Moonfruit Lounge - Technical info

Changes to the way HTML is generated

Dan — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:55:00 +0000

Hi, Dan here, SiteMaker's HTML developer guy. I've been working to make the HTML that we output a little more user and search engine friendly. As you may or may not know, we generate an HTML version of your site mainly for SEO reasons but also as an alternative for people who don't have Flash or are using a non-visual web browser. If you wanna know exactly what I've been up to, then read on...

Previously we'd been attempting to make a visually equivalent page with varying degrees of success...so we've decided to switch focus to a content based approach. What does that mean? Well, the idea is that the most important thing on your website is the content - the text and pictures -and I've been focusing on making the HTML site more readable when you don't have flash (maybe you're browsing on your iPhone for example). There's a fair distance to go but here are the changes that have gone out in this release:

H1 tag - The first Title text box on a page is now rendered as an H1 tag. The idea here is that you want to promote the content of each page and I'm making a best guess that the first Title text box on a page is going to be the page's title. Title text boxes on the Page Master are still rendered as h2s. The idea here is to focus on the unique content on each page.

H3 tags - Lots of you seem to be using normal text boxes using bold text as smaller headings. If you've got a text box that only has bold text in it and it's less than 120 characters long then it'll be converted to an H3.

No more boxes around text - The HTML now ignores text box dimensions. I found that a lot of the time the text rendered in the HTML didn't fit inside smaller sized boxes and you ended up with an HTML site covered in scroll bars.

New "View HTML Version" on the Page Settings panel - If you click this now you'll get a view of the site as it appears to people without Flash (minus the graphic that shouts INSTALL FLASH!).

Continuing the work on the HTML version of the site I'm currently looking into making the text render in the right order if it's laid out in more than one column (you know, like a sidebar or something similar). Feedback as always is welcome, after all, this is something of a work in progress.

Sitemaps and Google Verify

Walt — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:16:00 +0000

The wait is over. We took on board the number of requests for these two tools and decided you'd waited long enough. All users can now publish sitemaps, as well as Verify their websites.

For details on how to check for the sitemap and how to add Google Verify, read on...

Verify To add Google Verify to your site, please just follow the simple instructions below:

Log in to your website
Select “Admin” on the toolbar
Visit the “Site Information” tab
Click on the “Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools” button
On the bottom of the Webmaster Tools panel click “Get your Google ID”
Google should open in a new window and ask you to sign in
You’ll be taken to the Google "Dashboard"
Add your website address in blank field and click "Add Site"
Look for the "Next step" box and select, "Verify Site"
Go to the "Verification Method" drop down and select "Add a meta tag"
Copy the code string e.g.: <meta name="verify-v1" content="UqbdIVXyU8m8PIvMSJLj+W6bf5Sa4An1CZcxazTgafs=" />
Return to your website and paste the code string into the blank field in the "Webmaster Tools" panel
Click "OK"
Click "OK" on "Admin" panel
Your site will now have the Google Verification code added to the HTML

N.B. The code string given above (<meta name="verify-v1" content="UqbdIVXyU8m8PIvMSJLj+W6bf5Sa4An1CZcxazTgafs=" />) is an example, please do not use this, it won't work! You must register with Google and request your own.

Sitemap We automatically generate an XML file which search engines will index when ever they visit your site. We automatically publish all pages visible in the menu and withhold those that are hidden. If you wish hidden pages to be published you will need to visit the hidden page, click on "Edit" and then go to "Page Settings". You can then select the check box for "Include this page in my Site Map".

To see your site map, you only need to add "/sitemap.xml" to the end of your website address (or URL) in the web browser address bar e.g. www.mysitename.com/sitemap.xml

If you see the message: "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.", don't panic! This is being generated by the browser (most likely Firefox) and relates to 'how' the information is being displayed in your browser and does not affect what the search engines 'see'.

UPDATE (18/01/08):

For those of you checking site verification you will probably encounter some "403 (Forbidden)" errors. They will appear in list with entries similar to the two below:

(http://www.mysite.com/_app/8296/partner/moonfruit/modules/) 403 (Forbidden) _?_
(http://www.mysite.com/_app/8296/resources/) 403 (Forbidden) _?_

These are folders that the the web crawlers (or robots) should not be accessing as they contain and relate to software that runs your site and they do not contain any of your site content.

Our mistake has been to omit an 'exclude' comment telling robots not to look in these directories, which have restricted access anyway. So the web crawlers attempt to read these directories, are not permitted and subsequently generate a 'Forbidden' error.

This bug will be fixed very soon. We will simply request that the web crawlers do not check those directories and this will mean errors will not be generated.

These errors will have no impact on the indexing of your site or your page rankings!

UPDATE (08/02/08):

We have now modified the 'robots.txt' file to stop the web crawlers reading our application directories and throwing up 'errors'. However, now that we have blocked these directories you will probably see a report from Google that says: "URL restricted by robots.txt " and listing the same '.../_app/...' directories (as mentioned above). Google themselves recognise that some directories can be restricted for a logical reason and then simply continue crawling your site for valid content and links.

Just to reiterate, seeing a 'restricted' message is not a cause for alarm and this will not affect your site being indexed or impact your page rankings.

SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part VI - Return of the Taxi

Walt — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:35:00 +0000

If you thought we'd let Joe's Taxis gather dust in West London you were wrong. Far from being abandoned to the internet ether we've kept tabs on how the 'mythical' west London taxi business was doing six months down the line, after being set up by Joe. As far as rankings go, the two domain names are doing very nicely thank you.

For an update on how Joe's London Taxis and West London Taxis have changed in their rankings with the major search engines, read on.

In Joe's SEO article (SEO III) on Friday, March 16 2007 he had began his submissions process to Google, Yahoo and MSN. By Tuesday, March 27 2007, Joe's sites had found their mark with at least two of the major search engines. And by June his site had managed some success (check out his last article, "SEO V"):

June 12

"West London Taxi" - number 7, "Joes London Taxis" - number 1 (Google.com)
"West London Taxi" - number 2, "Joes London Taxis" - number 1 (Yahoo.com)
"West London Taxi" - number 1, "Joes London Taxis" - number 1 (msn.com)

Yesterday, we used the same set of keywords - "west london taxi" and "joes london taxis" - and we got the following results:

December 12

"West London Taxi" - number 1, "Joes London Taxis" - number 1 (Google.com)
"West London Taxi" - number 1, "Joes London Taxis" - number 1 (Yahoo.com)
"West London Taxi" - number 6, "Joes London Taxis" - number 1 (msn.com)

So, what have we done? Well, to be honest, nothing. But this does go to show you that with some solid groundwork in the early stages of your journey to the dark side of SEO you can actually get your site or sites into a very good position on the page rankings of the major search engines. However, if you resubmit your domain name (URL), keep your content fresh and get some incoming links from popular sites then you can ensure your site has a much better chance of achieving and maintaining a top ranking.

A reminder

Just to highlight the steps Joe took all those months ago, remember that search engines do look for consistency and relevancy in a number of different areas of your in-page content and referral links. These include:

The URL (or address) of your site (or specific pages on your site), e.g. www.joeslondontaxis.com, or www.joeslondontaxis.com/taxibooking, etc.
Your site name or title (and page titles) being published in the HTML, e.g. "London taxi company", or "London taxi bookings page"
Your site and page keywords meta data published in the HTML, e.g. "London taxis, London taxi, Joes taxis, West London taxi, etc."
Your site and page description meta data published in the HTML, e.g. "London taxi company provides taxi services..."
Your page content, e.g. the text that is on your page and relevant to your site name, keywords and description
Links on your page, including the anchor text, e.g. the text on which the link is set, e.g. "Book a west London taxi" links to http://www.joeslondontaxis.com/taxibooking
Images on your page, including the name of the image file (or Alt text)
Referral links to your site or specific pages on your site, e.g. a link on another site (incoming links) referring to your site

Points 1-7 are easily within your control as they all relate to the contents of your site and all can be easily managed through your SiteMaker site. Point 8 requires linking to your site from other external sites, which is less easy to achieve, though there are a number of ways in which you can go about doing this.

If you haven't yet had a read of Joe's articles and you are interested in getting your site listed or improving the rankings of your site, then the easiest way to find the articles is just enter "SEO" in the Moonfruit Lounge search.

Finally

Just remember, as Joe has already mentioned, SEO isn't everything. It certainly plays a big part in marketing your website but traditional off-line publishing methods still play a crucial part in the overall marketing strategy of any site. Good luck, persist with your search engine optimisation, and be patient. It doesn't happen overnight but if you follow our guidelines it will happen.

More Articles about SEO

SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part I (In the beginning - the 1st in this series by Joe)

SiteMaker, Flash and SEO (Why SiteMaker works with SEO)

Why am I (or my visitors) seeing a text only version of my site?

Walt — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:14:00 +0000

This problem is being encountered for users with Internet Explorer 6.

To enable the SiteMaker application and the web pages to load quicker we made changes to some code (JavaScript) which we released recently.

We use JavaScript to detect what version of Flash Player you have installed on your system amongst other things and we upgraded the JavaScript file and the loading process for this file to provide several improvements. Unfortunately, IE6 isn't exactly standards compliant so our mission to improve efficiency appears to have upset the IE6 web browser.

IE7, Firefox, Safari etc have no issues with these improvements.

Web browsers will store or cache commonly visited pages and files (like JavaScript) to make web browsing more efficient. The older JavaSript file should have been replaced by the newer version, but due to a deficiency in IE6 the older version was not over-written in some cases. In effect, IE6 thinks there is no Flash Player installed and therefore displays the text only version of your site.

Fixing this is simple. All you need to do is to delete your 'temporary Internet files', also known as 'clearing your cache', which will delete the older JavaScript file and force the browser to request the latest version. To do this, go to the IE6 toolbar:

Open the Tools menu
Select Internet Options
If the General tab is not selected, select it
Select Delete Files in the Temporary Internet Files section
Choose OK
Close and re-open your web browser

The other option is to upgrade to IE7 which offers tabbed browsing, more options and a more 'robust' version of web browser. You can upgrade to IE7 by visiting the Microsoft website.

Should you need to upgrade Flash, our minimum requirement is now Flash Player 8 and you can download the latest Flash version from the Adobe website.

My music is playing back too fast - it sounds like Chipmunks!

Walt — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:00:00 +0000

Do the MP3s on your site sounding like Chip and Dale (the chipmunks) are doing covers of your favourite songs? The reason is down to how you initially encoded your songs. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

Files encoded using 'standard' MP3 format at CONSTANT bit rate will normally play without issue, provided the sample rate is a multiple of 44.1kHz - other 'interpolating' sample rates cause Flash Player to speed up the playback.

So, how do you fix this problem? You have two choices...

IMPORTANT Update 21 Dec 07: Especially if your page lengths remain constant throughout your site in IE7: Please just go to Adobe and download the latest Flash player and this should fix get the chipmunks out of your site and give you variable page lengths back. If you downloaded the beta version (in article below) you will find a fix with instructions in comment #2 beneath this post.

You can fix it now: Sample rates of 96000, 44100, 22050 and 11025 samples/second at 8, 16 and 32 bit depth will all work fine. So if you wish to remove the chipmunks from your site you will have to re-encode the offending files using the sample rates given above with one of the constant bit rates. If you are interested there is more information about this bug available.

Adobe will fix it later: This bug will be fixed soon by the release of Flash Player Update 3 which is currently at the Beta 2 stage which will play back any MP3 sampling rate. So, no more chipmunks. Ever. But this will require all your visitors to have downloaded the soon to be released Flash update for this to work, i.e. your visitors must have the update to hear your music correctly.

So you have an option. You can re-encode your music and remove the chipmunks now, or you can wait for the fix to hit the masses.

Google Webmaster Tools - the lowdown

Walt — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:45:00 +0000

Firstly, sorry for going quiet on you in the forum with regards to some requests. The truth is we have been listening but we've been busy over the last few weeks discussing what we could offer, how it would be presented and when we would find time to develop it. So in answer to your many questions about Google Webmaster tools on Moonfruit, please read on...

From what we hear (on the forum) the main requests are for Google Verify and Google Sitemaps. Let's look at them one at a time.

Google Verify Just to be clear, site verification is a process that Google uses to ensure that only site owners can see detailed diagnostics, statistics and other information. It is worth also noting that Verification doesn't affect Page Rank or improve your site's performance in Google's search results. This is from the horse's mouth.

What we currently offer: Google Analytics, which is the statistics element you would be using to monitor your site stats once verification is enabled. Analytics allows you to find out where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site.

What we are looking to implement: We've already started looking at how we can enable Verify on users' sites. Inserting the meta tag which Google provide may be the best solution for us and the quickest for you. We're looking at doing this at the moment, so if you're lucky you may find it in your Xmas stockings.

Google SiteMaps When it comes to Sitemaps you have a choice of generating different types of files which can then be submitted or uploaded to Google or Yahoo or having some code included in your site which is read by the various search engines. Simply put, a sitemap using the Sitemap Protocol is an XML file that lists URLs (unique pages) for a site. It also permits the inclusion of additional information about each URL (when it was last updated; how often it changes; how important it is in relation to other URLs in your site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

What we currently do: We render all the content (publicly available on your site) into the HTML for each page so that they can be read by the search engines along with page title, links, meta keywords and meta description for those pages.

What we are looking to implement: We are currently working on using the Sitemap Protocol to publish a sitemap for each site so that every page URL (that you wish displayed) is listed for not just Google to crawl and index, but Yahoo and any other search engine that will read this widely accepted protocol.

This is being worked on at present although we make no promises about Xmas stockings. But, you never know!

Where's my email? The truth about forms

Walt — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:44:00 +0000

We often have customers ask us why emails that are sent from forms on their site take so long to arrive or why they just don't arrive at all? Slow or lost emails isn't a common event but the cause of this problem usually is. For more details read on...

Common Cause

The most common cause of emails not being delivered to a site owner or site leader's inbox is the email filter. This could either be a junk or spam filter.

When a visitor completes a form on your site and submits it, an email is generated to you (the site leader) from mailings@sitemakerlive.com. Our mail server sends the email to the nominated email address immediately and once it leaves our servers we lose all control over what path it takes and whether or not it gets delivered. If the email client - the package or application you use to view, send and manage your emails - has strict filters then some 'safe' emails may never reach your inbox.

One way of ensuring your emails from 'sitemakerlive.com' arrive in your inbox is to check your spam and junk mail folders and if you find any emails from us just highlight or select them and mark them as 'not junk' or 'not spam'. The other useful way of ensuring that your emails arrive is to add 'sitemakerlive.com' to your list of safe domains.

We have also found that having your own email domain and forwarding your emails can have its problems also. Using an email address with your domain name - when you buy your own website domain name you may get email addresses as well - on your forms will mean mail is normally sent to your domain name provider where it will then be forwarded (by them) to your own private email account. Occasionally, the domain name providers hold the emails, scan them for viruses, or for phrases and words linked to spam email and then will either delete them if they think they pose a risk or pass them on. This presents two problems: 1) they decide if incoming emails are spam, not you and 2) your emails may be held in a queue for an undefined length of time. So the forwarding of emails could result in you either not getting your emails or getting them hours or days later.

How to test?

Create a hidden page on your site and add a couple of forms to the page. Set one up to go direct to your own private email address and set the other (if you have your own email domain) to use your domain email address. Save the page and then just send two messages, one from each form.

Next, just check how long it takes for those two emails to arrive in your private inbox (if you have forwarded the latter of the two email addresses). If problems exist with you receiving your forwarded email then you will need to speak to your domain name provider and check why emails from 'sitemakerlive.com' are either being delayed or not forwarded. Usually, advising them that emails from our domain are safe is enough to fix the problem.

The best advice is just test your emails on a regular basis to ensure that your service is working correctly.

Also, in the next release (version) of the Form, we will also be saving all the data collected (from the submitted email) to a file that you can download from your site, so you'll never have to worry about losing responses again!

Happy emailing!

Flash and Vista bug: with Internet Explorer and Vista, text entry in Flash drops keystrokes - solution!

Joe — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:08:00 +0100

Some of you new vista users may have noticed problems with text entry in Flash, which will have affected your SiteMaker site. This is due to a general problem with the Flash player and Internet Explorer, which Adobe have now fixed. There is a new version of the Flash player that fixes this issue for IE users on Vista, which is not yet on general release, but can be downloaded and installed from their pre-release site. When Adobe release it in full it will be pushed out by them to all customers, but if you want to upgrade ahead of the game, read on.

This issue only affects users of Microsoft Vista and Internet Explorer. If you use XP or Firefox or a Max, don't worry about it ;-)

How to fix it
This problem has now been fixed by Adobe in the latest version of the Flash player, so please download it here;

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

And that should be that. Let us know if you still have any problems.

SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part V

Joe — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:58:00 +0100

So, done by keywords, started my optimisation, quick check on my current ranks:

"West London Taxi" - number 7, "Joes London Taxis" - number 1 (Google.com)
"West London Taxi" - number 2, "Joes London Taxis" - number 1 (Yahoo.com)
"West London Taxi" - number 1, "Joes London Taxis" - number 1 (msn.com)

Looks good, and I've even finally been listed by Yahoo!

If you've been reading the all the articles in this series of SEO, this will make more sense to you. For those of you who are new, these articles are about how to get your site listed and up in the rankings on the major search engines. I've been building my own site as a practical example as I go, and things seem to be going well.

We've now looking at the last places that you'll want to make sure your keywords are correctly represented to make sure there is good consistency in your content.

5 Your page content, e.g. the text that is on your page

This includes all the other contents on your page, particularly text and any 'alt tags' (alternative text) you have on your images. All this text is represented in the HTML and therefore gets picked up and used by search engines, so make sure it includes some of your keywords. Don't just dump them in so that it's a mess of words (remember your site is read by people too!), so make sure they are relevant and fit in.

For example, on my site I've included the following passage on the home page:

"Picking up and dropping off 24 hours per day!! If you want a West London Taxi call us now" and "So when you want to book a West London Taxi just think of us and call 0870 23 34 xx".

Both of these include my "west London taxi" keyword, and with other references to "Taxi bookings" and other services I offer on the page, this will all support my rankings. But I've been careful to make sure it's still readable and not overly crowded.

6 Links on your page, including the anchor text, e.g. the text on which the link is set

As well as the menu links on my page (which use the menu name as alt text), links in text on your page are a good way of reinforcing your keywords and creating interlinking between your pages.

For example on my home page, I have created links on the words "book a west london taxi" which go to my taxi booking page. To do this in SiteMaker you have to be using a 'standard font' text box (usually preset to be your body font), as only these types of text boxes allow links ('graphic fonts' do not allow links to be set). Next select the text box, then select the text string by clicking and dragging. Then go to the editor, and click on the link panel, choose 'link to a page' and select your page. Then 'apply' and save the page. This link will be correctly represented in your HTML along with the 'anchor text' which is the words on which the link is set, and be read and indexed by search engines.

Then on my taxi bookings page (and other pages), I have created links in the text back to my home page using anchor text like "Joes West London taxis", etc.

Try to make sure that all your pages have 1, 2 or 3 links to other pages using relevant keywords. Don't go nuts and put in 10/20 links, this might be overkill and penalised.

7 Images on your page

Your images can also be used to flag keywords as well as provide a text description of the image itself. For example on my home page I have set an 'alt tag' on the image to say "Office building image - book a west london taxi". This additional text provides extra information about your site, and the text description makes the contents more accessible user users with screenreaders. You can also make these images links to other pages in your site too, which will further improve the interlinking of pages.

To create an 'alt tag' on your image, select the image and then in the 'Editor' click on the 'Style' tab, and then the 'alt tag' button. Then enter your text and choose whether you want to display the text on rollover (it will always be displayed in the HTML), and then 'apply' and you're done.

8 Referral links to your pages

We used referral links to get the site listed in the first place, but they are also a good tool to improve the keyword relevancy and keep your site high in the rankings. It's always worth asking other site owners in related fields to put a link back to your site, and include some of your keywords in the link text. No everyone will do this, and its best not to pester people too much, but if you already have a relationship with another site owner, then this could be a good thing to do.

And that, as they say, is that! Like I said at the beginning, this is not meant to be the be all and end all of SEO guides, but provides some useful, practical tips in a confusing world.

Another good free tool to check how well you've optimised your site is: http://www.widexl.com/remote/search-engines/metatag-analyzer.html

Which will give you a report on the keyword density of your site and the links on your page. My site ranks 'very good' for title, description and keyword relevancy to the site contents, which is a good place to start.

Anyway, I hope you've found this useful, and let me know if you have any tips of your own.

Next Article in Series: SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part VI

SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part IV

Joe — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:31:00 +0100

Ok, so I've done the work, got my keywords worked out for my different pages, got my site listed on the major search engines (see previous article), now what do I do with them? How do I make these changes in SiteMaker? Good question. Glad I know the answer. Here's the how-to's for SiteMaker...

So now that you've got your keywords, we're ready to start making some changes. These keywords (or phrases) are your target words that you want to be found on when people search in search engines. So we want to make sure that they are used appropriately on your site, and there is a consistency in how they appear. However this still needs to be reasonable usage, just dumping a bunch of words on your site that don't really make sense or fit in can lead to problems, so let's do it carefully. (If none of this is making sense to you, try going back and reading SEO I, II and III for some background).

My keywords
For my site (www.joeslondontaxis.com) I've chosen a set of keywords which are:

"Joes London Taxis, London Taxi, West London Taxi, Hammersmith Taxi, London minicab, West London minicab, London airport minicab, London airport taxi, London Taxis, West London Taxis, Hammersmith Taxis, London minicab, West London minicab, London airport minicab, London airport taxis"

This is the general set that I've chosen and appropriate for the different markets I am interesting in, e.g. mostly in West London, and including airport services. I will further tailor them to each of my pages to make sure they are better matched.

For example on my 'taxi bookings' page (www.joeslondontaxis.com/taxibookings) I will use:

"book a london taxi, london taxi booking, west london taxi, book a minicab, london minicab booking, Joes London Taxis, London Taxi, West London Taxi, Hammersmith Taxi, London minicab, West London minicab"

This contains some overlap with my site keywords, but also more specific words/phrases to do with my bookings page. Using these two pages as an example I can now start to put the keywords onto the pages such that they are usefully picked up by search engines. If you remember from the first article, we had 8 different areas to optimise, I'll go through each of these in turn. This Article deals with points 1 - 4.

1 Your URL (or address) of your page
This can be the URL of your site, or indeed the URL of a particular page. In my example www.joeslondontaxis.com for the site, or www.joeslondontaxis.com/taxibooking for the page.

This URL should be relevant to the contents of the page, and use (if appropriate) some of your keywords. For example, my company 'Joe's London Taxis' is my domain name, and my bookings page, is named taxibookings (not page1.htm). If you have a brand name that isn't specific to your product, e.g. moonfruit, don't worry about that, just make sure it's one of your keywords, as it may be something people search for.

2 Your page title in the HTML, e.g. "London taxi company", or "London taxi bookings page"
3 Your Keywords metadata in the HTML, e.g. "London taxis, London taxi, Joes taxis, West London taxi, etc."
4 Your Description metadata in the HTML, e.g. "London taxi company provides taxi services..."

The 'Title' tag in the HTML is the name you see in the top of the browser bar when you visit the page. The Keywords metadata is also hidden in the HTML and gives the search engine an idea of what you site is about based on particular words and phrases. The Descriptions metadata is again hidden in the HTML and is a short text summary of your site.

All three are important to get right and consistent as they are used by search engines, though always in context of the rest of your contents. In SiteMaker there are a couple of ways of setting these things, we let you set a default for all pages (useful if you have hundreds), but also set these things for individual pages.

If you go to 'edit' -> 'admin' -> 'site information' you'll see the 'site title', 'site description' and 'site keywords' fields. This will be the default values in the HTML for all of your pages, unless there they are set in the individual pages settings themselves.

If you go to 'edit' -> 'page settings' -> 'meta tags' you will see the 'page title', 'page description' and 'page keywords' fields which set these values in the HTML for that particular page.

For my site I have chosen to set the default keywords to:

Keywords - "Joes London Taxis, London Taxi, West London Taxi, Hammersmith Taxi, London minicab, West London minicab, London airport minicab, London airport taxi, London Taxis, West London Taxis, Hammersmith Taxis, London minicab, West London minicab, London airport minicab, London airport taxis"

Description - "Joes London Taxis provides Taxi Services to all Central and West London areas. If you want a West London Taxi, call us on 0870 23 34 xx"

These will appear for every page I create unless I set a different set for that page using the 'Page Settings' panel. For my Taxi Bookings page, I have decided to create a different set and changed these to be,

Title - "Taxi booking page - book a london taxi"

Keywords - "book a london taxi, london taxi booking, west london taxi, book a minicab, london minicab booking, Joes London Taxis, London Taxi, West London Taxi, Hammersmith Taxi, London minicab, West London minicab"

Description - "Use this page to book a west london taxi with joes london taxis. Book by phone or by email."

You should be able to see how you can make some adjustments to the keywords/description to be more specific to the actual page you are on, without having to change them all.

Ok, that's enough for now. The next article will deal with points 5 - 8 and round things off. Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions.

Next Article in Series: SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part V

Notice of Flash Player upgrade

Ian — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:47:00 +0100

SiteMaker will be increasing the minimum Flash Player requirement for viewing and editing your site from Flash Player 7 to Flash Player 8 in the coming months. We thought we'd give you a bit of notice, tell you why we're doing it and let you know a bit more about what you can expect from the change.

Flash Player 7, Flash Player 8, what does it all mean? Well, as you know SiteMaker uses the Adobe Flash Platform which let's us give you access to unparalleled ease of use in editing (e.g. drag and drop tools plus point and click editing), rich graphical interfaces and media (e.g. MP3 players, Video players, animation, etc.) and integrated features (e.g. forms, galleries, etc.).

This means that your visitors need to have the Flash Player installed so that they can view and interact with your site. The Flash Player is now the most widely installed piece of software in history, meaning it is available on more computers than any other piece of software (even more than Microsoft Windows). This is one reason why it has become the video/interactive standard adopted by Google Video, Youtube, Amazon and Ebay. According to Adobe (the people behind Flash) in an independent study, 98.3% of users have Flash Player 6 or above pre-installed.

Flash Players also have different versions. SiteMaker 4.0 was launched in Nov 2004 and required Flash Player 7 to use it. Since then, Adobe have released 2 newer versions, Flash Player 8 in September 2005, and Flash Player 9 in June 2006. Chances are you're already using one of these (right click on any Flash object to find out which version you're using). Each Flash Player has a different level of penetration which grows over time. By Dec 06 Flash Player 7 was available on 97.3% of computers, Flash Player 8 on 94.2% and Flash Player 9 on 55.8%. You can get the details from Adobe here.

With each new version of the Flash player, we are able to enhance SiteMaker using the new features made available in the player. For example video only became possible in Flash Player 7. Flash Player 8 will allow a number of new things to be possible. These include:

Uploading/downloading of files through Flash - this will allow us to create a better file manager
More customisable widgets - 'skinable' widgets so the interface can match your site, e.g. advanced form, comment widget and new forums, blogs, etc.
Better video compatibility - some videos require Flash player 8
More advanced image editing/effects - will allow you to apply filters or other advanced effects to your images

A comment widget, which will allow messages/posts to be made on your site, will be the first new feature released which requires Flash Player 8. This will be in beta in April and you can expect the full version in May. This means we won't be changing the site requirements (and Flash Player detection) to Flash Player 8 until at least May, possibly later, depending on other developments.

In future, we will upgrade the requirements for Flash Player as and when penetration reaches a high enough level, and when new features are sufficiently attractive to offer real benefits to you, our customers. So for now Flash Player 8 has reached that 95% threshold and offers some good new options.

What will it mean for your visitors?
For 95% of them, it won't make any difference at all. For the minority who don't have Flash Player 8 or higher, they will be asked to upgrade their player when they visit the site and see the alternative text and image only version. The upgrade process is simple and well supported by Adobe.

So there you have it. We'll confirm when the change will be made, but you have a couple of months to go, and some great new features to look forward to.

SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part III

Joe — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 16:44:00 +0000

Ok, so we've prepared our Keywords, and that will come in handy for optimising the site, but the first challenge is getting the site listed at all. Search engines can take a long time (3-6 months) to list new sites, but there are some things you can do to help. However, even getting your site listed can be a controversial topic.

It's no secret that Google uses in-bound links as a way of assessing the importance and subject of your site. By this I mean it works out how many sites link to your site, and what keywords they use in their link. It also factors in the 'importance' of the sites that are linking to you based on their 'page rank' which is a the value (on a scale of 1 - 10) attributed to the site by Google. If a high 'page rank' site links to your site it is deemed to be a valuable link, which in turn will boost your own 'page rank'. See these for more details:

http://www.google.com/technology/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

Before your site can even get a page rank it needs to indexed and listed. Before it can be indexed and listed, it needs to be found by the search engine. So how does that happen?

There are two schools of thought in this, either adding your URL directly with the search engines, or using inbound links to direct them to your site more naturally. Or some combination of both methods.

Add URL
The first is to submit your URL directly to the search engines using the 'add url' pages that they provide, e.g.

Google - http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Yahoo - http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

This method should in theory allow them to index your site quickly and efficiently. However, there is some debate as to whether this is counter productive.

Sites submitted in this way are usually new sites, and often those that do not have a large number of inbound links. This leads some people to believe that as 'new sites' the search engines discriminate against them and delay their full index. There is debate about whether a 'google sandbox' exists which is supposedly a holding area of newly submitted sites until they move into the main index.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_Effect (note this article is disputed)

Google denies there is any sandbox, and others speculate that this observed phenomenon is merely the result of how the complex Google algorithms index sites and their constant battle against spammers.

Inbound links
The other less controversial way to get your site listed is by inbound links, particularly those that contain your most important keywords in the link text, and come from sites which have content that is related to your own.

Even a single high quality inbound link can put the search engines onto your site and get it indexed quickly. Once at your site, they will then spider all the pages and work out how it links together.

There are several ways to go about getting good inbound links, and there are certainly more than we list here, but these are a few recommended ideas.

Add your site to relevant local directories - these might be business directories, or interest/subject based directories, but make sure they are reputable
Contact webmasters of related sites as ask for reciprocal link exchanges - this is where you place a link on your site to them in exchange for a link on their site to you. Don't be too ambitious with this, as big sites are not going to link to you out of the blue. Try to find sites of a similar size and subject who can help each other.
Write articles about your subject including a link to your site - any article must actually contain useful information otherwise it won't get published. So if you're an expert in the area your writing about, and it is relevant to your site, then write about it and give the article to other site owners who are likely to publish it with a link back to your site. Make sure the article contains some of your relevant keywords. (This may also be possible with useful contributions to blog articles or forums, but be very careful about link spamming - if you don't have anything genuinely useful to say, don't say it!)

Once your site has been indexed, you're in a much stronger position for the future. Sites that have been around for a long time have a legitimate history and tend to stay in the indexes. If you have an existing site that is indexed, then try linking that one to your new site.

You can see if your site is listed by typing 'site:www.youraddress.com' into Google or Yahoo. Remember if you have multiple domain names make sure you try each of them.

And if you're using your own domain name make sure you are using the IP pointing method we recommend, and not the masked forwarding often offered by domain companies. Masked forwarding will make it very difficult for your site to get listed, as it appears to have no contents!

So there you have it. Let's get listed!

(I linked my site www.joeslondontaxis.com from the last article - I'll find out soon whether it gets listed or not)

Next Article in Series: SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part IV

SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part II

Joe — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:20:00 +0000

Now we get to the how to's for getting your SiteMaker site effectively optimised for Search Engines. If you're new to this series of articles, best to read Part I first, and get the ground rules under your belt, otherise it may not all make sense. This section now kicks off the discussion on what to do, so pay close attention!

If you remeber from last time "search engines looks for consistency and relevancy in a number of different areas of your in-page content and referral links". Let's start at the top and talk about keywords themselves, as these will be the important building blocks of your SEO tactics.

Keywords explained
Keywords are the words or phrases that you want people to be able to find you under when they do a search on the internet. These are essentially the words or phrases that best describe your business and the things that people would think of when they are interested in your goods or services. The more specific the word or phrase to what you offer, the more likely it will be to drive people to your site.

Let's take my example company 'Joe's London Taxis' and see how it works. For this fictional business, there are a number of keywords we could try. For each below I've indicated how many terms are returned by google.com as an example of their competitiveness. Here are some terms I could use;

business (1.4 billion results on Google)
car (652 million)
london (402 million)
taxi (97 million)

Hmm, these don't seem too good. The sheer volume of pages returned on these terms will make it very hard to ever have an impact for my little business. How about;

london taxi (2.7 million)
west london taxi (1.6 million)
hammersmith taxi (221,000)
london minicab (220,000)
west london minicab (96,000)
hammersmith minicab (24,500)

That's getting a bit better. Using the 2 or 3 word phrases improves your chances of ranking highly as these phrases attract fewer competing companies and can be more specific to your market. And it looks like 'minicab' is a much less competitive word than 'taxi', i.e. there is a greater chance I can score highly with 'minicab' as fewer companies compete for this word. This will all help me make my choices about which keyword phrases I should use for my site.

As the competitiveness of the search falls, so will the number of searches, so it's always a balance between being on page 100 for a top phrase with millions of searches or being on page 1 for a less used phrase with only a few thousand. Personally I think higher up and more focused is better.

How many should you use? Well that's debatable too. Most articles suggest less is more, as few as 5 keyword phrases per page as a target, e.g. "london taxi, west london taxi, west london minicab, london airport taxi, hammersmith taxi" is 5 keyword phrases (usually seperated by a comma). Most keyword optimisers won't complain until you have more than 15-20. So somewhere in the range 5-20 won't hurt. I'll choose 15 for my example site.

If you have an exciting or unique brand name then this should be included in your keywords (and probably your URL too).

And remember, your keywords will need to vary from page to page reflecting the contents of that page. There can be some overlap, but you can take different page contents as an opportunity to expand your list of keywords. For example, for my page www.joeslondontaxis.com/taxibooking I'll want to choose words relating to booking, e.g. "book a london taxi, london taxi booking, etc."

It's best to plan your keywords for each of your pages, and only then can you start to go through the pages themselves and make sure the keywords are correctly represented and consistent in the right places.

So there's your first piece of homework, work out your keywords for your different pages. Don't worry about getting it 'right' first time. These are things you can change as you go, but try to think about the important, specific phrases for the contents of each of your pages.

Next time we'll see how to use them in your pages.

Next Article in Series: SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part III

SiteMaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part I

Joe — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:56:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimisation on SiteMaker is much like Search Engine Optimisation with any website. The key is to make sure that your site contents are focused and relevant to the keywords that you wish to rank highly on. This means making a real effort in a number of places to make sure the terms you use are consistent. And don't be too ambitious, you're never going to beat the big guys if your words are too general and competitive.

This series of articles is based on our experience and generally accepted guidelines on how to improve your rankings. It doesn't guarantee results, but will point you in the right direction ;-). If you want more specialist help, check out Hypersubmit, or read the huge range of SEO articles available online.

Ground rules!
Firstly nobody can guarantee you positions in the search rankings. Search engines keep their search algorithms very secret, and update them regularly to make sure they produce true and accurate results.

The second thing to know is that SEO takes real work. Your going to have to think about it, and make lots of changes to all the pages in your site. This will take time, and you may want to adjust things after a few months as you start to see your results. The Internet may be a great potential market, but you need to invest in marketing your site on it. SEO is a good way of doing it, but like everything it doesn't always come easy.

Next it's going to take time for your rankings to grow. Search engines can take months to even list your site, and then further time to assign you a rank. They will then review your site periodically and check for updates, but the frequency of this can vary. So don't expect too much too soon. Be patient, build your credibility and presence, and good things will come. Many sites that rank highly have been around a long long time.

And finally, SEO isn't everything. There's never an excuse for not marketing your site in other ways if you're serious about getting it noticed. Traditional offline marketing, online marketing (banners or adwords), putting it on letterheads, posting on industry specific directories/message boards, etc., can all help, and it will also support your SEO efforts too. So don't forget that too.

First things first
So now the ground rules are out of the way, here are the basics. If you are building a new site, you have two problems; getting your site listed, and improving the rankings. Even getting your site listed is a subject full of controversy, but also closely relates to how to you get it optimised.

In terms of optimisation search engines looks for consistency and relevancy in a number of different areas of your in-page content and referral links. These include;

Your URL (or address) of your page, e.g. www.joeslondontaxis.com, or www.joeslondontaxis.com/taxibooking, etc.
Your Page title in the HTML, e.g. "London taxi company", or "London taxi bookings page"
Your Keywords metadata in the HTML, e.g. "London taxis, London taxi, Joes taxis, West London taxi, etc."
Your Description metadata in the HTML, e.g. "London taxi company provides taxi services..."
Your page content, e.g. the text that is on your page
Links on your page, including the anchor text, e.g. the text on which the link is set
Images on your page, including the name of the image file, and the link (if any) set on the image
Referral links to your pages, including the anchor text of the referral link, e.g. a link on another site referring to your site

Points 1-7 are easily within your control as they all relate to the contents of your site. Point 8 requires linking to your site from other external sites, which is less easy to achieve, though there are a number of ways in which you can go about doing this.

And remember, search engines are mechanical but not stupid! They are in a constant battle with link spammers who attempt to manipulate ranking results for profit. Optimising your pages and encouraging genuine link backs from other relevant sites will help, but getting involved in link spamming and other dodgy techniques can get your site black listed. So more isn't always best, make sure they're genuine.

This series of articles will go through each of these points in turn and discuss how they are relevant to SiteMaker and how to go about doing them.

Like I said, none of this is proven fact, but often based on perceived wisdom and what little guidance search engines give out. So we also want to encourage debate. If you know something useful or have found a good resource please let us know. Happy searching!

Next Article in Series: Sitemaker and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Part II

Cookies, Domain Names and Pernickety PayPal

Walt — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:44:00 +0000

Love it or hate it, PayPal does serve a purpose. For those keen to enter the commercial market place as a trader or seller, the big banks don't make it that easy and PayPal does fill the gap. But this is not a recommendation, this is a quick fix guide to the main problems you (or your customers) may encounter when using PayPal on your website. The most common issues are:

My customers have items in their shopping basket even though they've not visited my site before
Customers complain about an error message when trying to pay
PayPal seems to work on my Moonfruit domain but not my own domain name
My customers just can't complete a purchase - it keeps failing

So if any of those comments look vaguely familiar, read on...

The three biggest issues affecting how PayPal behaves for your customers are cookies, privacy settings in their web browsers, and (if you use your own domain name) using frames. Let's deal with these things one at a time.

Cookies

For the uninitiated cookies are simple text files that are dropped onto a PC to authenticate or identify a user, for personalisation (e.g. Welcome back John!), to track behaviours, or to record your selections for a shopping cart. These are used in online banking, online shopping and for email services, so they are a common and essential part of using the web.

When customers say they have visited your site for the first time, but they already see items in the shopping basket there are a few key things to ask:

Are they using a computer in a public location, like an Internet Cafe or library, where a previous user may have looked at your site?
Do they use a shared computer either at work or at home where someone else could have logged on to your site?

If either is remotely possible then that computer may have saved a cookie which has stored previous shopping selections from your site. They only need remove the items from the shopping basket and then continue shopping.

PayPal requires that all users permit a cookie to be dropped on their computer for their service to be used. The cookie is used by PayPal to identify the user and record their shopping choices. No personal or financial details are recorded or saved. So if their web browser is set with 'High' privacy then cookies can be blocked and your customers are more likely to see the error message: 'The recipient of this shopping basket is not an approved shopping basket user. ' The simplest solution is to ask your customers to reset their web browser's 'Privacy' setting to 'Default' which will then permit them to make purchases from your site. Once complete they can always reset the browser Privacy.

Domain Names

So, you've made your customers aware of cookies. Then you take the next step of buying your first domain name. It all sounds good till your customers complain they can't complete a purchase. PayPal strikes again?

To ensure transactions details remain in a secure environment PayPal do not permit frames to be used. Frames are automatically created by your domain providers when you use 'masked forwarding' with your domain name. The simplest solution is to contact your domain name provider and ask them to 'point' your 'DNS A record' to the IP address 146.101.249.107 where your website sits on the Moonfruit servers.

If you want more information on Domain Names please checkout an earlier blog I wrote which details why 'pointing' is better than 'forwarding' and why it's also better for search engines.

Hopefully the pointers above will help sort out most of your PayPal problems...although once you're on the PayPal site, you're on your own!

Good luck and happy sales!

Walt

Why all the fuss about Domain Names? (Masked Forwarding v Pointing)

Walt — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 16:56:00 +0000

When you buy yourself a domain name you also, inadvertently, buy into a world of frames, no-frames, IP addresses, and the occassional: 'something's not right'. Normally you don't need to worry about finding these 'little extras' although sometimes they have a habit of finding you. As always, there's a right way and a wrong way of doing things and sometimes the choice you make just ends up going wrong.

Setting up your domain name correctly can be important, as it will improve your search engine listings and it can ensure that your customers don't experience unforseen problems with your site.

So, you've bought yourself a domain name, you've had your domain name provider 'direct' it to your Moonfruit site and now you're finding that:

your customers are having problems completing a purchase using PayPal
your domain name just isn't showing up in searches properly
visitors are not seeing your site as it should be seen (or it's not working correctly)

If any of this sounds familiar then read on, as you may just find some answers...

Masked Forwarding & Frames.

When asked to direct a domain name to another website, server or service, domain name providers will often use 'masked forwarding' which uses 'frames'.

If 'forwarding' is used your domain name provider creates a web page that uses your domain name, and within (framed by) this page sits your Moonfruit website, although your users won't notice the frame. This sounds simple enough but using frames can cause numerous problems.

PayPal

When your customers finish shopping and go through the checkout (payment) process PayPal (which needs to control the browser for security) tries to open a new web page using encryption to provide a secure page. The secure PayPal page should display the 'padlock' symbol in the browser and a PayPal website address. This allows your customers to complete the purchase safely and securely.

Using frames means that the main window which contains your domain name, remains unchanged. When your customers interact with your Moonfruit site (framed within it) the checkout process tries to open the secure PayPal web page and take control of the browser but it can’t. PayPal will detect this and fail the checkout, as it can't provide a secure browser window for the payment process.

Search Engine Indexing

Search engines index websites by reading not only the Meta Data (site description and site keywords), but also the links to and from your site, as well as site content. The more accurate the site description and keywords, the more numerous the links, and the better the content on your site, the greater the chances of your website appearing higher up in search results.

Using frames means that search engines will read only the framed web page which only contains a bit of HTML, a frame for your site, and little else. They won’t read your website held within that frame. While you can add Meta Data to your frame, the full and rich content on your site, along with your links will be ignored by the search engines and deprive you of better rankings in searches.

Fixing Frames

The first point to be clear about is that you aren't transferring your domain name. You are simply 'pointing' your domain name to another location.

The solution requires 'pointing' your 'DNS A record' (your domain name) to our web servers where your Moonfruit site is hosted or stored. Visitors who use your domain name will be instantly (and seamlessly) sent to your Moonfruit site while your domain name remains visible.

This allows PayPal to control your web browser to provide a secure service so that your customers can complete their purchases easily. It also means that search engines will index your entire site - an added bonus.

Simply contact your domain name provider and ask them to 'point' your 'DNS A record' to the Moonfruit servers at 146.101.249.107 (our IP address). Then log in to your site, open the Site Addresses tab on the Admin panel and add your domain name to the list. If your provider doesn't permit pointing of your 'DNS A record', find one who does.

In a nutshell

It may sound complicated but 'pointing' is in fact fairly straight-forward and the benefits speak for themselves. 'Pointing' ensures that your customers have a greater chance of finding your site in the first place, enjoy a better experience on your site, and then complete more transactions. So, lose the frames and everyone’s a winner!

Google Analytics 101

Walt — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:11:00 +0000

There have been a couple of responses to Joe's blog about the recent December release and some entries in the Forum about Google Analytics: how to set it up, what data to look at, and no data coming through at all. So I'll give everyone a few ideas on how it all fits together.

First, how to set it up. Because Google Analytics is about figures, graphs and charts we thought the most obvious place to stick your access to it is in the Admin panel on the Statistics tab. Then just follow the steps bellow:

Click on the Sign up for Google Analytics button, which will open a new panel and then use the Get your Google ID button
You should now be on Google's Analytics page where you can sign in to your Google Account (or register for one)
Sign up for Google Analytics - this will ask for your URL (website address), account name (something appropriate), and your time zone
Then after providing your name you'll have to accept Google's terms and conditions
You will then be presented with a code block which is your Google Analytics ID which you need to copy (to your clipboard)
Almost there! Go back to the Admin panel on your site (should be another window or tab) and paste the code block into the spacious ID field
Click OK to save and then just be patient while Google begins to collect data about your site and your visitors

Depending on how popular your website is your stats may take a few hours to start collecting data or it may take several days. And there is a lot of detail and data, so if you love statistics you'll definitely be in heaven. The key stats for most users will be:

Daily visitors (how many visitors and what percentage are new)
Visits & Page View Tracking ( the number of visits which is distinct from your visitors)
Content Drilldown (the popularity of each page on your site)

Google's help is pretty extensive so spend some time understanding the stats and you'll have the basis for some very useful information. They provide good graphing for the visually inclined, plus they offer good options for printing and saving to various formats on your computer.

Really, the hard part is reading my blog. Setting up takes less than 5 minutes. How long you spend pooring over the graphs and figures is really up to you. So, sign up, get your website on the couch and start analysing.

SiteMaker, Flash and Search Engine Optimisation

Joe — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:12:00 +0000

The myths about Flash and Search Engines - what's true and what isn't

It's a commonly held belief that Flash content does not work well with search engines. It's true that most search engines can't read the contents of a Flash movie, but it's not true that this necessarily makes a difference to how they index Flash objects, or a Flash site. Like many things in HTML, there are good ways and bad ways of doing everything, and the best ways lead to the best results.

If you imagine Flash content to be like an image in your site, it's a bit easier to think about. Search engines also can't read images (i.e. know what the image is about), which is why 'alt tags' allow you to define a text description in the HTML. This not only allows the search engine to 'read' the image, but also increases the accessibility of your site, which is a key goal of the W3C organisation in promoting strong standards on the web. (http://www.w3.org/).

Flash can be seen in much the same way. Although the contents of a Flash movie can be more complicated than a single image, it can still be correctly represented as readable text and therefore indexable by search engines, with the added benefit of meeting accessibility guidelines.

SiteMaker's Flash infrastructure has been developed over a number of years and we constantly strive to meet the W3C standards for accessibility, and ensure all our sites are represented both in readable HTML and as Flash.

The key behind this is the use of 'Progressive Enhancement'. This is the principle that suggests that you provide content to your visitors starting at the lowest level and increase the richness of the content depending on what the visitor is able to see. For example, for text only browsers of those with images turned off the site will display text only, if you can detect an image browser, display images, if you can detect a Flash Player, display Flash, etc. The Progressive Enhancement technique allows you to swap out bits of content as and when you detect an improved capability by your visitor's browser in a seamless way. (See section 6 of W3C guidelines, http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-new-technologies, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement).

This is exactly how it works with SiteMaker. To get the full experience we require that visitors to your site have Flash Player 7 or higher (95% of web browsers according to Adobe http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html), and a browser with JavaScript enabled. However, if your visitors don't have this installed, they will still get a 'text and images' only version of the site.

The 'text and images' only version of your site contains exactly the same information as your normal Flash SiteMaker site. It includes a link to every visible page in your site, all the text on the pages, all the images, all the links, etc. Every time you update your site, the Flash is updated, and the 'text and images' only version is also updated.

It is this 'text and images' only version which will be 'read' by search engines, as they will not execute the JavaScript nor get inside the Flash version. This means to search engines, your site will appear as a normal HTML site, and be read in the normal way. How well the site is then indexed comes down to you.

SiteMaker allows you to set page titles, and meta tags in the HTML, just like a normal HTML site. And as every piece of text, link and image on your page is represented in the HTML, you can also employ the same techniques of keyword density and relevance with titles, use of links, etc., as are normally recommended by SEO companies.

So there you have it. Flash content, like everything else, can be done badly or done well. We do it well, which means your site is just as effectively indexed as any other site on the internet. So you can sit back and enjoy the benefits of our unique Flash based application making it easy to design and build your site, without worrying about how it's built.

We are constantly looking at ways of increasing our Search Engine Optimisation capabilities, and making sure that we are compatible with other leading techologies. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Useful links

Articles on Search Engine Optimisation - Part 1 of Series