Tag Archives: SEO

Google Indexing Ajax?

Kelly Abbott | November 8, 2011 - 4:35 pm

A certain rumor started circulating a week ago about how Google is now capable of indexing rendered Javascript. I received a notification from a customer of ours. My immediate reaction was skepticism and then optimism. If any company could pull that trick off it’d be Google. However, our own @jonnyjon did some research on this and it turns out that the claims, while accurate, are not precise. Here’s what Jon found.

  • Google is not currently indexing Echo stream client content (which is how we built all of our products at realtidbits)
  • Google is indexing Facebook comments when the comment widget is embedded via <iframe> or XFBML (which creates a dynamic iframe)
  • When you embed the Facebook comments widget via iframe or XFBML setting the content is rendered within an iframe as HTML not dynamic javascript AJAX
  • I don’t see any evidence that Google is in fact indexing Facebook comments served up via AJAX only static html that is rendered from an iframe
  • Google’s recent statement that they “can now index some dynamic comments” is true but very misleading they can only crawl javascript that creates a dynamic iframe
  • Displaying echo in an iframe was debated a while back but eventually rejected in light of backplane and having multiple widgets on a page all work together.
This last point is a good one and points to our philosophy on how and why we built our realtidbits products the way we did. By tapping into backplane, we may lose SEO bump but gain an engagement bump. Backplane-enabled apps allows us to break down the barriers between content silos from a widget-level to site-level and indeed to web-level. I’ve written more about realtidbits’ reason for being here where you can see how the products are envisioned.
One last note, we realize that SEO is important. We’re prototyping search engine indexible components for all Echo stream content. It’s a simple process, really. And one we have in beta with a few customers already. When we’re confident it does as it should, we’ll release it for all Echo ecosystem partners to license. Stay tuned.
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Web site design for SEO best practices

Kelly Abbott | April 2, 2009 - 6:05 pm

While we do not center our practice on search engine optimization much of our work results in search marketing efforts whether paid or organic. What follows is an example of some search engine optimization (SEO) best practices which through testing and experience have come to know as reliable heuristics for getting the most visibility for the content on your site. 

Pre-production:

  • Discover words users think of in the topic area of your site

On-site:

  • Keyword relevant global navigation structure
  • Minimize clicks to reach relevant content
  • Write effective meta descriptions (note: this does not affect rank, but helps search engines display content about the page or site in their results)
  • Keywords targeted are relevant to site’s content
  • Targeted keywords are popular searches relevant to client’s business
  • Page titles start with targeted keywords
  • Use h1 tag for prominent content titles
  • Body copy is contextually sufficient and keyword-rich
  • Text-links include targeted keywords point to relevant content within the same site
  • CSS/HTML design to minimize amount of hypertext market used in displaying page content
  • Graphics have descriptive, keyword-rich alternative attributes that are useful for visitors
  • INclude a sitemap with text links
  • Human-readable, keyword rich URL’s
  • Flat directory structure
  • Custom error page with site map
  • Avoid using popups altogether
  • Utilize common UI structures (left or top navigation, body, sidebar, header and footer design).
  • Include robots.txt file at root of site with appropriate links to content within site

Off-site:

  • List site on public directories
  • Encourage in-bound linking from other highly ranked sites for your keywords

Ongoing:

  • Measure individual page PageRank monthly
  • Add new content frequently to encourage re-indexing

References:

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Fail Fast & Other Product Development Lessons Learned in the Trenches

Kelly Abbott | February 17, 2009 - 4:37 pm

I spoke at a San Diego TiE event at the end of January. It was a panel of Software Entrepreneurs fielding questions about what the start-up life is like in software these days. Steve Bjorg from MindTouch was there. The two other panelists were Thomas Carter, Founder & CEO, Capital Window  and David Desch, Vice President of Engineering and IT, Digital Force Technologies (he helped Sony launch their HDTV division). For me, the chance to speak at the event was well worth it. I had not a little bit of fun too. In every way, I was the anomaly up there. No success to speak of (in the monetary sense), no “team” and no inhibitions.

Aside from being fun, the event also helped me frame some thoughts I’ve been having. I thought it would be a good idea to get them down on paper while they are fresh and share wit you. Let me know what you think, yeah? [...]

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