Search engine optimization for Flash

This article contains excerpts from Search Engine Optimization for Flash, which dispels the myth that SWF-based websites won't show up in a web search by demonstrating exactly what you can do to make your site fully searchable. You'll learn best practices for using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—as well as SWFObject—for building sites with SWF content that will stand tall in search rankings.

HTML, video, and images are indexed by search engines and stored so you can easily find them in a web search. Last year Adobe announced that some search engines (namely Google and Yahoo!) were given a special version of Adobe Flash Player that allows them to search through and index textual information found in SWF-based content.

Even though search engines can index some SWF content, it still takes special strategies to make the content more visible on the web. One of the most popular websites, YouTube, uses a SWF-based video player, and is extremely visible on the web. Part of the site's success in terms of visibility is attributed to its HTML and other content on each page that work together to effectively to make the SWF content more visible to search engines. So, although a YouTube video may have very little searchable text, search engines know what's in a video based on its HTML title and description. At least at this point, search engine optimization (SEO) is less about making your SWF content visible and more about using effective, searchable HTML to make the content within your SWF easy for search engines to find.

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Search Engine Optimization for Flash © 2009 Todd Perkins. Reproduced by permission of O'Reilly Media Inc. All rights reserved.

Understanding the facts about Adobe Flash and SEO

There are plenty of rumors, myths, and semi-myths about Flash and SEO floating around on the web. The following are some facts about SWF content on the web.

Is SWF content searchable? Many, if not most, people in the world of web design think SWF content is not searchable. Are they right? It really depends on what you mean by "searchable." At the time of this writing, search engines Google and Yahoo! are able to index text compiled into a SWF, as well as any HTML code that is automatically generated by Flash. And although the SWF itself is not extremely searchable, any content inside a SWF can still be made very visible by using the right tactics.

Note: Google indexes SWF files on the web. In Google, you can search specifically for SWF files by searching for filetype:swf + "search example", and the results will search page URLs and static text in SWFs. The problem with using this method for Flash SEO is that users are unlikely to perform a search for a particular file type to find your site. Further, the pages found in a Google search are links to actual SWF files, not HTML pages, so you have significantly less control over what the user will see even if they do end up finding your SWF.

What about SWF metadata? In Flash, for a few versions now, you have been able to add metadata information like a title and description to your SWFs. This metadata gets embedded in your SWFs to make them potentially visible to search engines. Sadly, SEO in Flash isn't that easy, because search engines don't currently index this information.

Sitemaps

Sometimes your web pages can get lost in the mix because there aren't many links to them, because they're new pages, or because of the content contained within the pages (i.e., dynamic content, SWF content, Ajax, or other media). Search engines can find out about these pages through a sitemap, a file containing information about pages on your site that you want search engines to index. Sitemap files can be in XML or plain-text format, and they require a special syntax to work properly.

• Read more about sitemaps

Creating optimized content in Flash

Now that you have some experience creating optimized HTML content, take a look at some techniques to make your SWF content more visible to search engines. This chapter discusses SEO mainly from the Flash development perspective, focusing on what you need to do for optimization when creating SWF applications.

• Read more about creating optimized content in Flash

Understanding the BrowserManager class and deep-linking

One way you can enable two-way communication between the browser and your Adobe Flex applications is when you use the BrowserManager class. The BrowserManager class lets you capture and use URL fragments—name value pairs used as named anchors. This ability lets you update a Flex application based on its URL. It also lets you update URLs based on Flex input, so just like using SWFAddress in Flash, you can create two-way communication between your Flex application and the web browser.

• Read more about understanding the BrowserManager class and deep-linking

Using SWFAddress with Flex

SWFAddress is not only a great deep-linking solution with applications created in Flash, it also works incredibly well for deep-linking in Flex. It's an excellent solution because along with easily implementing in an application, you can use SWFAddress to display any state of an application when it initializes. This section demonstrates how to use SWFAddress in a Flex application.

• Read more about using SWFAddress with Flex

Deep-linking with SWFAddress and URLKit

You can create deep links in Flex applications in many ways. So far, we've looked at the BrowserManager and SWFAddress. Another excellent and popular method of deep-linking is URLKit. In this section, we'll explore URLKit, its advantages, and how to use it in a Flex application.

• Read more about deep-linking with URLKit
• Exercise 6-3: Deep- linking using SWFAddress
• Exercise 6-4: Deep-linking with URLKit

Where to go from here

For more information about SEO, be sure to visit the Search Engine Optimization Technology Center, where you'll find articles on search optimization techniques for RIAs, enhanced search indexing of SWF content, and detecting Flash Player versions and embedding SWF files with SWFObject 2.