hi all few Q's about Flash optimization: assuming i have a pic. embeded in a flash file, can i define an ALT attribute? will goole index it? if i can, what is the best way to go about it? If the flash element is called to the page by Java Script will google see it? are there "google firendy" JS commands and not "google friendly" JS commands? if i link from the SWF file by a pic. or a text link, will google index the linked page? 10x to all future responderas
1. you can define an alt attribute - google may index it 2. there is no google friendly JS 3. Not likely The best way to go about seo is not to use flash. If you do want to rank for something you should present content for the search engines that are read easily. SWF and JS are not However this adobe tut may help you if you insist.
do you (or anyone else) know of any flash sites\"regular" sites with flash elements that are optimized for google? or someone with "hands on" experience with optimizing flash elements? yeah i normally don't go with flash to optimize as a rule, but i kinda have no choice in the matter...
Flash presents a LOT of challenges for search engines. It's not likely that Flash sites will even come close to ranking as well as an equivalent HTML site anytime in the next 10 years, and they will likely NEVER rank as well as an equivalent HTML site (and that is straight out of Matt Cutts' mouth just a few months back AFTER Adobe released it's specs to the big search engines). Search engines have been indexing HTML for more than a decade, and they have gotten very good at it. Eveything about search engines (their crawlers, their indexers/indexing algorithms, their ranking algorithms, their utility programs and tools, their index/database, etc.) is currently based on HTML. Yes, Adobe gave the search engines their specs on how to read the Adobe .swf binaries... but this is not likely to fix a lot of problems inherent to Flash. Even when Google and others are able to read every word of content and every link inside a Flash .swf, things are not likely to change as far has how they rank. The biggest problem w/ Flash sites IMO is that the Flash gets indexed under a single URL. Imagine a 30 or 40 page site... Picture it 1st as a single Flash .swf with the entire site's navigation system and all pages on the site embedded in a single Flash .swf that lives at your home page URL. Then picture the exact same site coded as a normal HTML based site w/ 30-40 separate pages... There is a HUGE difference. Search engines rank URLs... With a site designed entirely in Flash you get a single URL typically... the home page. That means you get 1 <title>... 1 keyword rich URL (I hope you have your 1 "money" keyword phrase in the domain name)... probably no <h1>, <h2>s, etc. (or at most 1) If your site is well SEO'd, every page on your site should be targeting a different keyword phrase (or very closely related phrases). So in the above example, w/ Flash you basically have a single page trying to rank for 30 or 40 different (possibly unrelated) keyword phrases. Even if the search engines can see all of the content in the Flash file, you kill your keyword density by having 30-40 different topics indexed under the same URL. As an SEO you want everything on each page (URL, <title>, <h1>, <h2>, content on the page, etc.) to be laser focused on a single keyword phrase. This is impossible to do w/ Flash. Now picture the same site in HTML... Each page will again target a different keyword phrase... But now I have the ability to have a different keyword rich URL for each page... a different <title>, <h1>, <h2>s, etc. for each page on the site... The content of each page can focus on the keywords it needs to rank for. It is orders of magnitude easier to make 30 pages each about a different topic rank well for 30 different keyword phrases than it is to make a single Flash page with content about 30 different topics rank well for 30 keywords. Basically, Flash sites are almost 110% dependent on inbound links and the associated link text to rank... Bottom line is that Flash sucks for SEO... has always sucked... will likely always suck until the search engines totally redesign and rebuild their crawling/indexing/ranking infrastructure which I don't see happening anytime soon. If I had a site where I wanted to 'play' with Flash then I would build my entire site in HTML... Then on my HTML based home page I would add a link to http://www.example.com/this-page-will-never-rank-because-it-is-flash.html which would call my .swf. The only time I would EVER write a site completely in Flash is if I have absolutely no interest in ranking organically and if everyone who needs to get to my site is going to be told the URL (and not need to search for the site). If you care even the least bit about ranking, steer clear of Flash... It's a toy not meant for search engines.
There are work arounds for Flash. but they're still not as good as using text and images on your webpage. If you have a fully Flash website. You'll need lots of links from other sites where all your Keywords weight for your site in search engines will have to come from those links. not your own site since you wont have anything on your site. So it'll be a game where your own site is not playing on the 'team' for itself.
first of all big 10x for the reply on the subject above, what if i'll build a different .SWF file for every part of my whole SWF site, and list each and every one of those partial files under different URL's\file names etc. I'll link from part to part by calling forth a different file every time, and more over, I'll link to every part with the right anchor text so, if i'll build it in a way that all the different parts of the site will be represented by different .SWF files under different url's than I'll evade the problem you spoke of above? it's kind of a messed up idea i hope i explained it right...any way it will be an interesting SEO experiment any thoughts?
I'm not quite sure why you would do that... but it would be better from an SEO perspective than a single .SWF file containing the entire site. Just not as good as an all HTML site. At least what you are proposing would give you a separate URL for each page of the site with it's own unique <title>. If you try something like this I would suggest that you keep all navigation menus outside the .SWF and in the HTML pages. So basically, the content portion (non-templated portion) of the page would be a Flash while the templated portion of the page (header, navigation menu(s), and footer) would be in the HTML page itself. My philosophy is to build the entire site in HTML so that it ranks well. If you want to have a Flash version of the site as well then simply make it a single separate page on the site (for example, http://www.example.com/flash-version-of-site.html) that the user can opt into by clicking on a link to it... You need to make SURE that the Flash does NOT get indexed so that you do not create a duplicate content issue. To do so you would either include a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> element in the head of the http://www.example.com/flash-version-of-site.html page or disallow http://www.example.com/flash-version-of-site.htm in the robots.txt file.
Yeah I'll try this one out and see how it goes. the good thing is that the site that I'm optimizing is PR-8 site, and is VERY strong on a wide array of long tail as well as "competitive" keywords... so my guess is, that a flash site\sub-domain\mini-site\element on a very strong HTML site "platform" would rank well even on a competitive keyword, just because of the blunt force and TR the domain has.. any one has had any experience with optimizing flash sites or elements?