Posts Tagged SEO
SWFAddress 2.1 and the new Google Analytics Tracker
Posted by zedia.net in SWFAddress on April 12th, 2008
I had made a previous post about how to integrate the new Google Analytics Tracker and SWFAddress. It wasn’t obvious but it was fairly easy. I guess people really asked for an even easier way to do it because the new javascript code(ga.js) now works with SWFAddress without indicating to it that you are not using the Urchin tracker. As a matter of fact, with the release of SWAddress 2.1 earlier this week, the support for the ga.js tracker is one of the update. Other updates include a lot of fixes for the SEO examples and also the AS2 and AS3 classes are now in the com.asual.swfaddress.
I really have to look into the SEO example that was released along version 2.0. It is one of my goal for the next month along to getting to know PureMVC better.
How Google indexes Flash content
I found while browsing the web two articles about how Google indexes Flash content; here they are:
Google reads Flash text, so optimize it and Matt Cutts on how you can help Googlebot “see” your Flash content.
Basically what they say is that Google is kinda working with Adobe on that, in fact Google is using the Search Engine SDK made by Adobe in order to find text in Flash files. Also, you can read there also that the techniques I explained about how to optimize your flash website for Google (easy technique, brute force technique) are accepted by Google (not seen as blackhat tricks) only if you put in the HTML the exact text that is in the Flash file. Have a good read.
What’s new in SWFAddress 2.0
Posted by zedia.net in SWFAddress on November 15th, 2007
SWFAddress 2.0 is being released tomorrow and Asual wrote a 3 parts article (1, 2, 3) about what’s new with version 2.0 and why should people use it. It’s a very nice article where they also speak about a new SEO method. I was suppose to make another tutorial about SEO, but I’ll wait until I have checked their example before making it. Also they revamped their website and I find it’s much better than their older version.
Finally something about SEO and Flash
I have been postponing this for a while but I think this is a good time for it now. This article will be the first part of a two part tutorial about how to optimize your website in flash for search engines. This tutorial is about the straight forward way of doing it involving no server side scripting. It is not the ultimate way to do it, but it sure is way better than doing nothing.
The first thing anyone interested in optimizing their site for search engines should do is read this article on seomoz.org on the topic. It is about how to optimize in html but a lot of thing that applies to html still applies in flash, read on to know why.
So if you read the article you will know that one of the most important factor is title of the Html page. The title in html is the text you see appearing in the blue bar at the top of your browser. That’s nice because with a flash based website, the title is still the html title, so you should give a lot of attention to it. And also it is really easy thing to modify. You should really think about the words you put in your title because you only have a limited number of words. Some say 60, some say more, I have a tendency to put more and let the search engines crop the end of them. Keeping that in mind put the most important key words first. Don’t just dump keywords, try to make sentences and slogans, search engines have been around for a while now, they know when you are trying to fool them.
Next thing you have to optimize is your text content. Google, and other search engines, cannot see in your Flash files (well I think now it can, but it sure cannot see dynamic text) so we have to find a way to make your text content accessible to them. It all happens in the html integration of your site. First, don’t use the default html page that flash, even flash CS3, creates for you. It’s just not good enough and there is a lot of bugs related to it. The best way to integrate a Flash is to use SWFObject. It’s so good that Adobe is even speaking with the makers of it to put it in the next version of Flash. Go read about it and check the examples, it is very well explained. The basic of SWFObject is that it will replace a div (or a td) using javascript by the proper Html to embed a swf. All the magic for us happens in the replacing of the div. Here is a sample code of how to embed using SWFObject:
<script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> swfobject.embedSWF("myContent.swf", "myContent", "300", "120", "9.0.0"); </script>
</head> <body> <div id="myContent"> <p>Alternative content</p> </div> </body>
So you see, everything that is in the div with id myContent will be replaced by your swf file. You can also see the text Alternative content in there, this is where you are going to put all the text that is in your swf file. Think of it as a tune down version of an html page. So don’t just cut and paste your text in there; use p tags around paragraphs and most importantly h1 tags around your titles. In the article from seomoz, you can read that text inside h1 tags is also really good for search engines. So use it to put your titles and important text. Another good point of using this technique is that screen readers for blind peoples just as search engines will be able to read your alternative content. Well that is it for part 1 of this article, part 2 will be about creating more than one entry point to your site using either brute force or server side scripting.
2 new tutorials and SEO
I have been busy this weekend, I have made two new tutorials about how to time your animations, one in ActionScript 2, one in ActionScript 3. I hope this help.
If you noticed there is the word SEO (search engine optimization) in the title of the blog but I didn’t have the time to write about it yet. In the meanwhile I can direct you to the website the-flash-files made by Nurun , a web agency in Montreal (actually a competitor of the company I work for).
