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.

This week I’d like to talk to you about a great new idea for promoting your websites Many of you have used Wix to create a Flash website for your business or non-profit organization and this could be particularly interesting for you.

Submit your website to Google’s Local Business Center listings. According to Google’s statistics 82% of searches for local business information go through Google. By submitting your website to this service you can control the way your business is listed in Google and its appearance in Google maps. This definitely gives you an advantage as you can also get information on the actual searches. The best news? It’s a free service so this is really a win-win situation.  Take a look at the short video they prepared explaining how to list your website. If you search ‘plumbers in New York for example, the first results will show the best results from Google’s local directory with a link to their website and a phone number alongside the Google map pin pointing their location. Putting it bluntly – this is good for business.

So What are the Advantages?

Getting your page listed is just the first advantage. With this listing, your traffic will increase, leading to an improved ranking for your website in general and the other keywords as well.

Also, you can get all sorts of information on your business you would not have had access to before, such as what type of keywords are being used to find you, what area of town your customers are coming from,  of  the type of traffic arriving at your site. Understanding trends amongst your clientele will allow you to cater to these specific needs.

If you have a restaurant for example, you may discover that 40% of the people reaching your website are searching for seafood or are coming from a specific area of town where you may want to open a second branch.

Knowing which keywords are working for you can give you a better idea of how to optimize your website textually, which words to emphasize and which words are just not working for you.

In short this is a win-win situation allowing you to get more from the search engine and putting your business on the map.

Good Luck!

If you’ve upgraded your Flash website to premium, you may be using Google analytics to study the trends and behavior of your website. Keeping a close eye on your website’s trends is a good idea as it helps you know what changes you can implement to improve the statistics, or what is already working.

Here are a few of the terms you’ll encounter in your Analytics account:

Bounce rate –

The bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who enter your site and leave after viewing only one page. If you have a blog that may not be so bad, but usually people prefer to keep the bounce rate as low as possible.

How do you keep the bounce rate as low as possible? Well, it depends on many different factors, but make sure your navigation is clear and legible, so visitors to your site understand where each button or link will lead them. Also, take a look at the sources of your traffic. Which keywords are leading them to your site? Perhaps you’ve been indexed in non-relevant keywords and you need to optimize your site to bring better traffic your way.

Unique visitors –

Unique visitors are first time visitors who have never before been to your website. How is this measured? As you visit a website for the first time, a cookie is planted on your computer. Don’t worry, it’s a harmless cookie and you won’t feel it any other way. Next time you visit that website, it will search and find this cookie on your computer and recognize you and register you in the visitor loyalty statistics.

Visitor Loyalty –

Visitor loyalty is measured by the number of repeat visits your website gets.

Page Views (vs. impressions) (vs. hits) -

A page view is registered when a visitor requests to view a ‘page’ type file. This should not be confused with impressions and/or hits.

Each page view may include many hits. Hits count the number of times a person requests to view a file on a certain page. There could be numerous files on each page and hundreds of hits for each page.

An impression refers to the number of times an advertisement is loaded onto a user’s screen. This is only relevant to those of you including banners and advertisements in your website. From the other direction – when you visit a website and see a banner, even if you ignore it – you’ve made an impression. Isn’t that nice for you?

% Exit –

The Exit rate is different for each page. It is the percentage of users who have exited from that page.

If you want to learn more about Analytics in general you can always visit the official Google Analytics blog and if you have more questions about how to connect your wix.com Flash website to Google visit our help center, the Wixipedia article on the subject. Remember, to use embed Google Analytics into your Wix website you need to upgrade, any of the packages will do. Following your website’s statistics is like collecting intelligence reports that allow you to adjust your website and improve its usability. This benefits both you and your visitors.

Have Fun!

Rumors have been a buzzing across the web that Google is about to introduce a new algorithm that will affect anyone who deals with SEO, SEM (search engine marketing) and web design.

This new algorithm is being called Google Caffeine and it will be launched some time after the holidays. So what is it? Matt Cutts calls it “…the new technology that improves our indexing infrastructure.”

Here are the categories in which tweaks and changes have been made. In some categories the changes are more dramatic than others, but in all cases the changes are constructed over Google’s basic line of thought – what’s good for you is good for Google and what’s good for Google is good for your users and business as well.

1. Content is Still King

Good news optimizers, content is still king. More to the point, relevant content is still king. Your website’s content should relate to your main message, to your products or your services. You’ll find irrelevant content to be much less effective. Also, an easily indexed website will get higher ranking than a website the Google bot finds hard to crawl. For this reason you should refrain from using a shotgun approach. Adding original content, or presenting your content in an original way is recommend and is also a good way of promoting your website for search engines. Sites that are indexed well lead to accurate search results. Accurate search results improve the service Google can provide its users and in turn improves business. You can apply the same logical train of thought to your customers and/or target market.

2. Meta Tags

Titles and descriptions continue to be critical elements in the indexing process. It’s in your best interest as well as Google’s to provide accurate descriptions to your web pages. While Google will only display up to about 155 characters in its search result and will only crawl about 200 characters, it’s also important not to leave your description too short. I’ve seen many cases in which the user’s description was so short, Google bots decided to use alternative texts instead. The website builders were then surprised to discover irrelevant texts or texts they hadn’t planned on using as descriptions spearheading their search results.

3. Website Loading Time

While I haven’t mentioned this criteria before it is based on the same principles as the rest of Google indexing doctrine. If your website takes a long time to load, its reasonable enough to assume that this will frustrate a certain percentage of users who will then leave the site by backtracking or by giving up on the search altogether. This affects the site’s usability and therefore also the website’s ranking in Google. So next time you upload pictures with the wix website builder, make sure they aren’t heavy, large sized images that will make it really hard for the page to load.

4. Refreshing Content

The new caffeine algorithm is expected to give greater weight to websites that are being constantly refreshed and updated with new content. This means that websites that have not been touched for a while will lose their ranking. This is a logical progression as it stands to reason that if a website has not been updated for a while, it has either been abandoned or has become outdated and therefore lost relevancy. Once again Google proves, that what is good for Google is good for you.

5. Quality Linking

Anybody who deals with SEO knows there are high quality links and low quality links and everything in the middle. If this is the first time you’re hearing this I recommend that you read a few of the earlier posts in this blog on links. From now on, quality links will not be the only factor. This means that even if you have a link to your website from a great site with a fantastic page rank, unless the content of your site is relevant to the source site and unless the link is organic, or a so called ‘natural link’, it will have less importance in determining your ranking and indexing. The same goes for outgoing links. If you send a link out to a great website with a high page rank, make sure that website is relevant to yours, otherwise you’re simply wasting potent linking juice.

Well that’s it for today folks. I guess all we can do is stay put and wait expectantly for the new caffeine algorithm to kick in so we can all have some fun!

I want to use this post to address a prevalent misconception. Many people, as they begin to optimize their website, tend to perceive this process as somewhat contradictory with the rest of the work they’ve put in with the product and potential users in mind. In fact, the work they invest in their website is divided between work optimizing for users and work optimizing for Google – when in fact these two are almost one and the same.

Google and you have the same agenda

Google wants to know what your website is about – so do we. Think of your new free Flash website as a well written essay. You’d have to ask yourself first what the essay is about and if you can’t summarize this concept in a sentence, you aren’t doing your job well. What is your website about? Is it about selling t-shirts? Is it a business website for a dentist’s office? Is it your band’s fan page? Make sure this message is clear and comes across fast. There were over 183 million websites on the internet as of early 2009 and this number just keeps growing. If a visitor reaches your website and doesn’t know what it’s about he has no reason to stay. It takes a lot less time to click your mouse than it does to walk out of a store.

Google has the same agenda. It wants to be able to give the best search results and this depends very much on how you present your website. It uses algorithms that are meant to discover your website’s purpose and subject. That’s why it reads the titles and gives them precedence over other types of texts. That’s why the description is so important. That’s why it crawls the links leading to your website to understand what subjects are relevant to your website. If you’re website’s message is clear to Google, it will most likely be clear to an actual human visitor.

Define your website’s message clearly

Many people have searched and found ways to outmaneuver Google’s algorithms and get their website listed on the first page. However, Google continuously updates its algorithms and these websites don’t last very long. Spamming is basically a waste of time at the end of the day. You aren’t serving your users/visitors by offering them shitty content, and you aren’t going to get very far with Google either. Playing the game however, may be a little harder and more complex, but it will improve the quality of your website and get you the right kind of traffic.

So make sure you define your message clearly. Notice our header: ‘Learn. Optimize. Get Your Wix Ranked’. Bing.  You know exactly what this blog is about. So does Google.

Are you being Google friendly?

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

This will be useful for those of you who are wondering whether Google has indexed your site, and what it looks like from the crawler’s POV.

The feature I’m talking about is the cache feature.
The technical definition for cache memory is ‘a fast storage buffer in the central processing unit of a computer’. Basically, cache is storage and what this means is that Google stores each website it crawls.

Google takes a snapshot of each of the crawled pages and stores (caches) this version. As you enter a search word, notice that practically every search result offers a regular link and a ‘cached’ link.

Why is this useful?

This is useful in cases of internet congestion (if you are unable to access the current page), if a website is very slow to upload or if the owner is working on the page and subsequently making it unavailable. Remember, when you view a cached web page you are viewing that web page as it appeared during the crawlers last visit. It may be quite different in the present.

Also, when you visit a cached version of a website from the Google search, you will see this page with your keywords highlighted in different colors. This can make it easier for you to find the content you were searching for.

So how does this affect You?

The good news is you can see Google’s stored snapshot of your website. This is a great solution for those of you who are wondering if Google has indexed your Flash website, and how exactly it sees it.

To see a cached version of your website, enter your website’s URL with the word cache: before it in the Google search. For example: cache:http://www.seomywix.com. If your website comes up, this means Google has already indexed it.

Another way to see the cached version of your website is to search for it in Google and choose the ‘cached’ link instead of the regular title link.

You can also download Google’s nifty tool bar, a very useful device in general, and cache the page you’re looking at.

At the top of the cached page is a header reminding you that you may not be viewing the current version of the website. It also gives you the date on which the crawler indexed this page. This is a good way for you to find out when and how often Google’s crawler indexes your website.

One last piece of information on cache. Google will cache the first 101kilobytes of text on your website, so if you have more than that (texts that is), don’t be surprised if you can’t retrieve it in the cached version of your website.

Search Engines – About and Beyond

After diving straight into the deep end and discussing redirects, search engine crawlers and site optimization I think it’s time for a little background. It’s important to know what options we have out there and the differences between the search engines may affect the way we work with them. We mention Google 100 times a day in different contexts, but what is Google? What other options does it give me? And who are its competitors?

Google– was established in September 1998 by Larry Page & Sergey Brin as a Stanford University project. Today it is the number one search engine with well over 60% of worldwide searches. Google offers a wide range of features including the ‘Cache’ option that allows you to easily see how the crawler perceives your site or older versions of web pages. It also provides spell checking, access to dictionary definitions, maps, telephone numbers and more. Google has its own free toolbar that has gained a lot of popularity and operates the Knol site which is an information community where many articles are published by Google users.

To get listed in Google you can submit your site directly or create links to it from other ranked websites.

In addition, Google also operates advertisement programs through AdWords, which is a Pay Per Click (PPC) program where webmasters can create short ads and choose the keywords.  Payment is made depending on the demand for that keyword and according to the number of times the ad was clicked.

Yahoo – this is the oldest directory on the web, launched in 1994. Originally this was a place where human editors arranged websites into categories. Later, in 2002 Yahoo shifted towards crawler-based listings that came from Google until February 2004. Today, Yahoo uses its own technology but it maintains a ‘human’ directory under theYahoo Directory Home Page.

The search engine includes easy to use tabs above the search box, making it possible to search for images, Yellow Page listings or shopping results. Inclusion in the commercial listings includes a fee, although non-commercial content is accepted free of charge. The search engine also launched a content acquisition program in 2004, where sites can pay to be included in the crawler results, although Yahoo assures that this does not guarantee ranking. This program also brings in content from non-profit organizations for free.

Just like Google, Yahoo also sells paid placement ads that appear on its site and are distributed to other sites. The current Yahoo crawler technology is a combination of AltaVista and AllTheWeb technology together with Inktomi (a crawler based search engine company developed from UC Berkley), purchased in March 2003.

Submitting to Yahoo is possible through their site, and you can choose a category for you website.

Ask – this search engine rose to prominence in 1998 & 1999. The concept was the use of ‘natural’ language. This means that you can ask a question in a ‘natural’ format and find search results, thanks to unique technology. In reality however, at the starting point at least, there were 100 human editors monitoring the search log – making sure the search engine’s performance was up to par, even when the technology was not. Later the technology was improved as Ask acquired Direct Hit in 1999 and then, in 2001, Teoma’s unique index and search relevancy technology. Today, Ask also uses crawler based technology to provide results for its users. The algorithm which Teoma uses is known as ExpertRank.

You cannot list your free website with Ask.com for free. You can either wait until its crawler finds you – again, through incoming links from other, ranked sites, or you can add a sponsored link for PPC.

Other Search Engines to Consider

AllTheWeb.com – powered by Yahoo, AllTheWeb is lighter and more customizable. It focuses on web searches but news, videos, pictures, MP3 and FTP searches are also provided.

AllTheWeb provides an easy and free submission process.

AOL.com – this search engine has internal and external search results. This depends on whether you are using AOL as a service provider or not. The ‘external’ version’s listings come directly from Google’s crawler based index, meaning that the same search in both search engines will come up with almost identical results. Why use AOL search? Because you are an AOL user. Even so, the ‘internal’ version provides links to content that is only available within the AOL online service. Certain things that are available with Google are not available with an AOL search, such as the cached option.

To get listed in AOL you need to be listed with Google, as AOL virtually duplicates Google’s editorial and ad listings.

HotBot – provides access to the three major crawler based search engines on the web, Yahoo, Google and Teoma. It’s ‘Choose a Search Engine’ interface was launched in December 2002, but HotBot had a long history prior to that as a search brand.

HotBot debuted in May 1996 and initially had a strong following amongst hardcore searchers looking for comprehensive and quality results. At the time, search results were provided by Inktomi. HotBot’s popularity began to drop when it switched over to using Direct Hit’s search results for its main listings in 1999. This is about the time Google entered the scene, and Direct Hit’s results could not compete, causing both search engines to drop.

To get listed in HotBot you need to be listed by the three major crawlers it uses to day.

More and More Choices

AltaVista was launched in 1995 and served as the Google of the day for a while. Unfortunately when AltaVista turned into a portal in 1998 it lost track of the importance of the search and overtime, the relevancy of the results dropped as did the freshness of the listings and web coverage.

Today AltaVista is focused on searches again and results come from Yahoo. Certain tabs above the search box allow you to find images, MP3/audio files, video files and human category listings.

AltaVista is good for those Yahoo users who prefer a lighter interface.

Live Search is Microsoft’s web search engine. It is designed to compete with market leaders such as Google and Yahoo. It offers a few innovative features, such as the option of viewing more results on the same page (as opposed to clicking through subsequent pages) and the option of customizing the amount of information displayed for each search query. For example, you can choose to view only the title, or a short summary, or a long summary… depending on your needs. You can also save searches that will continue to be automatically updated.

Lycos was launched in 1994 and is one of the oldest search engines around. In April 1999 it stopped crawling the web for listings on its own and instead began to provide human powered results for popular  queries and crawler based results through Yahoo for other search terms.

It’s ‘Fast Forward’ option allows you to see results on one side of your screen while the actual page are listed on the other. Relevant human-compiled informational categories appear at the bottom of the results page.

To get listed on Lycos you need to be listed on AllTheWeb.com.

The open directory uses volunteer editors who catalog the web. It was launched in June 1998 under the name NewHoo and was purchased by the AOL Time Warner owned Netscape in November 1998.

You can view searches directly from the Open Directory but their interface is not recommended. The site has no backup results in case there is no match in the human-compiled database. Also, the site rankings by keywords are poor, and an alphabetical order is used when you browse the categories.

A better option is to use the version offered by Google, called the Google Directory. Google uses refined algorithms to analyze links and push the better pages from the human database to the top. Also, when viewing the sites by category, they will be listed in order of their page rank. This means the most popular sites will be on top based on link analysis.

7 Super Tips to Getting Google to Crawl Your Site Faster

Search engine crawlers will index your new website, but it may take them anywhere from 1 month to 3 months. Three months is a long time and I know that I for one really don’t have that kind of patience. So for those of you who are like me, here’s some information on your Wix website’s indexing process and what you can do to help.

Can Google Index My Flash Website?

There’s been a lot of discussion on whether the search engines can actually crawl and read Flash websites. As of today, at least Google and Yahoo are able to index texts compiled into SWF and any HTML automatically generated by Flash. Even though SWF itself isn’t particularly searchable, any content (texts) inside a SWF can still be visible and indexed easily using the right techniques. In short, don’t despair – your Wix can and will definitely be indexed. Wix was designed especially to suit Google and the other search engines. Also, we are always developing Wix to remain on the cutting edge with SEO updates from Google and different online sources.

Just look at the picture below. Wix’s website is created using the Wix editor, and there it is ranked right at the top of the first page. Try a few other relevant keywords and see what happens.

Now let’s approach other tactics.

1. Make Sure You’ve Checked the Settings Boxes

First of all, make sure you’ve checked the ‘List in Search Engines’ box in the Wix editor’s settings menu. If you haven’t done so thus far, visit the editor and do so now.

2. Titles, Descriptions and Keywords

Make sure to update titles, descriptions and keywords in the Wix editor’s settings menu.

The title and description appear in search engine results so even though you can’t see the description on your site, it is one of the most important marketing elements, both in terms of the search engines and towards generating traffic.

A good title: This should include your website’s name, and be up to about 10 words long (70 characters).

A description: Should include relevant keywords and be about 30-35 words long (or up to 190 characters).

Keywords: Add about 5-7 keywords to the Wix editor settings menu. Make sure to use keywords that are relevant and actually appear in your general content. Use as many of your keywords as possible in your description, title and headers to strengthen their relevancy. For more information on the Settings check out the Wixpedia.

3. Words, Words, Words

Make sure you have enough good and relevant content. Textual content is Google’s bread and butter. You need to have at least 400 words on your Home Page and 250 words on each of your website’s other pages. If you don’t already have that, start thinking creatively on what kind of written content you can add and where to place it. Also keep in mind that Google (and the other search engines) like relevant sites. It’s not a great mystery that if your site is a business website, it may be slightly confusing if you give it an Arts and Crafts title. Your keywords and texts should be organic, relevant and natural.

If you really don’t want text on your page you can add it as a small footer at the bottom of the page for example.

4. The Chain of Links

Get as many incoming links as you can onto your web page! Google finds new sites through incoming links. As it crawls a familiar site, it follows links from that site to other websites. If you don’t have any incoming links to your website, it just won’t be discovered. Wix automatically creates two links for you when you a build a website using one of Wix’s templates. One is from the directory and one from an XML site map. This helps Google crawl your site but there are many other things which you can do. If you’re having trouble finding someone to send links your way (and you don’t have another website that’s already indexed for example), try link exchanges. People are always grateful when you send traffic their way, and let’s face it; nobody is going to stay in your website forever. So you might as well make friends. Add the links organically into the text. For example, if I want you to read more about Flash templates, I’ll anchor the link into the text.

5. Get Quality Links

Get good, quality links. Google crawls an average site once a month. On the other hand, it crawls the big sites, such as Dig, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia every day, so if you add an incoming link to your website from your facebook account, you raise the chances that your website will be indexed fast.

6. Submit Your URL to Major Search Engines

Submit your website directly to the major search engines. Once you’ve done that and read our previous blog about texts and how Google loves them, try submitting your URL to Google . This may make the process a little faster. Submit your website to the other major directories: Google, Yahoo , MSN , Ask etc.

7. Connecting Your Domain

Index your new domain to Google. If you plan on upgrading your Wix account to use your own domain, we highly recommend you do so before submitting the original freebie account. The reason being, that when you index the Wix URL, it takes Google about a month to index it. Once you connect and submit your new domain, the entire process begins from scratch, thus taking double the time it would to submit the final URL from the start.

To dig deeper into the world of SEO, visit Google’s webmaster’s site.