vital marketing

You’ve probably noticed when searching with Google, often PDFs come up in the search results. That’s because Google indexes PDF files, and PDFs represent a large volume of the content on the web.

However, most people don’t think about optimizing their PDFs for the search engines. That’s unfortunate because it’s easy to optimize your PDFs for Google indexing and searching.

First, make sure you include TITLE, DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDs attributes in your PDF file. You can also add the AUTHOR and other fields as desired—but TITLE is essential!

You can supply these attributes (tags) with Adobe or other tools that you use to create the PDF. Or you can always modify these attributes in existing PDFs by using a freeware utility like PDF Info.

Keep in mind that the TITLE field is what Google uses as the heading in its search results. If you don’t have a TITLE, then it will just display the first chunk of text in encounters in the PDF document—which is often not ideal. So always include a useful TITLE tag.

Also if you want a search engine to find your content based on keywords or key phrases, be sure you include those terms in prominent locations in your PDF document, such as the page titles and table of contents.

For more information on PDF files and SEO, here are a couple of useful links on Adobe’s site:

• Offer search tools a helping hand
• Make your PDFs work well with Google (and other search engines)

I have a non-profit client – www.vppac.org – that is hosting an annual conference for several hundred members in Vegas next February. Another client – www.ostermancron.com – is hosting a small open-house event to show off the latest and greatest in office furntiure this fall.  In the case of VPPAC, I needed a way to accept credit card payments. In the case of OstermanCron, I needed online registration and a way to track attendees.  A colleague of mine – Greg Doud www.doudsystems.com – found a great site for getting this done. Event Brite -www.eventbrite.com. Just started playing around with it but it looks like it is going to work brilliantly. Plus it’s FREE. If you aren’t charging for the event as in the OstermanCron case, it is truly free. If you are charging for registration/tickets as is the case for vppac.org, then you pay a transaction fee to Paypal and 2.5% to Event Brite with a max fee of $9.95 per ticket. Well worth it given all of the functionality you get and the time saved in trying to manage yourself. I’ll let you know how it goes…… 

This week Google added a privacy link on their home page and results pages.

Here’s an excerpt from Google’s blog about the new link:

“So, today we’re making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies. Google values our users’ privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles. The new “Privacy” link goes to our Privacy Center, which was revamped earlier this year to be more straightforward and approachable, with videos and a non-legalese overview to make sure you understand in basic terms what Google does, does not, will, and won’t, do in regard to your personal information.”

Like Google, all web marketers should include a privacy statement on their web site, clearly stating if you will share any customer data and if so, how. Make the policy easy to understand and make it easy to find on your web site—a best practice is to include it in the footer of the web site so that it appears on every page.

Plus as an added bonus, the search engines like privacy statements! It makes your site appear more legitimate and professional—include one and you’ll be rewarded with higher ranking.

Of course not everyone needs a privacy statement quite as sophisticated as $168B Google. Something like WEconectIT’s Privacy Statement is sufficent for many organizations.

If you need help crafting your policy statement, check out The Direct Marketing Association’s Privacy Policy Generator. Simply fill out a few questions and this useful online tool will generate a privacy web page that you can post on your site.

This week InformationWeek reports that Adobe announced their new ‘Searchable SWF technology.” They will be distributing a “search-engine optimized” version of Flash Player to Google and Yahoo.

“When a search spider hits an SWF Flash file, the special Flash Player will start up. This Flash Player will navigate every state of Flash files like a virtual user would, finding and helping the search engines index text and links along the way and searching through otherwise unlinked files that the Flash file points to.”

No doubt this will impact Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) once Google and Yahoo start indexing all the flash-only sites that have so far been invisible to search spiders. However, there are still serious limitations—some that will be annoying to web users—so there’s still no reason to race to Flash as a primary web site development tool.

“Still, only text and links will be searchable. Graphics and video, including FLV files, still won’t be able to be indexed properly, and there’s no capability to search and index metadata embedded in Flash files (even though, Adobe says, SWF and FLV files have metadata fields) or to allow people to link to specific content within a Flash file in order to make search results more relevant. Also, when someone clicks on a search result, they’ll be taken to the beginning of a Flash file and will have to navigate their way to the content they are seeking.”

Here is another article titled, “Caution urged following Google Flash changes” that outlines a few additional concerns.