Welcome to the latest issue of the SEO Chat newsletter. Microsoft and Yahoo continue to circle each other in their dance, but the rest of us go on -- and we have some news for you we think you'll appreciate almost as a much as a conclusion to that madness. We're going to start improving the content on Dev Mechanic, one of our sister sites. You'll see new, original articles posted weekly; they'll be longer and of higher quality than you may have seen on the site before. Since many of the topics we cover on Dev Mechanic are of interest to site owners and web-based businesses, we think you might want to check it out. You'll see the changes starting next week.

While you're waiting, you may want to check out the article we're highlighting for you this week from eWeek. Are we on the verge of seeing Web 2.0 technologies finally penetrate the enterprise? If not, why is there resistance to this trend? Read the article and find out.

Of course we published a great assortment of articles for you this week. Our most recent one reviewed Searchme, a search engine with a visual interface that can truly be described as intuitive. Google is said to be working on something similar, so you know this is something special. On Tuesday we ran the second part of our two-part series on basic SEO. This part focused on what search engines hate. It's quite possible to do something unintentionally to put yourself on Google's bad side. That's not a pretty place, so it's good to know what to avoid doing. Speaking of Google, on Monday we covered Google's latest moves in information indexing, including some controversial ones. If you remember hearing something about the "second search box" or that Google is trying to come up with a way to index content on the other side of HTML forms, you'll definitely want to read this article.

We cover a nice mix of strategies in the tutorials we're highlighting for you this week from Tutorialized. We show you how to build and structure your web site so that it will receive more traffic, build links, force search engines to read your keywords, and much more. Check out these and other SEO-related tutorials on Tutorialized today.

Our Thread of the Week asks a question of special interest to anyone who does SEO for a web site with lots of video. How do you get the search engines to properly index your site when they can't "read" video? Our original poster to this thread gets some good advice; feel free to visit the thread and join the conversation.

Finally, our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, offers suggestions on a topic near and dear to many SEOs' hearts: getting one-way .edu links. The .edu domain has been reserved for educational institutions, which are frequently authority sites, so it is widely believed that a one-way link from a site with a .edu domain carries more weight than one from a .com domain. Because of this, everyone wants such links, but how do you get them? Scroll down to the Spotlight for some ideas.

Thanks again for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

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• How would you like to meet Google's new search engine bot? Bad costuming ensues...

Watch the video!

Visual search engines try to show us that there is a better way to search than by looking at 10 links with snippets on a page and making an educated guess. Most try to say that they are more intuitive. Searchme really is. Keep reading to find out more.

Let me say up front that I do not see Searchme as a Google killer; you can not search as fast with Searchme as you can search with Google, due to the nature of the interface. But the time you spend searching with it will be a lot more fun, and you have a much better chance of finding what you are looking for on the first couple of tries.

I will start walking you through what it is like to search with Searchme in the next section. Right now, though, I will point out that I am not the only one who thinks the upstart company might have something. The $31 million it has raised to date includes investments from Sequoia; you may remember that VC firm as an early investor in a little search engine called Google.

Read Searchme: Most Visual Search Engine Yet?

Basic SEO: What Search Engines Hate
by Michael Lowry
2008-04-29

In my last article, I went over a few of the things that search engines love. Now, I will finish up the discussion with an article on what they absolutely hate, which includes everything from clutter to cookies. So if you're in the mood to build a website, grab your pen and paper and start taking notes, because this article will offer some of the most important tricks of the trade.

A wise man once told me to kiss. No, not what you are thinking. Not that there's anything wrong with that. KISS; keep it simple stupid. This can be applied to almost any walk of life, especially SEO. And one way to tell if your website is properly optimized is by how cluttered it is. For a website to be cluttered, it has to have vast amounts of unnecessary code, not including the actual page content. If the text of a page is around five percent of the total source code, you might be cluttered my friend. Be on the lookout for excessive code used for JavaScripts, navigation bars, JavaScript event handlers, Flash animation, etc, especially if it's above the page content, because it can prevent some search engines from reaching it.

One way to avoid clutter is to use external JavaScripts, instead of placing them inside a page. This means that they should be put in an external file (a tag in the page calls the script, which is then pulled from a different file on the web server). Doing this will make your life easier for a number of reasons, not including the SEO benefits. First of all, you can have a library of all the scripts on your site in one directory. You can then change your HTML code without worrying about damaging the scripts. It also makes for less download time when the script is used on several pages because the browser will cache the script after downloading it once.

Read Basic SEO: What Search Engines Hate

Google's Latest Moves in Information Indexing
by Terri Wells
2008-04-28

Sometimes Google does something with very little fanfare that stirs considerable interest. In this article, I am going to discuss several of their recent moves. If you are curious about their attempts to index more of the web or make their indexing more useful for searchers, keep reading; you have come to the right place.

SEOs have known for the longest time that HTML forms are potentially problematic. Any content that requires a user to fill out a form to peruse will trip up search engine spiders and remain unindexed. That's perfectly fine if that's what you want to have happen. Not all online content is for sharing, and if your content is valuable enough to encourage subscribers to pay good money for it, as happens with certain medical and legal indexes, you may not want general search engines to root around in your index and turn it up free for the asking.

Google wants to change that. In a recent post to the Google Webmaster Central Blog, the search engine revealed that "we have been exploring some HTML forms to try to discover new web pages and URLs that we otherwise couldn't find and index for users who search on Google." They make certain automated entries into the form based in part on content from the site, and "If we ascertain that the web page resulting from our query is valid, interesting, and includes content not in our index, we may include it in our index much as we would include any other web page."

Read Google's Latest Moves in Information Indexing

Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other
tech related tutorials.

SEO and Link Building
Build quality traffic using your keywords!
Read the tutorial.

How Search Engines Operate
A tutorial on how search engines and spiders actually work.
Read the tutorial.

Increase Your Blog's Alexa Rank
A tutorial on how to increase your blog's Alexa ranking
Read the tutorial.

Honesty in Search Engine Optimization
A guide to quality SEO tactics.
Read the tutorial.

Send traffic to my site!
Some advice on how to build and structure your website.
Read the tutorial.

Force Search Engines to Read Keywords
Forcing engines to read keywords.
Read the tutorial.

How can this SEO Newsletter be better?

What do you like or dislike about this issue?
Is there a topic you want to learn more about?
What issues in search engine news are important to you? We'll consider your suggestions and ideas for improvement,
so please email us. Email us.

Visitors like video sites, if YouTube's popularity is any indication. But search engine spiders don't see video. So how do you get such a site indexed? That's the question being asked and answered in this week's thread. Why not stop by and offer your advice today?

SEO for a Video site

Hi,

I'm one of the web developers for a video site. The site has been running for over 2 months now and our stats are showing that the majority of our traffic is coming from our sister sites, rather than search engines.

I was wondering if anyone could recommend ways of improving rankings on SERPs for pages that mostly feature a video (usually a flash player).

Thanks in advance

Search engines don't know what's in the video, you have to tell them. Do the pages have descriptive textual content about the video? descriptive h1? Title tag? Alt tags?

If you are using flash media, do what Youtube does...

Use html text links for navigation because it will help Googlebot crawls your entire video site.

While providing only flash for video, make sure your entire site is crawlable.

Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts.
Read the full thread.

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Scoring Those Elusive .edu Links

The .com domain might rule the web, but when it comes to one-way links, it seems as if everyone wants one from a .gov or .edu site. Many (but not all) .edu sites tickle search engine algorithms by showing all the earmarks of an authority site: they are large, having grown organically to their current size; many have lots of one-way incoming links; they provide excellent, authoritative content; and they've been around for a long time. Who wouldn't want a link from such a site?

The trick, of course, is getting that link in the first place. A college or university site isn't going to link back to just anyone; they have a reputation to uphold, and an obligation to make sure that one-way links really do lead to sites that serve their faculty, staff, and student body. That said, you may be surprised to learn that you can use some of the same tactics to acquire one-way links with universities that you would use for any other site, but adapted to the nature of the institution and your line of business.

Search engine marketing company Vertical Measures offered a number of excellent ideas for attracting these highly desirable one-way links from .edu sites. Much as we like to think of colleges as hallowed halls of learning, they (and their professors!) often show at least some interest in self-promotion. So, you might consider interviewing one of the professors for an article that you will publish on your web site. When it goes live, let the professor know; they'll probably be glad to link from their page on the university's web site to your article.

Another way to get a link from a professor is to review one of their books. Many professors live in the shadow of publish or perish, so it shouldn't be hard to find a publication that a professor would like to promote. You may find that professors who have published recently are particularly eager for this kind of attention. If a book review isn't appropriate, consider the research done at the college and whether any of it is a good match for your product. Vertical Measures used the example of a university's bio-sciences department studying the positive effects of vitamins on certain diseases as being a good match for a site selling vitamins; you can adapt this approach to your own product and needs.

Don't neglect student interests either. If your company is located in a college town, you might consider putting up sports scores and/or information on upcoming events. Or add content that's useful to students but might not be provided by the college itself. How about a student loan calculator? Or a survival guide for being out on your own for the first time (with instructions for doing laundry, fixing cheap meals, staying within a budget, etc.)? This kind of content could win you links from student resource pages. Just put on your mortarboard thinking cap, and soon your .edu linkbait will be earning you A+ grades and high marks in the SERPs.