Optimizing for Google through Digital Magazines
At Zmags we tell our prospects that our page flipping platform is Google optimized. Well, it is for sure, but the truth is that it depends on several factors and no guarantees on the impact can be forecasted. I will shed some light on how you can get better rankings on Google by publishing digital magazines in Zmags platform.
How the platform works with Google:
The Zmags platform is optimized for Google. (In fact it is optimized for various search engines, but we have focused on Google, so let’s keep it that way). Whenever a PDF converts into a Zmag, the process ensures that all text from the PDF is captured and made indexable. The flash and the page flips do not spoil that – we are at the PDF level here.
Whenever a digital magazine is converted, our integration ensures that Google becomes aware of that. This allows for much faster indexing of new Zmags and therefore also a much shorter time from upload to readers comes on board.
The deep-linking structure of the Zmag ensures that every spread in your digital magazine is indexed individually. Apart from being convenient for readers, who find the precise page in your digital magazine, it improves the range of possible keyword matches.
How your digital magazines content influence on Google ranking:
If you upload digital magazines by random, each phrase in the publication counts as a lottery ticket. In terms of search engine optimization each phrase is a keyword consisting of 1-4 individual words. However, the lottery game of Google is not based on luck alone. Your chances of getting a better rank on Google are aggressively increased if special phrases are repeated throughout the publication.
Example: You are publishing two publications. The first is a narrowed target cookery book focusing on Italian dishes. The other one is a digital magazine focusing on urban lifestyle in Southern Europe. The natural content of the cookery book has a much better chance of getting a good Google rank on a specific keyword like “pasta” than a broad target one, where the keyword is only mentioned a few times.
Optimize your digital magazine:
If you want to improve your rankings, Zmags offers different easy ways to do this. The most important is providing a good title containing your most important keywords. You only have 66 characters for this purpose – longer titles will be cropped and the weight of your keywords will be blurred, so write your title with care.
Deeplinking to spreads in your digital magazine will improve your rank as well. This also goes the other way around if you use Link Manager. The area of link building is vast, but for a beginning a link containing the keyword on the given spread as an anchor text will improve google rankings. Let’s have a look at the Italian kitchen again:
On your website you integrate the zmagged Italian cookery book with multiple deeplinks. On page 40 a chapter about Pizzas begin, so you copy the deeplink for that spread and ensures the word “pizza” is a part of the anchor text on your webpage. The word “pizza” should of course be found inside the cookery book and on the actual spread. You get even more successful if you can get others to link to you using “pizza” in the anchor text. But hey, forget about buying the domain pizza.com.
This is the basics on Google optimizing your digital magazines with Zmags e-publishing solutions. Please leave a comment if you have questions or some good samples to share.
Excellent and insightful!
More tech savvy users may however want even more control of the optimization process and I’d like to add that full control is possible and not that hard to accomplish.
To get full control over the SEO we offer an option that we refer to as embedding. Embedding means that the client embeds the flash viewer directly into their webpage. Embedding has the following advantages to the user:
• Full control over SEO
• The publication can be part of the existing webpage. Banners and text can stay in place
• publication can interact with the rest of the page through javascript connectors
Now, embedding may sound a bit difficult, but really its not, as it can be accomplished in 4 lines of javascript.
An example of embedding is available at http://www.tilbudonline.dk/tilbudsaviser.asp?CatalogID=418
Best regards
Andreas
HI
I have a few questions - if I search for “en absolut rolig kompasrose” , words that appear on page 14 of the watski catalogue. Although google has indexed the page, is has not indexed it with the words that are actually on the page. And with that seach Google does not find the watski catalogue at all?
If I want to send the link to the page to you - I can send
http://viewer.zmags.com/showmag.php?mid=sfhpf#/page14/
by copying and pasting - but when you click the above link you are send to
http://viewer.zmags.com/showmag.php?mid=sfhpf#/page12/
Why is that ?
Why are all your catalogues store on the zmag domain, this will give zmag a higher pagerank, but not your costumers domain a higher pagerank? Is there a option of having the catalogue on your own domain? Is that what you mean by embedding?
@ Mads: Thanks for your reply.
The current catalogue uses a feature to let the first page open as a spread. If you go to the front page of the Zmag, you can see “0″ stated in the bottom of the panel and the first left page is zoomable.
This “page 0″ feature is still not fully developed and apparently it has some downsides on the indexable content. I were not aware of that, so thanks for bringing this in.
Your second question: Page Rank is calculated per page so any new catalogue won’t have a Page Rank per default. All Zmags are placed on another server which helps all customers build up their Page Rank if using reciprocal links. Our main website http://www.zmags.com does not benefit from the Zmags displayed via the viewer.zmags.com unless linked to.
It is possible to setup your own subdomain and display your Zmag through a url like “catalogues.companyname.com”. From a SEO point of view it won’t make much of a difference, but you can hide the zmags.com in your url. Our supporters can help setting that up for a small fee.
Hi Joakim
Thanks for the answers, so as I understand you the redirecting is a small bug. But still if I search for “en absolut rolig kompasrose” , words that appear on page 14 of the watski catalogue. Although google has indexed the page, is has not indexed it with the words that are actually on the page. And with that seach Google does not find the watski catalogue at all?
Form what I understand you slice up the flash file, and use the tag. But it is the same noframe text on all pages, is that special for a cheaper product. And you have to pay extra to have the text in the flash page as part of the html page?
Can you tell my how you SEO optimize your flash site?
Then my second question - can I have the zmag catalogue on http://www.companyname.com/catalogue/pageXX/ ?
Best regards
Mads Gorm Larsen
@Mads: You are asking some intelligent questions here. I like that!
I had to consult the developers to get the right answers.
Google are constantly changing their indexing algortihms, and we change as well to follow up. Our approach is to get optimize the Zmag platform as much as possible using legal techniques. The catalogue you have looked at has the special page0 features and was made about 4 months ago, so things have changed since that time.
We recently changed the link structure so each spread (double-page) has a unique url. This enables more text to be indexed by Google. For each spread all text are ripped for the Zmags internal search function, but not all text is sent to Google. We keep a limit of characters per page sent to Google to avoid getting blacklisted in case some pages are keyword-stuffed. This limit is closely watched and adjusted on the fly.
I can’t tell you exactly how we SEO optimize the flash platform, as most of our competitors would love to do the same. Besides from that Publicator users can edit fields like Title. In addition, Publicator Pro users can add an intro text, which can be edited in regular html. Indexing is standard in all our solutions, but of course we can’t guarantee any rankings - it all depends on your content and who is linking to it.
To answer your second question. Yes, that is possible if you embed the Zmag on your website like http://www.tntmagazine.co.uk/emag has done.
If you have several issues it’s more elegant to use a subdomain like catalogs.companyname.com
Hi Joakim
Thanks for your answer, and I fully understand that you need to keep your method of SEO optimizing a secret.
But could you then give me some examples of newer versions so I can test how well they work? Could you also give me some examples of searches I can do in Google, were a zmag magazine appears in the top search results.
Best regards
Mads
Welcome back, Mads.
Sure, I just digged in some fresh overall stats. Try search for:
ipod nano udsalg - currently ranking 2nd of 1430
mobil handel - currently ranking 3rd of 979.000
lakers magazine - currently ranking 1st of 486.000
Please note that these are results may change a bit depending on geographical location.
But if I search for iPod nano udsalg, and then click on the link there is no iPod nano for sale. What I se is the first page of the magazine, and then I have to find the iPod nano within the magazine?
Mads
@Mads - You are actually right… Our developers are digging into this.
However, the most imporant is that your digital magazines or catalogues can be found.
Hi Joakim
I do whole heartedly disagree, but I promise I will let you and your developers have a nice summer. Next I think we should discuss the usability and readability of your magazines
Have a nice summer
Mads
Thanks Mads. I will say hi to our developers from you. But don’t get me wrong - it’s great that you jeopardise our claims. Otherwise it is hard to improve what we are doing.
Usablilty and readability could be a future issue. I saw you got a picture of Jakob Nielsen on your blog, so I am not sure we will ever agree here. Watch out for an entry on Zmags approach to usability once you are back from the beach.
And a nice summer to you
/Joakim
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