Organic Search and Flash
January 20th, 2007 by Doug ReynoldsLast year we redesigned the PJA web site. The primary driver was to update the site to reflect our more recent work. Another high priority reason to redesign the site was to improve our search rankings. Our site was contained entirely within Flash and none of its content was visible to the search engines. Back then a search for “PJA” would have a user believe that we didn’t exist.
We decided that one requirement for the site was to improve the visibility of our content at a number of levels. 1) Content: Move the text-based content out of flash and into HTML. 2) Infrastructure: Use search-engine friendly coding best-practices. and 3) Linking: Monitor and improve the quality of our inbound links. We also launched a modest Google AdWords campaign to supplement our search visibility while the organic search results improved.
It’s been about 10 months since we launched the redesigned site and a Google search on “PJA” puts us on the first page of the organic search results. A number of additional factors contributed to the improved search ranking. Links from the Complex Brands blog and the BtoB agency of the year award seemed to really help us. Surprisingly, links from LinkedIn appear to factor into the improvements as well.
One of the lessons we’ve learned over the years is that a top-ten search ranking is the result of ongoing efforts that takes place on many fronts. The primary front is content - analyzing our stats suggests that a combination of timeliness, quality, and focus drive a lot of the traffic that improves a site’s search rankings. It’s something to remember as 2007 gets going and marketers try to decide where to put their efforts.
Incidentally we’re getting ready to relaunch an improved version of our site. We use Flash throughout the site, but all our content continues to be visible to the search engines.