FLASH AND SEO

The Importance of Flash Web Design

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The importance of design is undeniable for a website’s success. Design is the most crucial component in the process of creating a website. Web design also plays an important role in customer capture through aesthetic view implementation. Website design speaks to the customer and invites him or her to explore the site, buy a product or try a service. The design of the website greatly affects the amount of time users spend on your website. Design is like a hook that engages visitors and persuades them to buy your product or service. Hence, website design must be given its due importance, since its impact is truly significant.
In terms of web design, flash animation provides the ultimate appearance to a website. Flash is a very effective web design tool, if used properly. Over the years, there has been a greater demand for flash design because it plays a pivotal role in drawing visitors and creates a more enjoyable and memorable website experience. In light of the stiff competition on the Internet, which has progressively increased, flash web design will help you to establish a strong competitive advantage.
Nowadays, millions of websites use flash to display products, showcase services, and entertain web visitors. Since flash is full of colour, glitzy and dynamic, it appeals to visitors in an interactive and engaging manner. The main advantage of using flash is that it allows animation in websites, and therefore helps web designers to strengthen their hold on the website. It also adds energetic features to the design. Flash animation is very attractive, captivating, and helps tremendously with website brand campaigning.
The Importance of SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving and optimizing the quantity and quality of traffic to a website from search engines, through better visibility in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for specific, targeted keywords. SEO enables a website to appear in top positions in Search Engines for competitive keywords. According to recent surveys, approximately 85% of website traffic originates from search engines, which highlights and emphasizes the important role that SEO plays in anywebsite’s success.
Today, more and more businesses are likely to have an online presence for their business in the form of a company website, but there is no point in having a website that has no visitors or traffic. A company’s website should give the business greater exposure and attract visitors and traffic; this is only possible if a website appears well in search engines. Having a Search Engine-Optimized website will accomplish the twin goals of having a good online presence and greater targeted traffic.
Whenever people want to find anything on the web, they use popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing (Live) to search for their specific topic or subject. The higher a website appears in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), the greater the chances that the site will be visited by more and more users. If your site is placed within the top ten positions on various search engines for your targeted keywords, then your site will receive loads of traffic and potential clients for your products and services, via the search engines. Consequently, having a Search Engine-Optimized and friendly business website would be very beneficial in obtaining a steady stream of clients directly from search engines.
The Ultimate Combination
Many people believe that Flash Web Design and SEO cannot be combined, since flash-embedded content is not properly indexed in Search Engines. While it is true that flash-embedded content is not properly indexed, this doesn’t mean that flash websites can’t be optimized for better visibility on search engines. At Mapleweb Creative Marketing, we create flash websites that are search-engine friendly. Our flash websites rank extremely well on search engines for their related and targeted keywords.The major issues with using flash animation in web design are Search Engine Optimization(SEO) and file size (which also impacts SEO):
Flash websites that are not designed properly have the tendency to be very slow. This is mainly due to the fact that the flash designers did not take the time to optimize the website’s flash files before finishing the work. Mapleweb Creative Marketing createsflash websites that are fast and reliable.
Creating search-engine friendly flash sites is relatively difficult, due to problems in the crawling and indexing of flash-embedded content in search engines. However, at Mapleweb Creative Marketing we use all the latest “white-hat” SEO techniques to make flash websites search-engine friendly and make them appear well on search engines.

INFO ABOUT WEB MARKETING

Internet marketing can attract more people to your website, increase customers for your business, and enhance branding of your company and products. If you are just beginning your online marketing strategy the top 10 list below will get you started on a plan that has worked for many.
Start with a web promotion plan and an effective web design and development strategy.
Get ranked at the top in major search engines, and practice good Search Optimization Techniques.
Learn to use Email Marketing Effectively.
Dominate your marketing niche with affiliate, reseller, and associate programs.
Request an analysis from an Internet marketing coach or Internet marketing consultant.
Build a responsive opt-in email list.
Publish articles or get listed in news stories.
Write and publish online press releases.
Facilitate and run contests and giveaways via your web site.
Blog and interact with your visitors.
By following the above tips you'll be on your way to creating a concrete internet marketing strategy that could boost your business substantially

ETHICS IN COMPUTER BUSINESS

The ethics of free software

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When you turn on your computer, you’re making a political statement.

If, like most people, your computer boots Microsoft Windows, the statement you’re making is that transnational corporations should control access to the most powerful public media that ever existed. You’re passively accepting, too, that non-industrial nations should be kept from developing, and helping to preserve a monoculture that threatens the existence of minority languages. At a personal level, you’re accepting that these same corporations should control your access to educational and government services and have a right to install lock-down technologies on your computer without your permission – to say nothing of controlling what other software you can use and how you use it.

Most people, of course, never think of these implications. When confronted, some will claim that none of this matters. Most, even social activists, accept the situation because they don’t know of any alternative.

Yet an alternative does exist, and it’s becoming more viable by the day.

It’s called Free Software. It has already built and still runs most of the internet. Now, increasingly, Free Software is finding its way on to the desktops of those who want their ethics to extend to their computers.

From the city of Munich and the Extremadura region of Spain, to Brazil and the Indian state of Kerala, the possibilities of Free Software are being explored and, in many cases, implemented. Adaptation is slower in North America, where Microsoft’s influence is strongest, but even there many universities, corporations and government departments are at least considering the possibilities.

Where it all comes from
Free Software began in 1984 when Richard M Stallman started the GNU project to build a free operating system. Stallman had become concerned about a major shift in the culture of programming. With the increased popularity of computers, software was being treated as a commodity and the old academic tradition of sharing programs in the name of exchanging ideas was dead.

As an alternative to the new proprietary programs, Stallman created the Free Software Foundation as a home for his project and wrote a software licence called the GNU General Public Licence. ‘The GNU General Public Licence is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software,’ the Preamble to the licence says, ‘to make sure the software is free for all its users.’ The licence then goes on to grant users the right to copy, install and change any software that uses it in any way that they please, so long as a few basic conditions are met, including preserving the original programmers’ credit and using the same licence for any modified version.

These were radical ideas in the 1980s and they were largely ignored by the general public. Free Software’s real boost came in the early 1990s, when the internet – that it had largely created – in turn allowed groups of programmers to co-operate remotely. In a few years they had built a whole operating system called GNU/Linux – or Linux, as it is often shortened to.

Soon, thousands of people were collaborating worldwide to fill in the gaps. At first their efforts were focused on GNU/Linux. However, enthusiasm quickly led to similar efforts on Windows and the Mac, as well as several other lesser-known operating systems. An offshoot and ally, the Open Source Movement, uses the same licences and co-operative work methods, but its main concerns are software quality and working with business. Today, some gaps remain – notably games and some drivers for the very latest software. But it is now possible, without much effort, to perform routine office functions entirely in free software that is usually as good as, and often superior to, the proprietary tools it replaces.

Need to replace MS Office? Try OpenOffice.org. Internet Explorer? Try Mozilla Firefox. PhotoShop? The GIMP. And, in many cases, you’ll find not just one alternative, but dozens, especially if you drop Windows or OS X in favour of GNU/Linux.

The free software world view
If you’re not a programmer or a lawyer, all this might sound as exciting as washing the dishes. So why should you care? Because, in ensuring their own power to tinker with software, free software programmers have also empowered users.

With free software, access to programs becomes a matter of accessibility to the internet or contact with a project rather than the size of your bank balance. Instead of going to the store, users can download the type of program they need from the internet – and have it automatically installed in minutes. Upgrades are the same. If organizations or users need some functionality that isn’t there, they can add it themselves, or become involved with the project that develops it and lobby for changes. Moreover, organizations no longer need to be worried about licence audits or getting activation codes.

The fact that it comes without a price tag doesn’t hurt, either. Although the Free Software Foundation prefers to emphasize philosophical freedoms, its cost-free nature remains one of the main attractions for cash-strapped governments and educational institutions. Even allowing for training, free software has been found consistently cheaper to run than proprietary software in every neutral study ever conducted.

If you are socially active, you’ll probably find the values associated with free software even more attractive. For one thing, projects are usually communal organizations, where authority and respect are based largely on contributions. Many of the members, too, are volunteers, working only for credit, although a growing number are paid for their efforts by companies like Google or IBM that see benefits in both software results and public relations by offering assistance.

In some companies, too, the co-operative ethos spills over into their interactions with competitors, evolving a less capitalistic, more humane way of doing business. The same clashes of ego occur as anywhere else, but, even so, the thousands of projects around the world are living proof of how efficient collaborative methods can be.

One more reason to support free software is that it helps to put the entire world on an equal footing. Free Software Foundation supporters believe that it is a basic necessity of free speech. Today this requires that everyone who wants it has internet access. Yet, given the price of proprietary software, many people – especially in impoverished nations, but also in the inner city and remote rural regions in the industrialized world – can’t afford legal access. Nor can some governments afford to build the technological infrastructure to improve their countries. Free software removes many of these barriers.

Admittedly, hardware can also be a problem. That’s one reason why One Laptop Per Child, an initiative whose goal is to build a $100 computer and see copies distributed as widely as possible, finds many of its most enthusiastic supporters in the free software community. The computer will be distributed to millions of schoolchildren in the developing world and free software will be installed (see http://laptop.org).

Some people question the priorities of the project, arguing that it matters less than ensuring food or shelter. Yet, by the same arguments, efforts to improve education in developing nations should also be ignored. The issue is less about priorities than about people helping in the areas where they can make a personal difference.

Similarly, personal computers and the internet threaten to produce a monoculture. Fortunately for the British, North Americans and Australasians, the language of the monoculture is English. Those in less dominant states or in minority regions aren’t so lucky. Often they have trouble finding programs written in their own language, because proprietary software vendors have judged the market too small to be worth developing a product for it. However, armed with enthusiasm and a perception of need, volunteers can often bridge the gaps that economic realities leave. OpenOffice.org, for example – the alternative to MS Office – has been the first office suite in many languages, including Welsh, Scots, Gaelic and Slovenian. With free software tools, minority language users can keep their language alive and growing. In fact, Free Software projects have frequently been the originators of dozens of computer terms in such languages.

Free Software even plays a role in recycling. Because operating systems like GNU/Linux are more efficiently written than Windows, they can extend the life of older hardware. Instead of upgrading all your hardware to Vista for the same functionality, you can step away from the mindless consumerism of planned obsolescence and install Free Software. That way, you can keep your existing equipment from filling up landfills or being dumped on developing nations as toxic waste.

Ethical computers and civil society
It’s all very simple: supporting free software is good for you and even better for the global community. Yet fewer than 10 per cent of computer users have any free software installed.

A large part of the reason is probably the tactics used by Microsoft to encourage the use of its products. However, Peter Brown, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation and a former New Internationalist co-operative member, suggests some additional reasons. For one thing, he suggests, the implications of Free Software are so large that mainstream journalists have trouble covering the issue. When Brown tried to interest a friend at the BBC in covering free software, his friend was overwhelmed. ‘He was like: “This is a big topic we’re talking about,”’ Brown recalls.‘“It covers disks, it covers downloads, it covers television, it covers iPods. How on earth am I going to wrap up this story?”’

Another reason, Brown suggests, is that until recently the free software community has not managed to contact potential supporters who lack a strong interest in technology. The philosophy and organization of the movement have close affinities with those of social activists, charities and religious groups, yet such people know little about them. Many people in such groups have a minimal knowledge of technology, and tend to accept the dominant media portrayal of technologists as smart but anti-social people whose concerns are irrelevant to the average person.

Supporting free software is good for you and even better for the global community. Yet fewer than 10 per cent of computer users have any free software installed

Yet, slowly, the connections are being made. For example, as the Free Software Foundation explains in its Defective by Design campaign, the increasing spread of ‘lock-down’ technologies that can limit users’ control of their own hardware and obtain information about their habits without their consent raises issues about consumer rights, privacy, anti-trust and industry standards. In such cases, the technical aspects become secondary to the social implications.

‘When you’re talking about recycling, you don’t say that you’ll take waste to this location and heat it to so many degrees. No-one needs to know that,’ Brown says. ‘You don’t need to know the architecture of GNU/Linux in order to make a judgment call about the ethics of free software.’

In the end, he says, ‘Free software should be an obvious civil-society issue. It should be as obvious as recycling cans. It should be something that every parent should be asking when they go into a parent-teacher meeting: is the school using free software? Is my child being taught to use free software? Having control over your computer and knowing that your devices aren’t spying on you, that you have an ethical computer – [these] are all issues for civil society.’

Support begins with personal involvement. Instead of trying to grapple all at once with the complications, start simply. Look up the subject at Wikipedia and Google (two organizations with strong connections to the free software communities) and choose a program or two to try. Two good choices are the OpenOffice.org office suite (http://www.openoffice.org) and the Mozilla Firefox web browser (http://www.mozilla.com).

PPC/PPL/PPS

Understanding Affiliate Marketing
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Affiliate Marketing is a good way to earn extra revenue from your website. Many programs have a high payout and take very little time to set up. The following article on affiliate programs is a summary of the detailed information you can find at Affiliate Marketing Guide.
By Sharon Housley

Affiliate programs are commonly misunderstood, in order to understand affiliate programs lets start with terminology. For clarification purposes, an affiliate is defined as any "referrer" or website that promotes a product in an effort to earn revenue. A merchant is defined as someone who owns a product and is sharing revenues with an affiliate based on the affiliate's performance. Affiliate programs can drive targeted traffic to your website.

There are 3 basic affiliate programs, though only the first two are commonly used.

Pay Per Click - this is when an affiliate is compensated for sending traffic to the merchant. (AdSense is an example of PPC affiliate program)

Pay Per Sale - this is when the affiliate is compensated by the merchant if the referral generates a sale or purchase.

Pay Per Lead - this is when the merchant agrees to pay for a qualified (or sometimes unqualified lead), which is very uncommon because it is subjective and up to the merchant.

Affiliate websites tend to provide information, entertainment, and content services to their customers. The online merchants sell products, goods and services online. These are programs permitting affiliates to earn money based on the visitors to your site who click through to another's website. Some pay a token amount for the click through and others provide a percentage of sales when a visitor "clicks through" to your site and buys a product or service on the other party's site. This could represent a value added service to your visitors.

Affiliate programs allow you to pay and track incentives from other websites that send web surfers, leads or paying customers to your website. Commissions based on purchases made by traffic sent from the referring website can be paid. Besides a commission, an affiliate can receive a flat fee, or other incentives for all valid transactions it refers that generate a sale or lead.

Be careful that the affiliate's web page is not cluttered with banner ads that may crowd out your link, or that be annoying to customers. Affiliate programs enable affiliates to leverage their traffic and customer base in order to profit from e-commerce while merchants benefit from increased exposure and sales.

Commonly traffic to merchant sites is measured and affiliates can clearly see conversion rates. Meaning, they track the percentage of people they are referring, and how much of it results in earned revenue. If the affiliate finds a very low conversion, they will find a better way to monetize that traffic, quite possibly with a competing merchant product.

In order to be a successful affiliate, the affiliate site needs to either have tons of traffic or target a specific audience, frequently one untapped by the merchant. It has been my experience, the closer the affiliate site content resembles the merchant products, the higher the likelihood of a good conversion rate.

IMPORTANCE OF DOMAIN NAMES

Selecting a Quality Domain Name
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When you're ready to launch your web site and you're trying to select a good domain name, there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration.

Select a Domain Name that Reflects Your Web Site
Above all else, your domain name should reflect what your web site is all about. For example, if your web site is about grooming a dog, you certainly wouldn't want to select a domain name like 'mybusinessname.com,' as this would have nothing to do with your web site's focus. You would want to select a domain name that tells the world what your web site is all about -- something like 'doggrooming.com.'

Select a Domain Name that Contains Your Web Site's Keywords
Another consideration of great importance are your keywords. Try to select a domain name that contains your most relevant keyword phrase, as some Search Engines place relevancy on them. A keyword phrase is two or more words that best describe your web page. If your web page is focusing on grooming a dog, your best keyword phrase will be "dog grooming."

Select a Domain Name that will be Easily Remembered
With millions of web sites accessible on the Internet, it is also very important to select a domain name that will be easily remembered. As in the 'doggrooming.com' example above, 'doggrooming.com' is very easily remembered, contains the most relevant keyword phrase and describes the web site in explicit detail. It is the 'perfect' domain name for this particular web site.

Select the Best Domain Extension
Another consideration of importance is the domain name extension. Although there are many new domain extensions available, dotcom is still the best choice. When typing in a web address, Internet users automatically want to type in a .com extension, as this is the extension that has been embedded into our brains from the start.

Avoid Using Numbers in Your Domain Name
Although you may be tempted to do so, avoid using numbers within your domain name. Including a number within your domain name can cause problems, as when you tell someone your web address, you will continually have to tell them it's a number and not the word. For example, if you selected a domain name like number1host.com, if you were to tell someone your web address, they may try to type it as 'numberonehost.com' instead of 'number1host.com.' This type of domain name would cause confusion.

Avoid using Dashes and Underscores in Your Domain Name
Although many people do it, don't make the same mistake I made when I first started out. Avoid using dashes, underscores or any other characters within your domain name that may cause confusion. When I registered my domain name, Web-Source.net, I actually wanted websource.com; however, it had already been registered. So, I settled for Web-Source.net. Now, when I tell someone my domain name, I have to say it like this: web dash source dot net.

Don't get me wrong, www.Web-Source.net is now a high traffic web site, but I can only imagine how much traffic I've lost over the years due to my domain name. I have received many emails over the years from visitors who had a hard time finding my site. They said they couldn't remember the domain name and kept wanting to type in websource.com.

Avoid using Abbreviations within Your Domain Name
Although well-known companies, such as IBM, can get away with using abbreviations within their domain name, most companies can't. As a rule, try to avoid using abbreviations or anything that will be difficult for your visitors to remember. Not only will this cause confusion, but it can also cause your potential visitors to make spelling mistakes when trying to type in your web address.

Avoid using Long Domain Names
Although you may now register long domain names, it's really not a good idea. I learned this lesson the hard way. I registered 'www.workfromhomebusinessguide.com' and the sad thing is ... I can't remember the domain name half the time. How can I expect my potential visitors to remember it? Try to keep your domain name as short as possible. The longer the domain name the harder it is to remember and the more apt your potential visitors are to make a typo when typing it into their browser.




Ensure Your Domain Name is Not a Trademark Infringement
Prior to registering a domain name, you may want to consider searching the Trademark Electronic Search System, http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm to ensure your potential domain name isn't infringing on any trademarks.

Please don't take this point lightly, as trademark infringement could cost you your entire business. It is your responsibility to ensure that your potential domain name doesn't infringe on any registered trademarks, as the trademark laws that apply in the hard copy world also apply on the Internet. Any company that registers a trademark has the right to protect their trademark and has the right to notify you that your domain name is infringing upon their trademark.

When you're ready to begin, create a list of a dozen or more potential domain names, as chances are, your first choice will already be taken. With any luck, one of the domain names on your list will be available.

Take your time and select a quality domain name that will grow with your business. It will be well-worth your time and effort in the long run

WEBSITES & SEO

Web Site SEO Check List
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There are a number of steps that should be taken when putting any website on the Internet. Failure to consider these steps will usually mean that your site will either rank very poorly in the search engine results or not at all, which pretty much defeats the purpose of creating a website. Collectively these steps are called SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

This list will help you remember all of the most essential SEO steps. Once these are completed you can move on to “Fine Tuning” your SEO by applying some of the more advanced Optimization methods found on this site. Looking for a professional web design agency? Check out Teknicks, the leading website design and search engine optimization SEO agency.


Search engines change their methods of ranking website periodically, so we will be updating this page as often as needed. Bookmark us, and stop by regularly for additional tips.

Editor……….
Onsite SEO
Research Good keywords
Sufficient page text – Too little text on a web page will cause Google to turn it into a supplemental page.
Original Page Text – Pages that are too similar to other pages on your site may be filtered out by the search engines.
Unique Page Title – Each page on your site should have a unique title based on the pages content and your most important keywords.
Unique Meta Description – Each page on your site should have a unique meta description based on the pages content and your most important keywords.
Unique Meta Keywords (doesn’t do much good, but it doesn’t hurt either) – Each page on your site should have a unique meta keywords based on the pages content and your most important keywords.
Keyword repetition in page text. Keywords and keyword variations should be used frequently on the page. Don’t get carried away, make sure the page is still comfortable for your visitors to read.
Keyword emphasis in page text – Use heading html tags and bold to tell the search engines what you think are the most important words on your page.
Keyword placement in page text – Be sure the first and last paragraphs on your page include your major keywords.
Alt tags – Search engines cannot read an image. Tell them what the picture is about. Don’t repeat the some keywords over and over, if you put the image there than it must relate to your content, tell the search engine about that relation.
Offsite SEO
Incoming links
Directories - General directories have some value; however, try to find as many niche directories that are devoted to your industry as you can. We suggest though that you do not get too wrapped up in this form of link acquisition. We recommend a slow, steady rate in adding these links. Don't spam Google
Article Submission – This is a good way to establish yourself as an “Authority” in your field, as well as create a steady stream of new relevant links (and Traffic) to your site.
Press Releases – Find “News Worthy” events to write about your company and your website. This can give you a large burst of new visitors, although these will normally reduce over time. Some of the sites that use your release may keep it on their site, which will give you a good quality link back to your site. Most of the links that you get will be short term, which will not provide link value. It’s the traffic that makes this worth while
Link Trades – The search engines are reducing the values of these trades. Be picky; only add trades from quality related sites. These trades often will send you regular visitors. If one of your visitors are going to leave your site (you don’t always have what they want!), why not send them to one of your “friends”.
One-way links – These come in many forms. You may pay for some, often sites will give you a link if you just ask and your site would be valuable to their clients.
Look for opportunities, some additional sources are:
Forums
Blog Comments
Review sites
Classified sites
Don’t spam these sites, if they give you the opportunity to write something and add your link, be sure to give them something back. Follow their rules and give quality thoughtful comments, reviews etc.
Link Bait – This is a pretty new term. It means to add high quality content to your site that someone may want to link to.
Outgoing links - It has been suggested that Google uses the sites you link to in determining the subject of your site. Link to a few authority sites.
Statistics – Watch your Web Site statistics for trends. This will show you what is working in your SEO efforts and what is not. Statistics can also be used to see where people go when they visit your site. If people are leaving without visiting other pages, then you may have a problem with that page.
Web Master tools – There are many tools you can use to check the health of your web site.
Google provided tools – Google provides a number of webmaster tools to help you to see if there are errors in your site, what the most common words are in your site (ie what your site is about), what words are most frequently used in link text pointing to your site (once again, what your site is about)
Additional reading
Good SEO means keeping up with the latest trends and changes in the search engines. This requires spending some time on a regular basis reading industry related blogs, newsletters and forums. Although the basic SEO steps listed on this page never change, the way you do some of them will, as well as many other details on now to improve the ranking of your sites in the search engines.

LINKS FOR WEBSITES

Are Reciprocal Links WORTH?
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If the current indications are correct we may be looking at the end of reciprocal linking as a method of building rank and link popularity, at least as far as Google is concerned.

The latest ‘Google Dance’, nicknamed ‘Jagger’, has caused major concern by those suffering loss of position on the top ranks of the search engine’s listings. So we decided to take a close look at what is happening and see what we could learn.

We have a few small websites that have a limited number of links. These sites are used mostly for research and testing of our primary business in Web Analytics. By analyzing these sites, we were able to quickly get an idea of what is happening in Google’s Jagger Update, which is still in progress at the time of this writing.

By using our web analytics tools, we were able to look at the history of visits by the bots and the links to these small sites. We had to go back as far as January in order to build a picture of Google’s actions. Our software also allows us to look at all links from the SEs, not just those shown by using the browser’s ‘link:’ command. G only reports some of the links to your site, not all.

Here is what we have seen:

Like many other sites, we noticed a sharp drop in rank in our test sites around the first of July. They lost about 40% of their previous link popularity and moved down sharply in rank. Also, duplicate links on a single site disappeared. We now only showed one link from each linking site.

As Jagger started, unlike many others we have seen complain about G’s actions and timing, our sites stayed rather stable. Evidently they had already suffered their major losses. However, there was a small increase in the number of links. This caught our attention. We had expected that, like many others, we would experience further disruptions to our link structure.

But when we examined these links, we were surprised to see that not one of them had been listed with Google a few weeks earlier. Not one. Our research showed that these links had been live in G’s archive, but none had shown up publicly before now. It appeared that there was some sort of ‘aging’ process taking place, but this may just be coincidental. It is more likely that older links disappeared because the host site was lost in the shuffle and our links no longer appeared ‘relevant’.

The other thing we noticed was that not one of these new links was listed on our reciprocal links pages. In other words, all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because G is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way.

If your web sites have suffered from the latest ‘dance’, you may want to take a look at the type and source of your links. If they are mostly from link exchanges, you are probably looking at the reason for your move down the list on the search engines.

During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.

This research has us now re-evaluating our linking strategy. We urge others to do the same.

We are now concentrating only on building strong one-way inbound links. We are focusing on publicity, articles, directories, and other direct methods of building our image and consumer awareness.

In addition, we are also looking for associated but non competing firms like web developers, Search Engine Marketers, SEOs, web site owners and designers to partner with us to build direct business relationships and the resulting inbound links. This strategy may not be the fastest method of building links, but we feel it is rock solid and within the spirit of good business practices. The best thing is that it is search engine independent.

We will no longer worry about chasing (or beating) the search engines and their ever changing algorithms. That is a fool’s game we are sure to lose.

Instead, we will focus on building rock solid links and popularity with the group that counts: our customers. By focusing on beating our competition and providing a top quality product, plenty of educational information and relevant content, we are sure to move up and stay at the top of the search engine rankings.

It’s something to think about.