to your website in comments on blogs is usually detected as spam, and will be deleted by that blog’s webmaster.

Filling your site with relevant content, and taking advantage of metadata and linking possibilities should secure you a ranking in Google.  But patience is required as well.  Google crawls sites according to an algorithm that is purposely unreleased to the public.  This protects the internet from becoming flooded with low-quality content manipulated by crafty webmasters.  So it may take anywhere between 1 and 3 months for Google to index a new website.
When those spiders come crawling, have your Wix website ready and waiting for them!

5 Ways to Get Your Keywords Noticed:

Many users want to know how to get search engines to recognize specific keywords that they’d like associated with their website.  The goal is to attract potential customers who don’t know you, through organic Google searches.  Follow these steps to have your targeted keywords correctly inserted into your pages.

1.  Make a List of Keywords

Stay organized and focused. Study your competition. Make a list of keywords that are relevant to your business. Start with the obvious ones. For example, if you were creating a website for Lisa’s pancake house you may write the generic word “pancakes” down first, then perhaps “best pancakes”  and then you might get even more specific and choose a local keyword, such as “San Francisco pancakes” or “strawberry pancakes in San Francisco”. You may be able to get indexed for each of these keywords, but the greater question is how well you can get ranked. Even if you get indexed in the 100^th page for pancakes, it probably benefit your business much. Each keyword has different levels of competition which you can see by the number of results and by undertaking some research to find out how many people search for that keyword. Software is available to help such as WordTracker or Google AdWord.

Consider the size and amount of traffic you are likely to generate to your website. If you’re creating a 10-20 or even 50 page website, I don’t recommend trying to compete with the Apple website, for example.

2. Remember Content is King

This cliché survives because it holds a world of truth.  Your website must contain quality, relevant content in order for its keywords to be caught.  Writing the same key phrases over and over again will be recognized as spam by the search engines. If you’ve chosen good and relevant keywords you should have no problem inserting them into your text naturally and organically.   Insert your keywords throughout your text.  Spread them out evenly and discretely without making it obvious.

Aim for your homepage to contain 400 words.  A footer is a good place to add text if you prefer an image-based homepage.  Aim for 250 words on all other pages. For the best results, you should aim for you keyword to appear about 3 times for every 250 words. This includes your titles, headers and regular text.

Google loves headers. More emphasis is placed on any text that appears in your headers, so make sure you word and phrase your headers wisely. In the Wix website editor, select the Text button from your menu, and choose Title. The text you write here is what will be interpreted as a header tag – it’s that simple. The larger your header text, the higher it will rank.

The more text you have, the more opportunity to insert a keyword. Having trouble finding room for more content? For Lisa’s Pancake House, an “About” page or a ‘Reviews’ page may be good places to add some content.

3. Use Your Meta-Tags

Search engines rely on 2 types of Meta tags to discern the subject of a web page or website.

.  These are both found in the Settings section of your Editor, in the SEO Settings box.

Title Tag: The most important part of your page, in terms of SEO.  The title appears on the very top left-hand corner of your browser when you are viewing your Flash website. Make sure your title contains relevant keywords.  Also note that keywords found at the beginning of a title are much stronger than those placed toward the end.  Titles should not be longer than 70 characters, including spaces.

Description Tag: The description tag is another great opportunity to use your keywords. The description cannot be viewed from within the site, but it is the text that will appear alongside the link to your website in search results. This is an important text. Try to keep this text between 150-160 words.  Use at least two of your keywords in the description.  Keep it to the point, be direct and catchy.

You may also add up to 7 keyword tags in this same section of the Editor. Make sure you’re adding keywords or phrases that actually appear in your content.

Alt Texts: You can add “Alt Text” to your images that will be read by search engine crawlers, and cannot be seen by users.  Take this opportunity to use the keyword you are promoting one more time. In the Wix editor, you can add Alt Texts to your gallery pictures through the Manage Photos option.

4. Internal Linking

Internal linking refers to the navigation within your website and the infrastructure of links pointing from one page to another within your Flash website. Since your homepage (or landing page) is usually the page that gets the most traffic and the most links pointing at it, it is usually the most important page in your website.  Use text links to point at the different pages of your website to make sure that the search engine knows what that page is about.

For example, all links within Jack’s New York Pizzeria website pointing at the website’s homepage can use the ‘anchor text’ “Jack’s New York pizzeria” instead of the generic ‘Homepage’. An inner page in Jack’s website might deal exclusively with pepperoni pizzas, so the link to that page can use the anchor text “Jack’s pepperoni pizza”.

Pages with more links pointing at them will be considered as having more importance and relevancy from the point of view of the search engine crawler. The more often a link is used, the more relevancy and importance it is allocated.

5. External Linking

The same principles of internal linking are applied to links from the outside. Get as many backlinks to your site as possible and make sure your links are properly anchored in relevant text – keywords.

You can optimize specific pages for specific keywords by dedicating specific keywords to specific pages. For example, all links using the anchor text: “Jack’s anchovy pizza” to point at a page that has lots of text on the subject of anchovy pizza. Use all the links with the anchor text “Jack’s New York Pizzeria” to point at the home page that has that specific keyword inserted into it repeatedly.

Links will have greater potency when they come from a powerful website. Powerful websites are websites with a high page rank and a lot of traffic. A web page that simply has a long list of links from it (also known as a link farm) won’t have the same effect on your website as a link in a popular pizza review magazine, pointing at your website from an article raving about your great pizza.

Bottom line: the more anchor links pointing at your website – the better. Make sure these links are active.

Over the past few weeks several people have asked me questions to find out how they can improve their listings in general and how to get listed in their local Google listings in particular. Lots of the Wix users are local businesses and small business that rely on their website to get noticed online by potential users. So I’ve decided to post a simple step by step rundown of a few tactical steps you can take to get yourself listed in the right places, and use the competition for your own benefit.

Step 1:

Start searching for keywords relevant to your business and location. Try all the combinations you can think of. For example, if you were to search for a pizzeria in New York, you may use several different combinations.

What you’re looking for is a list of competing and closely related businesses. Imagine you were one of your clients, what possible combinations might you be using to find the service or product you’re looking for?

Step 2:

Start making lists of the businesses that are consistently getting top rankings. The more keywords (word combinations) you try, the more listings you will become familiar with. Get to know your virtual surroundings. For the best results I suggest you get a few dozen listings from your research. You can start a spreadsheet to follow the different data you’re about to derive from each of these listings.

Step 3:

Explore each of these local business’s online profile. Don’t click on the name of the listing, visit the reviews by clicking on the reviews link next to the listing. Each page listed here is a page with information about the restaurant, reviews and information that Google found about the place.

Step 4:

Scroll down the page to the “More about this place” section. This is where you’ll find a wealth of links to websites that contain information and mention the restaurant. This is your goldmine, as you can probably find lots of great places to get listed yourself.

Each of the website’s listed here is a website that Google is crawling for information on that restaurant. You can visit many of these websites and list your own Flash website. Make sure that there is a consistency in your listings, that the phone numbers and address are consistent and true. Google places as much emphasis on quality as it does on quantity, so if you’ve listed yourself in a million places, but those websites are irrelevant or the information on them is irrelevant you’d be doing yourself a disservice.

Even if you don’t care about being listed in local directories but you care about promoting your website, this is a good tactic, as it will bump your website up in terms of ranking. Google will see many good website’s pointing at it and it will consider your website more relevant important.

Step 5:

If you’re feeling particularly industrious you can do the same thing for the “reviews” and “user content” sections. Here you’ll find many more links. Do this process thoroughly and you will reap what you sow. Don’t think small. I recommend you try to get between 50-250 listings, even if it takes you a few days, and of course depending on the level of competition in your field and your area.

Many of you often ask me how to get the search engines to crawl your website more often. Well, the simple answer is that you need to get your website noticed. That means, generating as much traffic as possible and having as many good and established sites pointing at yours, drawing the search engine’s attention to your web page.

The following is a shortlist of common redirects. You may not be able to implement all of the redirects but you may also have run into a few of them and its always a good idea to recognize them and know what they mean. So here they are:

Http 301 – the 301 code means that the URL you are requested, meaning, the website you are attempting to visit, has been permanently moved. This is usually used to avoid duplicate content issues when similar documents are located on different URI’s.

Http 302 – This means the document you are searching for has been temporarily moved to a different location.

Http 400 – This code means that there was most likely a syntax error in the URL entered and as a result the server is unable to understand your document request.

Http 401 – This means that there has been an unauthorized request and that the server requires authentication before carrying out the document request.

Http 403 – The server has understood the request but it refuses to fulfill it. This is a ‘forbidden’ code response. A webmaster may alert the user as to the reason his request is being denied, but if he prefers not to notify users, he may use a 404 status code instead.

Http 404 – This response means in general that the document you requested cannot be found. The client was able to communicate with the server but the server was not able to find the requested document. This could also mean that the server was told to refuse the request without providing a reason.

Http 410 – Similar to a 404, the 410 code indicates that the document you requested is ‘intentionally gone’ and will no longer be available at this URL address, while there is also no forwarded address. This code is usually used for documents such as promotional information and it is up to the webmaster and at his discretion to determine when to remove the 410 status code.

Http 500 – This indicates an internal server error that is preventing the document from loading.

Http 501 – This indicates that the server does not recognize the document request method. Since the server cannot fulfill the request it displays a ‘not implemented’ status code.

This sums up the basic redirects and what they mean. Just remember that redirects are often problematic and collide with good SEO. This is because good SEO will always prefer to have the simplest and fastest access to a website, for the best usability. Redirects complicate things so don’t use them unless you absolutely have to.

Good Luck!

So we’ve been discussing SEO from many different aspects for quite a while. We’ve touched a variety of different topics relating to the optimization of your Wix website. I thought this is probably a good opportunity to do a little review and summary of the most important aspects of SEO and how to implement it in your Wix Flash websites, and have it posted all in one place. So here goes:

1. Content

Google and the other search engines crawl your website using the text. They crawl text. That is why you need to have as much of it as possible on your website. A website with no text will simply look empty to the search engine. Make sure you have content in your website and that this content is informative, in the sense that it will tell the search engine who you are and what your website is about.

To be more specific for Wix, I recommend at least 400 words in the homepage. Don’t sweat it though, if you’re using mini-pages you can spread the words throughout the mini-pages, as they’re all counted as one.

2. Keywords  & Meta Tags

Keywords are important in search engine optimization. Keywords are the search terms used by your target audience to reach you. For small to medium sized websites, think of 3-5 main keywords which you would like to optimize. These should be terms (they can be one, two, three or more words) that are relevant to your website and are likely to be searched in order to reach you. The first thing you can do is integrate these keywords into your content as naturally as possible. They should be part of the natural flow of information, and they should make several appearances.  The second thing is using headers to emphasize your keywords. Use your keywords in your headers. This is done through the title text box in the Wix website builder.

Third but certainly as important, use the keywords in your Meta tags. Meta tags are added through the website builder settings that appear at the top of the editor.  Add a title (up to 70 characters long) and a description (around 155 characters including spacing). Use the keywords you want to promote and make sure your description isn’t too short.

3. Links

Links are an important part of search engine optimization. A link pointing at you lets the search engine know you’re there. The more links pointing at you’re the higher your chances of getting indexed faster. Links from high ranking websites, or more important websites (aka – websites with a high page rank) are better and more meaningful than links from link farms or websites of low importance (meaning – websites with a low or no page rank). To take full advantage of the linking system use anchor links. Anchor links are links that are embedded organically into the text. For example, I could say that if you want to learn more about using links to promote your website, you should follow the link. So now the search engine knows that the target page has something to do with information on links and website promotion, and if lots of you start clicking on that link, it will also learn that the content on that page must be valuable. This will increase the ranking and rating of the target page.

4. Structure

The structure of your website is the way each page is connected to another and the manner in which information flows through your site. These days it is understood that the best type of website architecture is a flat architecture. By creating a flat architecture you are endeavoring that each page on your website can be reached with a minimum amount of clicks. This is good both for your website’s users and for search engines. If your homepage has the maximum page rank and importance, than that importance is trickled down throughout the pages. That’s why keeping as many pages as possible as close as possible to the home page (close in terms of the number of links apart), increases their importance.

5. Sitemaps, Directories and Submitting to the Search Engines

There are a number of methods to help your website get indexed along with all the pages in it. The first method of getting all your pages indexed is by using sitemaps. Sitemaps map out all the pages of your website through links. As the search engine crawls your website, having a sitemap increases the chances that all the pages will be crawled and indexed.

Get listed in as many directories as possible. The more traffic a directory has the better. Getting listed under the most relevant category lets search engines know more about your website and also leads relevant traffic your way. It’s an all round beneficial method of promoting your website online.

Last but not least, you can also submit your website directly to the search engines. Both Yahoo and Google have manual submission pages. This does not ensure that the crawler will index your website but it certainly increases the chances.

Good Luck.

If you’ve been reading the previous posts in this blog than you know that different links have different ratings and different levels of importance, depending on the source page’s page rank. Well, you may also have noticed that your facebook and twitter profiles have a pretty high page rank. So how do you use it? Well, Matt Cutts posted this short and interesting vlog on this subject recently.

Here’s a summary of his key points:
If your facebook profile is completely public, then Google can register the page rank and use it to transfer what I like to call ‘link juice’ to your website. Of course, if your profile isn’t public then Google can’t register the page rank and then this link won’t the same weight and value. It has standard marketing value, but in terms of SEO, you might want to consider opening a public profile specifically for promotional purposes. It’s just a very powerful tool.

Twitter usually adds no-follow to its outgoing links to prevent spamming so its links aren’t as relevant to the SEO cause. Check out his video to learn more on this subject.

Your website architecture is important both in terms of its target audience usability and also when taking search engines into consideration.

Focusing on the search engines for this post remember that your site architecture may influence and affect your page rank and traffic, particularly for inner pages. A higher page rank doesn’t necessarily ensure a higher ranking in search results, but it helps. It also tells your users that the information on your page is reliable, having passed the Google test.

So what does ‘flat architecture’ mean? Flat architecture is the alternative to ‘deep’ or ‘nested’ architecture. A deep architecture refers to a long chain of links, leading to inner pages, while a flat architecture refers to a system where practically no link chains exist and each page can be reached in one, two or three links.

Having a flat website makes it possible to access each page on your website quickly. From a search engine’s perspective less clicks translates into higher importance and fewer clicks into diminished importance. This is also based on the logic that the more clicks it takes to reach a page, the fewer the viewers who will reach it. This doesn’t mean you should put all your content on one page. Keep in mind that the logic behind Google’s algorithms is to target improved usability, if all your content is on one page and assuming that you have enough content to fill in several pages, will clog the page and make it harder for users to understand where and what to look at.

Here is a sketch of what was traditionally considered the best practice for an SEO structured website:

Here is a sketch of a modified web architecture, based on the flat structure theory:

This modified web structure is a good idea for websites. If you have hundreds of pages you may find that you’re clogging your homepage with links and damaging the usability of your website, not to mention that Google traditionally does not crawl over 100 links on a specific page.

In terms of transferring the ‘link juice’ and improving the ranking, the more links on a page, the more the potency of the link juice is diminished. Most experts agree that the typical algorithm for link juice is something along the lines: .85 * (1/X), with ‘x’ representing the number of links on the page.  Even so, homepage links are stronger and more valuable than deeper links and the further away a page is (in terms of links) from the homepage, the lower its page rank and importance.

Please remember that this is referring specifically to small websites. Websites with thousands of pages will have to utilize a completely different strategy that will be compatible with their size and subject. If you would like to read further on this subject, you may enjoy Sergey & Larry’s famous original paper on Page Rank .

Good luck with your new Flash website!