Welcome to IMD398

Hello and welcome to my independant study. My name is Philip Huffstickler and I am a senior at the Art Institute of Atlanta. I am currently in my second to last quarter and have decided to do an independant study on Search Engine Optimization. I am in the planning stage for a future web development company and want to make sure I have a clear understanding of search engines and web marketing. This blog will help me organize my findings and help communicate my ideas to other "bloggers" who happen to stumble across my writings. This site will also serve as a class portal, used to submit assignments to my adviser, Aarron Walter.

Please take the time to read the proposal below (in .pdf format). It will provide you with a clear description of what will be accomplished with the Independant Study

Independant Study Proposal in .pdf format. (*.pdf requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

Assignment 1 - SEO - Where to Start

Yahoo! and AskJeeves and Google, oh my!

So you’ve spent, what seems like a million hours, designing a Website. It utilizes every new technology on the market and now you’re the king of the world. Wrong! Without proper evaluation of your Website’s “searchability”, that is, whether it is optimized to best suit search directories and/or search engines, your beautiful masterpiece of a website will not go far into the vast regions of the Internet (echooo, echoo, echo). That may be ok for those of you who simply want your own Website to show your friends at school, but if you’re a serious e-business owner or web marketer, search engine optimization can mean millions of dollars in return on investment. Also, for all you web design students out there, it is a good idea to make sure you know how to best market yourself, a way to make yourself famous amongst the web design community. But wait a minute, earlier I mentioned that your site should be “optimized to best suit search directories and/or search engines .” What the heck was I talking about? Where you wondering the difference between the two, or even better, what they are? That my friend will be what starts this great journey into the world of Search Engine Optimization! But before we begin, I’d like to save myself a little typing and preface by stating that from now on, I will refer to “Search Engine Optimization” as “SEO”. Ok, now were ready.


Search Engines vs. Directories

Search Directories

Search engine directories organize websites into categories so that people can easily find them. They are similar to the Yellow Pages. Search directories offer centralized information for the search engines, so users can browse through any website category based on keyword queries. Seems simple enough. Well, simple is good, but as the Internet expands and information needs to rapidly change, the static "yellow page books" will never be able to meet the quick demands of Internet users. While directories are vital, because of their contribution to search engines, they are slowly transitioning from front end GUIs to backend engines. Back in the day, when the Internet was in it’s pre-teen years, Yahoo! introduced their web directory. The directory was great. It made finding things very easy. You could just go to www.dir.yahoo.com and search a website by category, but it took longer to find what you were looking for. Luckily, advancements in technology brought the advent of Search Engines and users no longer had to sift through millions of website links.


Search Engines

Directories are handy, but what if the archived website links are outdated and you need a way for everyone reading them, to know. That would be very tedious considering all of the online directories are populated by a room of research monkeys, I mean people, who carefully sort out information and categorize it. But enough about Directories, lets move on to the engines. Engine sounds cool, doesn’t it? Search engines, a.ka. search indexes, are really just giant search features that index all of the content that is stored on the Internet.

Over the years, companies like Google and Yahoo! have come up with a way to search and store large amounts of information. The Mad Scientists at Google spent a gazillion hours developing spiders, robots or just plain bots or is it robotic spider bots? Regardless, these mysterious programs find web pages, store their information and then spin a web of information. Wait a darn minute. “What information are they getting? “ What information you ask? Just all the textual data, imagery, audio and video content that is being communicated over the Internet, all wrapped up into a database with a pretty little bow on it. It is a bit scary that companies are able to micromanage what we post on the Internet for all to see, but that is just how things are and in order to spread the word, we have to play by the rules. Whether we want to admit it or not, we need search engine companies to continue to develop ways to better index and search content. We must make friends with and learn from the search engine companies, in order to discover what is needed to rank number one. So without further ado, let me introduce you to the search engine sites.


Before you continue!
Make sure you fully understand the two terms below. As we continue, I will be referring to them both when discussing search engine companies.


A search site is a web site with allows a user to search through an index and/or directory of Web sites.

A search system is an organization of hardware, software and manpower(or woman power) that join as one to categorize Web sites and build the indexes or directories searched through at a search site.


Search Sites

There are literally thousands of Websites, which help Internet users search for web content, but the number of web users who use search engines has significantly dropped from 80% to just under 50%. More users are able to find their way to a Web site via the address bar, and the need for search engines is decreasing as people become more comfortable with Internet technology. However, as of 2004 the number of search engine users has remained at 50% of all users, which is just as much as people not using them. I find it interesting that out of the thousands of search sites available, there are really only four that are important to know. Which four you ask? I will get there, just be patient. According to the 2003 Nielsen/NetRatings study, the top twelve most popular search sites on the Internet are as follows.

* Study based on # of hours users visited the search sites.

Google.com 18,700,000 hours
AOL.com 15,500,500 hours
Yahoo.com 7,100,000 hours
MSN.com 5,400,000 hours
AskJeeves.com 2,300,000 hours
InfoSpace.com 1,100,000 hours
AltaVista.com 800,000 hours
Overture.com 800,000 hours
Netscape.com 700,000 hours
Earthlink.com 400,000 hours
LookSmart.com 200,000 hours
Lycos.com 200,000 hours

As you can see, these are the big guys. The popular sites who will steal your lunch money if you’re not careful. They are searched more than any other search sites on the Internet. Why then should we exclude the remaining eight search sites after compressing down to four? After all, AskJeeves is in fifth place and I know many people who use it. The answer is simple. Because many of the search sites feed off of one another, or one site may be owned by another. That’s right, even America Online, the Internet powerhouse gets its search results from Google. We can quickly start to eliminate many of even the most popular search sites by analyzing how and for whom they work.


Search Site Elimination List






Search Site Conclusion

See, that wasn't so bad. We are finally starting to break things down a little and make the enigma that is the Search Engine Company, become clear (hopefully). What the above chart concludes is that you can spend numerous hours submitting to every last search site on the Internet, but you are wasting your time. Focusing on the top four search engine sites, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AskJeeves, is what you need to do. With Google feeding three quarters of the worlds search results to America Online, Earthlink, Netscape and many others, and AskJeeves providing results for many of the smaller search sites, you can see how smaller search sites operate. Some smaller sites even manage to charge fees to users who submit to them, which in the end are only getting fed to the "big boys" anyways. Understanding the search site system, will save money and time in the long run and will keep you coming out on top.

Search Directories

We now have our four search sites narrowed down. While these search sites are important to understand, let us not forget about the search directories mentioned at the beginning of this posting. The most widely used directory is The Open Directory Project, which feeds information to Google, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Netscape, Earthlink, Lycos, and almost 400 other sites. Zeal, another directory of importance, feeds LookSmart, but only for noncommercial sites. However LookSmart also gets search results from Yahoo!, so Zeal isn't nearly as important as The Open Directory Project, but is worth adding to our list.

Our Finalized List?

Now that we have added The Open Directory Project and Zeal to our list, it is no longer a list of Search Sites. It is now a combiniation of both Search Sites and Search Directories, so lets call our new list, our searchsystems list. So here is the finalized search systems list, just to recap.

• Google.com
  
• Yahoo.com
  
• MSN.com
  
• AskJeeves.com
  
• The Open Directory Project
  
• Zeal
  

Summary

A finalized list is the fist task completed. Once you have pinpointed which search sites and systems to work with, it is now time to perform a thorough analysis of your web site. Doing so is vital to the success of search results. “What, go back and re-do my masterpiece?” It really isn’t that bad, there usually isn’t that much that needs to be changed. It will be worth it in the end. Plus, once you learn the proper strategies for optimizing your Website, it will come natural as you build your web pages in the future. The next posting, assignment 2, discusses the steps that need to be taken in order to best optimize a web site for search engines, and explains how to get your Web Site into the search systems discussed above. Can’t you just feel the excitement! This is better than an episode of 24.

Assignment 2 - The basics of SEO

That's right folks, 4 Easy Steps!

Once you have determined which search engine systems you want to utilize, whether they be search sites such as Google, or search directories like the Open Directory Project, you must ensure that your website is optimized for search engine sites and that you know how to and where to submit it.

Lets get started!

There are four steps that should be taken in order for your Website to become successful with search systems. If you follow such steps, which I will cover in a minute, you will be “too cool for school ”, oh and you will have a better understanding of the techniques for improved web page optimization and seach engine submission.


Step 1: Do A Keyword Analysis

To better your chances of a high search engine ranking, it is important to decide which keywords and/or keyword phrases you want to use. You should determine which keywords people will be searching for at search engines sites. A good way to start your keyword research is by going to one of your friendly search engine sites and typing in a keyword that you feel is closely related to the topic or theme of your website. Look carefully at the results that are listed as the top 10 ranked websites. Are they indeed potential competitor sites, are they closely related to your website, or are they completely different? Searches for the most obvious keywords first will help you narrow down your keywords list. Once the most common keywords are out of the way, it is time to start thinking like the user performing a search.



Step 2: Design for the robotic spider bots!

Before you continue!
Keep in mind that this step is not an issue for search directories. Remember that search directories are only categorized websites, therefore humans, not programs, record the information.


If you expect your website to show up in search engine results, you have to create "spider or bot friendly" pages. Spiders or bots, are those programmed explorers who find, analyze, and record website data. Without them, search engine technology probably wouldn't advance very quickly. So you can see why it is important to design and develop sites that please those crazy little critters. The following are several, but not all, things to consider when optimizing your web site for search engines. The details of each media and data website element will be covered in later posts. For now just consider the tips below.

Avoid using frames

Search engines robots do not like websites using frames . They have trouble knowing what content will be placed within a target frame. I would suggest not using frames at all, but if you are just doing it to spite me, then let me provide the following tips:

• Make sure that your "title" and "description" tags are between your "head" tags

• Include and "noframe" tags between the "body" tags, placing 200 to 300 keywords within.
  
• Add links to all other pages within your website within the "noframe" text.

Create Keyword Rich Titles

Titles are what you see displayed in the browser's title bar. Search engine assume that a web page's title describes its content. That is a reasonable assumption, even for a robot. Other than telling you that a web page's "title" tag is something to pay close attention to, I would like to offer the following suggestions:

• You should try to use between 40 to 60 characters for a page's title.

• Make sure that your title includes key words that are relevant to your content and to the keyword list you created in step 1. You have started thinking about your keyword list right?

Provide Search Friendly Navigation

So you have created a snazzy javascript drop down menu to serve as the site's navigation and your so proud of how nice it looks. You even managed to organize the cluttered javascript code by putting it in its own file and calling it from your main website pages. You spent a while doing that right? Well, I hate to burst your bubble but a search engine robot has a rough time trying to figure out how to navigate your website if your navigation is source is within an external file or if it uses embedded javascipt. A robot or spider will be able to find your home page, however will not be able to get to any of the other pages. If you must use an external scripting language for your navigation, it would be wise to consider the following steps:

• Include redundant navigation links to provide search engine robots access to your sites. This will not only help with the indexing process, but will benefit end users who are viewing your webpage on a wireless device browser.

• Add a sitemap page to your site. It will serve as your mini directory that robots and spiders can quickly find and index.

Include lots of Content

The fact remains that you can have the nicest designed website on the planet, but if your site does not contain textual data, it just won't rank as high as some ugly, content rich website (If you could hear me, you would have heard me cough Jackob Nielson's name). There isn't much more to say about content, other than you need to either find some, or write some. Try incorporating some RSS feeds from some popular news sites or blogs. Also you might want to:

• Limit the amount of Flash used within a site, especially Flash if it is being used to display textual data.
  
• Make sure that the textual content you need to display is not a graphic. It is wise to not create the text within a graphics program, unless you have a really good reason for doing so.
• Consider what the overall point of the site is. The keywords you collected for search engine optimization should somehow relate to the content itself. The closer your keywords and your actual content are, the closer you are to becoming the master of the SEO.

Implementing your Keywords

So you have your list of keywords ready, right? Good, I thought you did. And you went back and got rid of your framed site, right? Ok, well then were ready to move on. Having a page that is readable by search engine robots and spiders is suburb, and having a list of keywords that users will potentially search for is great, but you must first make sure you know how to add those keywords to your pages. After all, what good is a list of keywords if you don't know how to offer their sacrifice to the robot and spider gods. Take into consideration the following as you begin to incorporate your keywords into your web page.

• Try to place any keywords into "header" tags. Headings are very important and summarizes content. Search engine robots see the headings and assume they are important.
• Use bold and italic keywords. Search engines like this too.
• If possible, put keywords into bulleted lists.
  This again, will appeal to the search engines.
• Use keywords multiple times on a page, but be sure not to over due it, especially when using word phrases. If a particular word makes up, say 10% of all other words on a page, then it is probably overkill, and the engines might think you are up to no good.
  

Step 3: Register with search systems

So, now your web pages are more prepared for search engines. You've spent some time making sure that when a search engine robot or spider attempt to index your page, they will be able to do so more effectively. There is only one problem. There are millions of websites on the Internet, all competing for that #1 search engine ranking. You can upload all of your web page files to a server and yes, the search engines will eventually find some of your content, but at a slower rate than the others who have taken the time to submit their website to search engines and directories. To recap from the assignment one posting, a search engine uses programs, called spiders or robots, to search and index content from websites all over the world. A directory on the other hand is like a recipe book that contains categorized information about a website. Directory companies utilize actual humans to do the indexing, not a programmed bot. Directories and engines work together to bring "searchers" effective results, therefore it is important to know how to make yourself known to them both.

Submitting Web Pages to Search Engines

Search engine companies have managed to take control of web marketing. They dictate what and how information is found. They have also managed to figure out a way to make lots of money doing so. It may be suprising to know that just because your website is on the Internet, your not guaranteed that search engines will actually find it. To test this out, go to Google and do a search for "IMD398 Independant Study Philip Huffstickler". My results came up empty, but I know for a fact that my site exists. I am even using google's blogger application to create my content, so why no results? What about the crap you had me do in steps 1 and 2, you may ask? Keywords and layout practices can help you increase your ranking, but you should submit to search engines, so they know exactly where to sick their spider bots. You need a way to let search engines know that you mean business. So, lets look at how to submit your site, shall we?

Submitting To Search Engines For Free

The following search engine companies, below, accept free URL (web address) submissions. Keep in mind that some search engines have limitations on the number of daily submissions. The engines also limit your submission to only one URL. If this is the case, provide a URL for one of your web pages that contain the most links to all of the other pages within your web site.


Search Engines who accept free web page submissions:

Google: www.google.com/addurl.html
Yahoo!: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit *requires a Yahoo! account
MSN: search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

Search Engines who charge for web page submissions:

There are literally thousands of search engine companies out there. Remember, we narrowed them down to a small list? Of course, each one of those engines are going to try to suck as much money out of us as they can, so we need to know, again, who the key players are in the paid-inclusion system. Paid-inclusion simply means that you pay to have good search engine results. If you are financially stable and do not have much time on your hands, then paid-inclusion is just what you need. Me on the other hand, I am broke, which is why I am doing this Independant Study in the first place. That and the fact that I really want to know how this SEO stuff works, so I can save on business overhead in the future. Anyways, now on to the paid-inclusion systems.

Google: www.google.com/ads/
Yahoo: www.searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/sse.php?mkt=us
AltaVista: www.altavista.com/web/express_incl
AskJeeves: www.sitesubmit.ask.com


Submitting Web Pages to Search Directories

Search directory companies, once again, do not use robots or spiders to index information. They use human beings who search for websites, determine what category they are in, and index their information. You might think that they are a waste of time. After all, a human can't possibly stay current on website content, especially with the dynamics of web content today. This is true, however many search engines feed off of the search directories' content. Also, believe it or not, people still use directories such as the Yahoo! directory to find content. Not everyone is a pro at knowing what keywords to search at search engines, you know!



Step 4: Get Other Websites To Link To Your Site

Search engines determine a website's rank by a number of things including popularity. Its like being back in highschool. You become "cool" as other people begin to tell other people about you. The more popular kids have credibility amongst their peers, therefore can boost your coolness rating. In the world of the web, being cool means that people are visiting your web pages. Since a search engine robot or spider cannot look at your sexy web graphics to determine if your cool, they need to base it on the number of links to your site from other websites. The other website's popularity can also help your ranking, so starting selling out and make friends with every website on the Internet, even if they do wear braces!

Readers Challenge - Evaluation of SEM companies

This section provides you with some helpful resources that you can use when deciding whether to optimize your web pages yourself or pay someone else to do it for you. Although the first two assignments do explain where to submit your websites and the basics of how to prepare them for search engine submission, they do not describe the specifics of optimizing all web content, including media content. The first two assignments serve as a primer for Search Engine Optimization, and if your ok with creating your websites with the minimal requirements and then leaving it up to someone else to market and optimize them later, then this section if for you!

This section challenges you, the reader, to do a bit of research for SEM companies. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firms are responsible for understanding every aspect of web design and development, when dealing with search engine optimization. SEM companies are the ones who claim to get your websites the high rankings they deserve. An evaluation of at least five companies will help you to understand exactly what those companies are doing to remain on top. SEM firms make good money, mainly because of the lack of SEO knowledge of web based businesses and even many successful web designers! Many SEM companies do help save time, but for a high price. My father was recently contacted by a SEM company who gave a rough estimate of 7,000 dollars. Paying that much money, to me, is crazy, but for my Dad, who knows nothing about SEO, it might be worth paying. As a web designer/developer, I would rather just take the time now to learn proper SEO techniques, and save money in the long run. Which ever path you choose to take, it is important that you are able to make an educated descision. This challenge will help you do so.


Search Engine Marketing Companies - Things to Consider

It may be difficult when attempting to communicate with a SEM company. Like all businesses, they are not going to give away the secrets to their success. I mean, if they told us what they did, then we would see just how much little extra effort is required when optimizing our own sites for search engines. When contacting companies, standard inquiry e-mails will not be enough. You must e-mail the companies, armed with a knowledge of weapons. Ask specific questions about their services and be extra picky about pricing. Use the knowledge you gained from the first two assignments. If they care enough about you, the potential customer, they will provide you will details of their services. If not, then you probably wouldn't want to do business with then anyway. Keep in mind though that they are a business and have to be careful with what information they provide. If you ask the right questions, they may not even realize that your probing them for information. When communicating, don't sound so educated that the SEM companies think your evaluating them.

When searching for SEM companies, I used the top four search engines. If you do not know what the top four are, you probably didn't read assignment one yet. I would suggest reading it. I performed four seperate sets of searches because I did not want my searches to be too search engine specific. I also did not evaluate SEM companies who simply paid the search engine companies to rank them first. That's cheating! A good SEM company should know how to get ranked high without paid advertising.

Choosing the top five, non pay per click, SEM companies within each search engine company is probably good enough. You can then decide which companies best suit your needs. Some companies probably have a better understanding of specific web content, such as video or audio.


Search Engine Marketing Company - Resource List

The following are SEM company websites that may help you with your challenge. They were ranked the highest within Google and Yahoo, so I felt they were doing something right. There are literally thousands of companies, so do not limit yourself to these.

http://www.highrankings.com/
http://www.submitexpress.com/
http://www.ebrandz.com/
http://www.seoinc.com/
http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm
http://www.seoimage.com/

Good luck with your challenge. If you find this challenge boring and you know you will be doing the optimization yourself, then you will like assignment 3. It discusses each media type for your web pages and how search engines handle them. I would however, still perform this challenge. It should encourage you to want to learn more about SEO and SEM, so you will save money in the end. Who doesn't want to save money?

Assignment 3 - Web Media - SEO Problems and Solutions

In the first two assignments, I introduced the most beneficial web directories and search sites and how to submit your websites to them. I also provide some guidelines to follow when designing and developing a web site. While the assignments do provide information that will certainly benefit your seach optimization process, they do not explain the steps that must be taken when implementing rich media into your websites. Let's face it, people don't want to stare at a page with just plain text, anymore. People like media. I mean, look at the popularity of television, and then imagine television with the added functionality of the web. So, because the future of web media production is a given, this assignment will discuss the current state of web media types, and their compatibility with search engine crawlers and/or spiders. Technology is always slightly faster than the people trying to control it. The goal of this assignment is to help clear up any issues or at least provide information about the current problems with web media and dynamic data types, in hopes that you will then be able to design and develop a web site with a different perspective and have a better understanding of SEO for web media content.

Rich Media Types

The integration of rich media into a web site is nothing new. Video and Audio have been used for years, even since the very beginning of the Internet's popularity. Unfortunately, the dynamic duo only seemed to annoy users. Slow dial up modems could not handle the large packets of video information being sent over the Internet, and the poor compression rates of audio files forced users to listen to annoying midi clips. It seemed that low quality video and audio clips were all over the place, with no real structure or way for users to choose which dancing baby to watch or which sitcom theme song to listen to. Now, things are much different. The use of audio and video within a web page is improving. The advent of broadband connections have resurrected rich media content, and television networks are quickly jumping on the Internet bandwagon. As each new website introduces their media content, the web will continue to grow larger every day. This is great news to seekers of web content, but the exponential growth of web content stored online introduces a question for creaters of web sites. How should rich media be best optimized for search engines so that people can find it on the Internet? In order to answer this question, we must first evaluate the current problems that search engines have with rich media types.

The Problem with Rich Media Types vs. Search Engines

In assignments 2, I stressed the importance of keywords within a web site, and how those keywords direct search engines indexing. Keywords provide the web site context for spiders or robots that are viewing them. The better the keywords within a web site are, the higher the web site's search engine ranking will be. So, the problem with rich media elements and SEO is that the sound waves or animated graphics, that make up the media types, do not contain the essential keywords that search engine spiders like to see. So what can we do to provide keywords for content without text? The answer is meta data.

The Solution for Rich Media Types vs. Search Engines

Meta data is textual data that is included with or embedded into rich media content. A file's metadata contains descriptive information that helps to contextualize the actual content contained within the file. For example, you can listen to an .mp3, but you might not know the exact length of the song, the songs title, what genre of music it belongs to, or even the software that was used to create it. Metadata makes organizing rich media much, such as video and audio, much easier and it also allows search engine spiders to index the otherwise textless mediums. A picture can say a thousand words, but not to search engine spiders. The spiders or robots need the web developers to create the words for them, at least until search engines can figure out a way to visually scan web graphics and sound waves. So how then do we create this magical metadata for video and audio, you may ask? It is actually quite easy.


Overview of Metadata Generating Programs

The first thing one must do when optimizing rich media content for the web is embed the appropriate metadata into your media files. If you have ever published a media file from a piece of software, such as Adobe Premiere or Protools, then it is likely that you have already been introduced to metadata injection. Popular video and audio applications make it easy to embed common metadata like framerate or duration into rich media. When dealing with video, for example, it is nice to be able to generate the duration metadata for use with timecodes. This common information is nice, but what if specific scenes in a video could be described in full detail? What if you could prepare your videos so that end users can better search exact areas of your content. Well you can!

The most current media applications also support the embedding of customized metadata information, such as titles, and descriptions that help contextualize the media. Whether common or customized, the metadata is conveniently saved as a string of keywords and assigned in name/value pairs. If you have read Assignment 2, which discusses the significance of keywords, you should have a good idea of how to create your own keywords for use with media content.


Metadata for Flash Video (.flv)

Why use Flash Video?

I have found myself growing more fond of Flash Video (.flv) as I invent new ways to utilize it's rich features. Another reason I am leaning more towards flash video than any other format is because of its ever increasing popularity, especially with search engine sites. Google, one of the most well known search engine service, uses the newest Flash platform to display their indexed videos. What does this mean? This means that Google has realized that Flash is the most efficient way to display video. Flash is even extensible enough to embed other popular video codecs without their native players. Flash offers the total package and provides the platform to take video interfaces to the next level. The Flash video format (.flv) allows developers to bring users closer to the video they are watching. Different points within a Flash video can "cue" actionscript, which in return can perform just about any function within the realm of the Flash Player.

Google is using Flash to present all web video, so if you use the .flv format then your a step ahead of others not using it. This is because a video format is always going to run more effectively in its target video player. A .mov file runs best in Apple's Quicktime Player and a .wmv will always run better in Window's Media Player. In fact, you can't even play a .mov in Window's Media Player or a .mov in Quicktime. When your .flv is loaded into Google's player it will probably run smoother than its competition. So, it all boils down to this. If you want to get the most out of your video by adding rich interactive features then Flash video is the way to go, plus your movies will work seamlessly with the current technologies being utilized by the top search engine companies, such as Google.

How To Embed Metadata into Flash Video

I recently purchased a program called Captionate and my life suddenly became easier. Captionate allows you to embed closed captions, subtitles, and cue points in your Flash video files. Captionate also provides an interface to embed both common and custom metadata into your (.flvs). Below is a short 4 minute long video where I explain how to use Captionate.

Assignment 4 - Rich Web Media In Action

Below these next few paragraphs is a video application that detects the metadata within an .flv file and then dynamically displays the data in plain text format. The .flv that is used in the video player is actually the video that we created in the last assignment, so to fully understand how the player below works I would highly suggest reading it. It is important to realize that the metadata being displayed in the player is the same metadata being indexed by Search Engines. This is great news for any of you who want to display your own customized information, and even greater news for those of you who want to get ranked higher on Google's video index. As mentioned before, search engine robots love rich text, so our metadata is just the thing to satify their hunger.

Below you can choose from two videos. The video on the left contains customized metadata created with Captionate, while the video on the right does not. You can toggle back and forth to see the differences. Mess around a minute with the player and I will discuss key areas once you are done. Oh, and make sure you have the latest version of Adobe's, Flash Player installed or the demo may not work properly.
Was that not the greatest thing ever? Well, now that you've had your fun let's continue.

Closed Captions

Not only are closed captions great because they comply to accessibility standards, they also provide all users the ability to search videos by quotes. How many times have you found yourself using famous quotes when trying to describe a movie to a friend? How great would it be to quickly type in those quotes into a search engine and instantly find the video your talking about. I think that would be "keen". Captionate makes embedding captions or subtitles very simple, so I think it is worth investing in the program if your serious about Flash video.

*Keep in mind that video is not the only platform to use captions. I bet someone could think of a really great way to implement lyrics into mp3s using captionate. You can create audio only .flvs and use them for an audio app, you know! I would love to have an application that could search through any song based on lyric queries.

Titles or Descriptions or Keywords = All The Same

Don't let my master trickery fool you. The title, description and keyword display areas, no matter their label or hierarchy, are just strings of text. This text is pulled from your embedded custom metadata. This rich text is what the search engine robots read and use to contextualize and index your videos. Although there seems to be no way for search engine robots to verify that the keywords in your video indeed match what is actually in the video, I would suggest that you refrain from plastering unrelated keywords in your metadata.

Where to go from here

Hopefully this tutorial has inspired you to jump on the Flash video bandwagon. You are now ready to embed your own custom metadata into your .flv files and are ready to create your own Flash video application. Take your Flash apps to limit knowing that the videos being played in them will be fully optimized for search engine sites.

If you would like to test out the Atari videos seen in the player above, you can download both videos here. Good luck and I look forward to seeing all of your great video content at all the major video indexing search sites.

Assignment 5 - Future Analysis of Web Content Indexing

The Evolution of the Internet

In the early 1990's, when the Internet made its commercial debut, the idea of communicating with someone else on the other side of the world through a computer was revolutionary. America Online chatrooms became popular and web users were now beginning to form online societies. The advent of the Internet helped us better manage our communication with others. We were now able to send e-mails to and join chatrooms with complete strangers. As Internet technology improved and became increasingly popular worldwide, the amount of information that was being stored on the Internet was exponentially growing. Every product, subject and opinion was being discussed on websites all over the world. In less than 10 years the Internet managed to grow so large with content that companies were needed just to manage all of it.


The Current Status of Web Content