The SEO community was abuzz this week when a member of Search Engine Watch forums posted an interesting reply he had received from MSN when asking them why his site seemed to be banned. Note that this has not been confirmed by MSN, but the header information from the email he received seems to authenticate that it came from MSN.  The reply to his questions was:

“Your site is acquiring links through posting to or exchanging links with sites unrelated to your site content. Techniques which attempt to acquire unrelated spam links in order to increase ranking are considered spam and your site has been excluded from our index as a result. Please contact us once you've removed these links and we will reevaluate.”

Reciprocal links are, by definition, links that are given to a web page on the basis of a trade.  That is, one web site owner offers to link to another website’s page from one of its pages in exchange for a similar link.  Many webmasters or other website administrators have received automated emails prefaced with obvious boiler plate requests such as “I have looked over your site and I love it…I feel that our visitors would benefit from the information…we would like to exchange links.”  Although the MSN statement is not confirmed, SMTrends wanted to present the AA|RF opinion on reciprocal links.

SMTrends Issue #12 covered the basics of link building, and one will notice that reciprocal linking was not mentioned as one of the main tactics employed by the AA|RF SEO Team.  The reason for this is because of the fear that search engines will be able to easily track this type of link building behavior and eventually discount those links or even penalize sites which count on reciprocation as their primary source of inbound links.  In their Webmaster Guidelines, Google clearly states in the “Quality Guidelines – Basic Principles” section that websites should not participate in “link schemes.” Yahoo! also covers this topic briefly in their Content Quality Guidelines.  MSN does confirm they are looking for questionable linking tactics in their Guidelines for successful indexing.  Links should be gained without having to resort to offering a link exchange.  In some cases, however, an exchange may actually be beneficial to both sites, and as with many things, using reciprocal links in moderation will probably not harm rankings.

Matt Greitzer, an AA|RF Search Marketing Director, spoke on November 13th at the Search Insider Summit in Palm Springs, CA.  In the session, "Search and Branding," Matt argued the word "branding" is a loaded term, and does not accurately describe what is occurring in the search landscape.  Rather, marketers are finding more non-transactional applications for search marketing and evaluating success based on metrics other than direct response. 

Matt highlighted three emerging strategies all designed to capture value outside of an explicit transaction, including: 1) Top-of-the-funnel keyword bidding, in which advertisers bid on general keywords in order to drive awareness and consideration, resulting in increased volume on more specific, down-funnel keywords (note these down-funnel keywords are also commonly referred-to as “long tail” keywords, discussed in SMTrends Issue #10), 2) Associative keyword advertising, in which advertisers bid on keywords with which they want their brands associated (e.g. W Hotels bidding on pet-related keywords to promote their pet-friendly hotels), and 3) Corporate reputation management, in which advertisers maximize their web assets in both the paid and natural search landscape to prevent competitors from encroaching on their brand names. 

These and other cutting edge strategies are regularly used by AA|RF Paid Search teams across the organization.  Matt’s third point also aims towards the increasingly prevalent belief that “search is search,” and that Paid Search and Organic Search efforts need to be aligned for maximum benefit.

Before writing ActionScripts for a new Flash website consider the basics: who is the website geared towards and how will users find the site? If the plan is to rely on Organic Search engine traffic there are some important factors to consider. While search engines do index Flash files, they have difficulty indexing text and links embedded within Flash.

Typically, web developers and designers who build Flash-based sites rely on keywords in the page title and the keyword and description Meta tags to inform search engine spiders about the content.  Search optimizers have also used hidden keyword text on the page (often the same color as the background) or paragraphs of keyword rich text positioned off the page with the help of CSS.  These methodologies are forbidden by the search engines, and can draw serious penalties including a ban of the website from visible results indices.  As search engine spiders have matured to identify such unethical tactics, it has become increasingly difficult to rank Flash based websites unless the collective inbound links to the website are powerful enough to drive rankings alone.

The most effective SEO method of dealing with Flash has been to create a text-based website that contains all of the information embedded within the Flash website. This happy medium was achieved by serving the text-based version with indexable copy and links to the search engines and the Flash based site to users with browsers able to display Flash.  While this has proven to be effective in helping organic search engine rankings, it has doubled the amount of work to keep a website current as both versions need to be updated.  Although this methodology is essentially like the forbidden practice of cloaking, it is allowed by Google if the site’s Flash version is not indexed and, by permission, according to Google engineer Matt Cutts.

New progress has been made in the effort to increase the effectiveness of Flash for organic search rankings. Titles and descriptions are allowed for Flash files in recent versions and the Macromedia Search Engine Software Developer Kit provides additional features such as indexable text and links. Google has taken further steps to extract 50% more links from Flash files than the Macromedia SDK developed for search engines.  If using Flash for a new website or redesign, weigh the options regarding search engine rankings. Consider an HTML based site with text links and content enhanced by Flash elements, and Organic Search rankings will come easier.  Generally, the rest of the SEO community feels that Flash will always be a problem, yet search engines are trying to find ways to index flash and SEO are testing more ways to manipulate Flash, as evidenced from this post by Moderator Robert Charlton of Search Engine Watch.

Three Avenue A | Razorfish representatives will appear on panels at the SES Conference in Chicago next week from December 4 to 8.

• Brooke Nanberg, the Creative Discipline Lead in the AA|RF Chicago offices will enjoy “home field advantage” as she presents Monday December 4 at 2:00pm CST in the ClickZ Advertising track during a session titled “Ads Beyond Search.”  She will explore other Interactive efforts that can be explored when marketing on the Internet.
• Matt Greitzer, Director of Search Marketing in the (new) New York office, will present on Thursday December 7 at 10:45am during a panel covering “Big PPC” (Pay-per-Click).  This session will cover the interesting problem that sometimes occurs when one department in a large organization is actually bidding another department for the same keyword phrase within Paid Search listings.
• Chris Boggs, Search Strategist on the Philadelphia SEO Team, will present Wednesday December 6 at 2:00pm on a panel titled “Link Baiting and Viral Marketing.”  This panel covers the latest trends in viral campaigns as well as methodologies being used to entice people to link to a particular web page. 

Chris also covers the sessions along with a few other writers at Search Engine Roundtable Blog.  This coverage is generally posted as soon as the session ends, so for real-time news please keep an eye on the Chicago SES 2006 category at SER.  Additionally, coverage of the AA|RF speaker session as well as other sessions of note will be provided in upcoming SMTrends issues.

***Note also that SES Paris is concluding today, having started yesterday.  World-renown Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch (moving to the new Search Engine Land soon) has an excellent write up of the keynote presented by French search marketer Francois Bourdoncle, based on the initial coverage by Andy Atkins-Kruger in the Multilingual Search Blog.  SMTrends will focus on European trends in a topic next week.