Google can now indexed scanned documents - .pdf files and other images of print text. Wow!

This is great news because before humans - people like you me - had no problems reading scanned documents online, but the search engines did. Now you can scan your entire library of technical manuals and possibly rank for search terms within them. At least, in theory.

From Google’s official blog:

Consider a circle. Should it be read it as a zero, the letter ‘O’, just a circle, or the ring from my coffee cup? People learn to answer this kind of question very quickly, but for the computer it is a painstaking and error-prone process.

Check it out:

Here’s a link to the SERP.

Now view the .pdf document.

Incredible that the huge title across the top of the page on the .pdf file is the actual title of the document in the SERP, just like on a web page. How you can make that work for your website? Any ideas?

I’ve seen all kinds of websites. The worst kinds of websites in the world are websites that sit on Windows servers, designed using ASP, and use Javascript dynamic navigation menus. Why even build a website? It’s a combination of three of the worst design mistakes you can make.

Like anything made by Microsoft, Windows servers are loaded with code. You’ll typically find that many web hosts will offer a free website building tool with your hosting package. A great deal many of those are Windows-based. They suck. Don’t use them. Your website will be littered with code, making it difficult for the search engines to find the meat of your content so that they can index it properly. You are much better off using a LINUX or UNIX server. When interviewing your web host, ask them if their servers are LINUX or Windows-based. If they say Windows then shop elsewhere.

Windows servers and ASP go hand in hand. Why? Because they are both Microsoft products. If you guessed that ASP is littered with code that bogs down your website, you’d be right. Just like the Windows server, it’s got all kinds of useless code added in that makes it more difficult for the search engines to crawl your website. Build your website in HTML. It will get crawled better and will be more likely to get indexed by the search engines.

Javascript has some useful applications. There are things you can do on a website that will be difficult to do without Javascript, or that you wouldn’t even want to try without it. Embedding audio and video files, for instance. So Javascript is a great tool to use. But not as a navigation menu item. Why? Because the search engines can’t crawl it - yet.

There are other cool things you can do with Javascript. Most social applications use it. Without Javascript you couldn’t put all those widgets on your website. It’s a really, really cool coding language that has allowed webmasters to move beyond the basic formatting of HTML and into the world of Web 2.0, making user interaction one the defining principle of post-Bust Internet marketing.

So why is Javascript so bad?

The answer is it is only bad for certain use, namely, as a navigation menu. Yes, your navigation menu will look cool and your users will love the flips, turns, drop downs, flashing giggles, and other bells and whistles you embed into your website, but the search engines won’t crawl those links and your internal web pages won’t get indexed. And that’s why I recommend, instead, that you use an HTML navigation menu, because the search engines have no problem crawling HTML links.

One alternative, if you insist on using the dynamic Javascript navigation menu, is to place HTML links in the footer of your website so that the search engines have something to crawl. Otherwise, you’re really just building a website that looks pretty, but only you and your web host will know it.

Live Search wrote on its blog that it can provide instant answers. That’s great, but I think Ask.com proved years ago that instant answers weren’t always that good. But Jeeves didn’t quite do it the way that Live Search is trying to do. I actually like the Live Search model.

Here it is in a nutshell:

• Search the Live Search Encyclopedia for information
• Get local traffic by performing a traffic query
• Check your horoscope

I like the encyclopedia approach, especially if it’s free. But users will have to be able to get the information that they need right now. One failed search query and it’s doomed. But I’m not real sure it’s going to MSNs market share. It probably won’t. Still, if they can provide useful information at a snap, it’ll hold its own. What do you think? Is Live Search cool or a fool?

SEO cuts a lot of ways. If you write a blog, for instance, you don’t have to do every single post on a niche-related topic. You should a lot within your niche because, well, it’s just common sense. If your blog is about milk-based products then you’d better talk about milk-based products a lot or no one will take you seriously when you do. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t veer from your primary path from time to time.

Politics is something that most people really care about. It is political season. Why not endorse a candidate on your blog and give the reasons why you support that candidate. When you do this you are giving your readers a little bit of your personal values and you can do it such a way that it doesn’t turn people off. Steer clear of the controversies and stay on the positive aspects of your candidate’s views rather than the negatives of the candidates you don’t like. But be sure that you search engine optimize the post so that you garner the search engine benefits to draw in people interested in that topic.

When you SEO your political endorsement, pick a key phrase that you want to target. Don’t use the candidate’s name because that’s what most people use. There is a lot of competition there. Instead, pick a phrase that is associated with that candidate and target that phrase. For instance, Barack Obama’s campaign slogan is “Change We Need”. John McCain has often referred to himself, and has been referred to by others, as a maverick. These are phrases that are less popular than the candidates’ names but that are popular enough that people will search for them. You want them to find your post.

While you try to optimize your blog post to reach a political audience, keep in mind that your audience also consists of people who are potential customers. Don’t talk down to them or insult their intelligence. Keep it short, simple, and focused on the positives - then move on to the niche-related business without further ado.

A few days ago Rand Fishkin made a post outing another website that ranked for the term “SEO Company”. He called it an “embarrassment” to Google. I thought at the time that it was a bit too nutty for him to be doing that, but I didn’t mention. I just figured it was Rand using someone else’s success as target practice for his own self-promotion agenda. It seems I’m not the only one who thought that. Aaron Wall calls him the SEO Police.

Shoemoney wasn’t too happy about it either and posted this video:

Rand Fishkin is getting on the “manipulative techniques” band wagon, but it seems to be self-serving. Outing other webmasters for their success, even when it comes from manipulative techniques, could have a detrimental effect to the entire industry. I’m with Aaron Wall and Shoemoney on this one. Don’t buck up to Google. It’s a bit like the angels waging war on God. Who do you think is going to win?

A buddy of mine said that two SEOs with different approaches working together on the same project is like Obama and McCain working together to solve the Iraq issue. Is that true? Can two search engine optimization experts with different ideas about optimization work on the same project together?

First, can two SEOs disagree that much? Isn’t SEO pretty much a science? Don’t all roads lead to Rome?

As much as many of us would like to believe that white hat search engine optimization is an exact science, it isn’t. There are likely as many solutions to a problem as there are search experts working on it. Sure, some may be better solutions than others, some more effective than others, but at the end of the day a solution is a solution. It either works or it doesn’t. And for many problems, there isn’t just one answer. There could be multiple approaches that work.

It’s a bit like building a house. Two different architects could design a house and it will look completely different. Neither is wrong, they are just different. Two contractors could take the same blueprint and approach building that house from different methodologies. It will still look like the same house when it is finished, but they just approach the task differently. I’m not saying that one starts with the foundation and the other starts with the roof. It isn’t that drastic. But one could start on the living room and the other on the kitchen and still build the same house.

In SEO, there are principles that cannot be ignored. But that doesn’t mean that every SEO following those principles will do things exactly the same. If you are planning to use two different SEO companies on the same project, keep this in mind. Don’t create conflict where it isn’t necessary. Pick a plan and go with it.

Search engine optimization has both a bad rep and a salvation complex. Spammers, black hat SEOs, and other types of vermin have given our industry a bad name and many business owners are leery of anyone claiming to use SEO for better business. On the other hand, many of us have proven that SEO works when does correctly and ethically. But it can it brand your business?

I think it can. In fact, I know it can. The Brick Marketing blogs have done quite well as a branding item and we rank well for our keywords on just about every blog in the family. But understand that effective SEO isn’t sales. There is a limit to how far it can take your business.

A No. 1 listing in Google, for instance, doesn’t mean you’ll make any amount of money. You might get a lot of traffic from your listing, but in order for that traffic to convert you’ll have to sell to it and that means writing website content that closes sales. Branding, however, is about image. And when it comes to creating a positive image for your business, you should start by defining what you want that image to be. Then you should deploy every asset and strategy at your disposal - SEO included - to create that image. Successful branding, even branding that uses good clean white hat search engine optimization, should lead to closing sales.

Local search is growing into its own, which means that there is going to be a growing threat of spam. You’d think that Google, as long as its been the top dog in search, would have figured out a way by now to pre-empt spam and address the issues before the pop up. I guess that would be too much to ask.

This blog post describes a new phenomenon in map spam. While it hasn’t been a huge problem - yet - the potential is there. And if you are one of the victims discussed in this blog post then you probably do - and should - see it as a big problem. A 30% loss in profits is a big deal no matter what your former profit margin was.

I like the blogger’s suggestions, though. Especially the last one:

One, they need to do their homework, two they need to turn it in on time, three they need to stop relying on the likes of me, and others like me, to highlight the worst cases and four when they do find a case of spam, they need to go back and scrub the data not just remove the most visible of them.

If Google is going to fight spam then they need to go through and identify the cases of spam. Even better, they need to devise a spam fighting mechanism for Maps so that this doesn’t happen again. Maybe some kind of editorial review with checks and balances to prevent editors from abusing their authority.

This morning I talked about keywords and how they are not the most important thing in the world. Important, yes. But not everything.

I’d like to elaborate on that a little more. Search engine optimization is a bit like life. You learn as you go.

New webmasters tend to focus so much on attaining search engine results that they forget about the customer. You have to create a positive user experience. That’s what it’s all about. Search engine robots are not going to buy your widget. If you have a No. 1 listing and no customer then what has it gained you?

Yes, good listings in the search engines can get you traffic, but well-written web pages that speak to your target audience will keep them there. Unless you are reaching your target market right where it triggers their emotions and gets them involved, you probably aren’t going to sell much. Well optimized or not.

Keyword density is a term you’ll hear a lot when it comes to learning how to do on-site SEO. Honestly, too much is made of it and I’ll tell you why. SEO is not about how many times you can stuff a keyword into your content. It IS about how well you let your human visitors and the search engines know what your site, and each page on your site, is all about.

The search engines analyze over 150 different criteria when they determine page rankings in their SERPs. Each criteria has its own weightiness in the algorithms used to rank pages. For instance, keyword usage is just one criteria. It may have more weight than something like alt tags, but a bit less weight than, say, an h1 tag. The key is not to focus on one or a few criteria to the detriment of all others. The idea is to optimize your search engine optimization efforts by using as many of the criteria successfully as possible.

Effective search engine optimization is a combination of on page criteria and off page criteria working together to produce a positive effect on search rankings. Knowing what those criteria are is the first step. Learning how to employ them successfully is the next. Focusing too much on a single criteria is a sure way to fall into search oblivion, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

According to Aaron Wall, who is quoting Bill O’Reilly making fun of Jon Stewart, who has no clue that his primary audience is the lazy slacker market, young liberals are the biggest segment of content producers online. And if that’s true, young liberals must be hip to SEO. Right?

Well, I don’t know how true that last statement is, but does anyone really care how liberal or conservative the creator of a website’s content is? If it’s optimized improperly is Google going to flag it as the right wingnut site so everyone will know which shade of red or blue it is associated with?

Obviously, I’m making light of the lightheartedness of the Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart exchange, and it makes no different if you prefer Stewart or Colbert, the most important thing online is content development. Left leaning or right leaning, your content must shine. It’s got to appeal to your target audience, it should be original and unique, and in order to attract the attention of the search engines, it should be reviewed for search engine optimization. What else is new? God bless America.

The Google Webmaster Central blog paints a vivid picture of an innocent website that gets mixed up in bad company and becomes the carrier of malicious malware. Could that happen to you?

Sure. I think it could, and if you don’t take precautionary measures it just might. Here’s a little snippet of what Google had to say:

The good news is that your grandmother is still kind and loves turtles. She isn’t trying to start a botnet or steal credit card numbers. The bad news is that her website or the server that it runs on probably has a security vulnerability, most likely from some out-of-date software. That vulnerability has been exploited and malicious code has been added to your grandmother’s website. It’s most likely an invisible script or iframe that pulls content from another website that tries to attack any computer that views the page. If the attack succeeds, then viruses, spyware, key loggers, botnets, and other nasty stuff will get installed.

That’s pretty gruesome. Your grandmother is a sweet old lady who wouldn’t harm a fly. Everyone knows that. And when your best friend Bob’s grandmother lands on your grandmother’s cooking website, well, things can get really nasty, and I’m not talking about bread dough falling flat. Is there protection for your grandmother? What can a webmaster do to prevent this type of hack from taking place on their site?

First, make sure that you don’t “hang out” in bad neighborhoods. Research the server that your site is located on and try to find out what other kinds of sites are on it. If possible, get a dedicated server, which is a server that your site and your site alone sits on. It’s more expensive, but you won’t have to worry about bad guys in your neck of the woods.

CMS systems are particularly vulnerable to attacks. They are easily hacked unless you go through the trouble to secure them properly. Make sure that you do. Better yet, code your site in HTML and CSS, if possible. Coded sites are less vulnerable to hacks.

You can also request a malware review of your website from Google. It’s best to do that if you think you may have been hacked or if you have just cleaned up your site and you want to be sure you got it all.

From time to time you probably want to search out your own sites on Google and see if you get the message “This site may harm your computer” associated with it. When you log into your Google Webmaster Tools account you should get a notification from Google that your site has been flagged. If you see one of those then it’s time to take action. Google will not give you advance warning so you need to take action as soon as you see the message. You will lose traffic if you don’t clean it up because if you’re seeing the message then it is appearing in the Google SERPs when people search for information that you provide.

Two sources you can go to for more information about bad malware are:

• Stopbadware.org
• Google Groups

When it comes to SEO there are primarily two content factors you should consider: Links and keywords.

Those are not the only search engine position factors, but they are the broad categories of content factors. Links, of course, refer to the actual link structure of your website and inbound links to your site from other sites on the web. Keywords refer to the words in your content, but not just any word. Keywords themselves are like anchors - they keep your content from floating adrift and hold it down to the actual subject matter of the page.

How well you manage links and keywords pretty much determines how well you succeed at search engine optimization. It’s not all on page. Much of it is also off-page. Keywords and links, for instance, can work together to produce effective anchor text for your inbound links. If you perform your link building tasks effectively then you’ll see that your anchor text can be quite instrumental in helping you achieve the rankings you are looking for. But … that’s just one factor.

Bottom line: Manage your keywords and your links for maximum performance. Don’t let them manage you.

Link popularity is a phrase that is used to describe your website’s power according to the number of inbound links you have. There are several tools online that will measure your link pop for you and I’ll list a few in a moment. Right now, I’ll talk about the importance of link popularity.

Any time another website links to yours you get credit for the link. You might get a lot of credit or a little credit, but you’re going to get some credit. With a few exceptions.

If you are being linked to from a spam site or bad neighborhood then you may not get credit for that link, but you won’t be penalized. The search engines know that you can’t help who links to you. There’s no control in that. But link popularity measures the number - not the quality - of the links pointing in to your site.

At one point, MSN reported the links the counted, but that hasn’t happened for a while. Yahoo! seems to count every link, even sometimes internal links - that is, links that point from one page to another. Google only reports links from certain pages once and then doesn’t report them again, but may still give additional credit for the links, though the credit is somewhat diminished.

That’s a quick overview. Keep in mind that link popularity is measured for each page of your website and not the website itself. When you check link popularity for your site’s domain name then you are checking the link pop for the index page, or home page. Usually, that page has the highest link popularity, but not always. It depends on your site and whether you’ve been successful in getting other webmasters to link to your internal pages.

Tools that will report your link popularity include:

• Marketleap
• LinkPopularity.com
• SEO Chat

There are more link popularity tools out there, but these three are perhaps the most popular and sufficient for your needs.

One thing that often goes unnoticed or ignored by new webmasters is load time. New bloggers like to go a little crazy and every widget they set their eyes on to their new blog. It looks cool. There’s no doubt. I don’t dispute that the widgets, gadget, and bells and whistles are cool. But they could slow down your website’s load time and that’s not cool.

Why does load time matter? It matters because your PageRank, and maybe even your rank in the search engines, could be affected by it. The faster your load time, the less you’ll aggravate your site visitors. If visitors find your site cumbersome then they won’t come back. Search engines want their search results to benefit searchers. The want the best results possible as that will encourage more searchers to use them instead of the competition. So it is in their best interests to return sites for each search query that provide the end user with the best experience. Slow load times impede that. Therefore, the search engines prefer sites with faster load times.

I’m not saying you should get rid of all of your widgets. I am saying that you might want to take some time to figure out which ones are the absolutely most necessary. And keep those. Find reasonable alternatives for the others. As your load time increases you’ll find that your website’s quality will increase and so should your traffic.