HOW TO OPTIMIZE WEB 2.0 SITES FOR SEARCH ENGINES
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 4:28 am
Websites with Flash or AJAX content are often not sufficiently optimized for search engines, according to Shari Thurow, search marketing specialist and founder and SEO director of Omni Marketing Interactive , at the Search Marketing Expo in Munich.
In her presentation at Search Marketing Expo Munich, the specialist outlined the strategies that can be followed to improve the positioning of a Web 2.0. Thurow states that creators of Web 2.0 sites that include Flash or AJAX content often neglect the presence of the site in browsers that cannot reproduce these formats. "Instead, AJAX and bank data Flash content should be a complement to traditional (X)HTML pages."
Since Flash-based sites cannot link to specific content, Thurow believes that this content should also be offered in other formats for users who do not have JavaScript or FlashPlayer.
Blogs are also generally not well suited to the needs of search engines. According to Shari Thurow , “blogs have a poor link structure, because they are usually not organized by content but by date. Users do not search by date in search engines, but by keywords.” Therefore, blog editors must integrate an alternative navigation structure by topic.
Shari Thurow's recommendations are:
– Take advantage of descriptive tags and use keywords. Other features, such as title attributes in image tags, are of no importance to search engines.
– Ensure that the website has good usability: sites without AJAX or Flash must offer the same content as sites programmed with those languages.
– Landing pages with flash animations should display key ideas at a glance, so that the user can be sure that they have reached the page they were looking for.
– Provide users with both sitemaps and home pages.
– Use only the fonts that are most widely used by users, otherwise the design of the site may be affected.
– Do not position layers with negative values; search engines assume that they are not visible and value this fact negatively.
In her presentation at Search Marketing Expo Munich, the specialist outlined the strategies that can be followed to improve the positioning of a Web 2.0. Thurow states that creators of Web 2.0 sites that include Flash or AJAX content often neglect the presence of the site in browsers that cannot reproduce these formats. "Instead, AJAX and bank data Flash content should be a complement to traditional (X)HTML pages."
Since Flash-based sites cannot link to specific content, Thurow believes that this content should also be offered in other formats for users who do not have JavaScript or FlashPlayer.
Blogs are also generally not well suited to the needs of search engines. According to Shari Thurow , “blogs have a poor link structure, because they are usually not organized by content but by date. Users do not search by date in search engines, but by keywords.” Therefore, blog editors must integrate an alternative navigation structure by topic.
Shari Thurow's recommendations are:
– Take advantage of descriptive tags and use keywords. Other features, such as title attributes in image tags, are of no importance to search engines.
– Ensure that the website has good usability: sites without AJAX or Flash must offer the same content as sites programmed with those languages.
– Landing pages with flash animations should display key ideas at a glance, so that the user can be sure that they have reached the page they were looking for.
– Provide users with both sitemaps and home pages.
– Use only the fonts that are most widely used by users, otherwise the design of the site may be affected.
– Do not position layers with negative values; search engines assume that they are not visible and value this fact negatively.