Before we dive in to the technical details around SEO for rich content, lets first cover off on the basic items that must get addressed regardless of presentation layer technologies.

1. Create your keywords. These are the words that you believe potential “seekers” of your site/product/service will be searching for. For example, if you have a chiropractic practice in the Bay Area called Doctor Smith D.C., that specializes in cold laser therapy, good keyword options would be “Bay Area”, “chiropractic”, “cold laser therapy”. Words like “doctor” and “smith” may be too general.
2. URL(‘s). Does your URL describe your site? www.smithchiropractic.com, is preferred over www.drsmith.com. The overall folder structure and naming conventions of the site should also follow this: www.smithchiropractic.com/services/cold-laser-therapy/how-it-works. Be sure to use a dash ‘-’ instead of an underscore ‘_’ to separate words in a URL. The search engine will use dashes to retain the wording structure, and this will help it understand your site content and provide better indexing:
   = services cold laser therapy how it works
   Meanwhile, underscores are removed and all words become slapped together and rather meaningless:
   = servicescoldlasertherapyhowitworks
3. Use Semantic HTML.
   <h1>My Content Title</h1> vs. <span class=”header1″>My Content Title</span>
4. Use of standard HTML tags.
   • <title> Using a descriptive title tag is probably the single most important SEO thing to check off and it doesn’t matter if you are building a traditional HTML-based website, or a richer Flash, AJAX or Silverlight-based RIA. Here is the first place to use some of your keywords (identified in step #1). It’s also important to be aware of the order in which these words appear. Most people will put a name or company name first (or only use a single name): Doctor Smith: Chiropractor. This may work well if your name is “Microsoft” and everyone knows you. However, you may want to list your keywords first for people searching for your specific services in general and place your name/company name at the end. So a better approach for Dr. Smith would be: Bay Area Chiropractor Cold Laser Therapy | Doctor AJ Smith, D.C. If you have a niche/specialty, as in Cold Laser, this is a great opportunity to get high search results; consider moving “cold laser” to the front.
   • <h1> Only 1 per page, this signifies the most important topic on the page. Although this may not be applicable in a full RIA (Flash) application, it is important to understand how important it is to search engines; a good place to consider integrating this HTML content on pages with heavy graphics, video, Flash, etc.
   • <meta> Description tag very important. This is normally what the search engine will display on the results page to describe what your page/site is all about. Apparently, the keyword tag is no longer used at all.
   • <a> Anchor. Again, more applicable for traditional HTML sites. The text is import, use something instead of “more info” – for example, use descriptive text: “how cold laser therapy works.”
5. Canonicalization. Fancy for saying: www.smithchiropractic.com vs. smithchiropractic.com vs smithchiropractic.com/index.php: Pick one! Otherwise, you will be spreading your search rating among 3 separate sites (that all lead to the same place). This dilutes your ranking. For example, if you ultimately have 6,000 inbound links, but they are separated among the 3 URLs, you will only have 2,000 inbound indexed for the same site!

Coming Next: SEO Part 4, Progressive Enhancement (for Rich Content Search)

Now for part 2 of my SEO/Findable (rich media) content discussion. After we answer the business questions addressed in part 1: what are we building and who is it for, then we can begin to choose the correct approaches and strategies for getting people to “find” our work; and it is not all about search engine optimization (SEO). There are many platforms for creating attention for your work. Again, think about who the audience is and what you are providing; will anyone actually even use a search engine to find you? Perhaps a better idea is to go to them, where they hang out online. Some of the findable approaches to consider:

• Search Engine Optimization
  More on this in part 3, but essentially this involves techniques for building your site so that it is easier for search engines to find and index properly. If search engines can find you, and know what you’re about, then users will be able to find you on the web just by using a search engine.
• Search Engine Marketing
  Paid placement search (pay per click, PPC)
  Paid inclusion: pay the search engine to include you
  Combination of paid placement + organic search
• Communities, Social Networks and Media
  MySpace, Facebook, YouTube
  Communities, Blogs, forums
  The idea is to go to where the target audience is, instead of trying to get them to “find” you
  Inbound linking – getting your site known inside of a community can have additional benefit for your SEO, as now you’ll have a bunch of inbound links (from relevant sites) pointing back to your site
• Mobile
  Create a mobile application or WAP site that points people to your website
  
• Online Advertising
  Specifically using contextually relevant ads on targeted sites.
• Offline
  Does your target audience spend more time offline? Use print/TV to point to your URL on the web.

OK, I’m becoming a little bit of an SEO freak now. I seem to think about search with everything I do; is that a bad thing? And it’s not all about SEO either, there are many strategies for creating “findable” content as I tried to express during my panel discussion at SXSW. I want to summarize my presentation, as well as all the things I learned from researching this subject and from getting the chance to work with Google, Microsoft and Adobe. Before I get into the technical and creative strategies, I wanted to remind everyone, that the first step in creating “findable” content, is to answer some basic business questions:

1. Who is our audience?
   -what would make them search for content?
   -where do they spend time, what tools do they use? Google? Facebook? Blogs? Forums? YouTube?
2. Client-specific considerations/dependencies
   -does the business rely on search?
3. Technical considerations/dependencies
   -is it an application with a single entry point (i.e. RIA); for example, it would be bad to have an email application searchable!
   -does the experience exist in a pre-defined framework?
4. Distinctions:

• Short lived vs. longer term
  -it can take months to get indexed and build solid, reliable search results – will your creation come down before it is even indexed by the search engine?
• Big brand vs. smaller name
  -some larger brands don’t care about or need SEO, while a smaller company lives by it
• Rich experience vs. informational content
  -some companies are more interested in creating an amazing experience than offering information content
• Awareness vs. direct model
  -is the goal to create general awareness of the brand/company, or directly market to a specific group

Part 2: Creating a Findable Strategy, coming soon!

What an adventure. 3 days in Vegas at at MIX and then 4 days in Austin for SXSW.  Although my plane was late and I missed the opening keynote for MIX, where they demoed the Hard Rock Cafe site that Jason W designed (I’m so pissed I missed that), I was lucky to arrive in time to see Nathan Buggia’s session on SEO. This was fortunate in that I would be giving a similar talk at SXSW in two days! This weekend, I will post more on my SEO, SEM and overall “findability” thoughts, including the ideas (and code) that I presented at SXSW.

I also enjoyed the Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki Keynote. Steve B was so funny and down-to-earth, that I not only fell out of my seat laughing, I also really liked the guy! I thought that Guy did a great job. Not sure how informative it was; although I did get to hear how a typical day in the life of Steve goes, and I also found out more about the Microsoft product roadmap.  The Deep Zoom stuff (used in Hard Rock Cafe site) is pretty amazing. I also attended a demo on how to implement it. I wonder how it compares with the old Zoomify for Flash?

More on this to come….

I think many have already seen or heard of Nextwall, as it has been in creation for about a year or so now I believe. I find it more than just a cool visual “art” thing, I think it points to how a future of digital social networking and commerce may look. It kind of sums up all the freaky stuff I’ve been blogging about recently into one amazing experience. Although Nextwall is focused for artists, it’s not difficult to imagine what could be done for any digital media audience. Because it allows any user to “contribute”, as well as receive, from the wall, it begins to look like a powerful and very expressive tool for social networking.

“Nextwall is an interactive “graffiti wall” in the Karo district of Hamburg.” The wall, 30-metre also contains QR Codes, Bluetooth, object recognition and RFID technologies to enable people who pass by the wall to download content to their mobile phones. In this case, the content can be further information including notes on the artist’s approach and the idea behind his/her art. But now the commerce part kicks in as people take photos of the nextwall, QR codes send along coupons for neighborhood cafés and shops back to the user. Other technologies enable passersby to add their own comments or jokes. There’s also a technology that enables people to spray virtual spray paint – creating 3D, free-floating graffiti that can only be seen through special glasses. Additional ideas in the pipeline for 2008 include: “a mobile phone guide that explains details of the graffiti to the user; or the “I was here” camera, with which nextwall visitors can immortalize themselves on the Internet. In addition, some of the very latest technologies will be tried out: from object recognition and RFID to laser projection.”

http://www.nextwall.net