flash site submission to search engine question?

Oh yeah bu the way never make your title tag like brave brain said. (small cookies, hard cookies, old cookies, chocolate cookies)

coz when u searched for cookies do you click on the page with the title "We provide tasty cookies - yourdomain.com" or do you click on "small cookies, hard cookies, old cookies, chocolate cookies"-page? It is up to u but i click on the first page.

Meta tags are small in size, but can get you excluded from larger search engines if you abuse them... so if you already have them on your page, then just make sure you only are using about 10 to 15 keywords and a short description.

if you don't have them set up, then don't take the time unless you plan on being indexed by small no name engines...  

your altimate goal is to be listed on the first page of Google, because it is by far the most widely used search engine on the internet...

I have said this about a hundred times, but here it goes again:

The best thing to do to be listed on Google is to have your web site linked with other web sites that are either partners or sites that sell complimentary products.

TCV, hope this helps and Happy Holidays...

rp

I read a little bit of that article, and was confused about WHO uses the SDK to output the SWF to HTML...

do we as developers have to use the SDK or the Search index developers?

rp

It is for the search engine people.  However it doesn't hurt to learn how it actually works ;-)

However it does bring an intersting point.  Right now most search engines do not use it, so could devlopers parse thier own site and spit it back out to the search engines?  I had never thought of that, but it is something to think about.

I'm curious as to what others think.

curious as well, but it makes my head hurt :)

rp

Hello,

FAST (powers Lycos) indexes Flash, start with them.  You can submit via alltheweb.com.

The suggestion to put Flash in frames and place content in the noframes tag is good, pay special attention to the suggestion that you place the same text there.  This is still s bandaid approach and carries with it limitations and other problems.

The noframes solution, (sometimes called envelope pages,) is not ideal because you only have one page indexed to try to obtain positioning for all your terms.  And frames are not easily crawlable; indexing errors are commonplace.

Macromedia has had the API out for a long time.  It isn't the fix either.  Why?  Because there isn't enough Flash content worthwhile indexing to bother with.  Most Flash by design consists of vector graphics and very little unique text for search engines to care about it.

The API guarantees that when Flash programmers develop enough material containing unique material for search engines, search engines will begin to concertedly index it.  The hard truth is that search engines have been able to index Flash for years.  It has been cost prohibitive for them to do so with nothing worthwhile to index.

Search engines still haven't indexed all the HTML yet!

What to do... simple!

You have to do the hard work that the search engines ask you to do.  Each and every Flash programmer should always consider browsers without the plugin- search engines do too!  They do not want to deliver a surfer without the plugin to a site which requires Flash.  Design an HTML based version that you can submit.

And don't forget meta tags, they are still useful even if not for positioning.

Regards,
-d3tl3v

What you have to do is create your layout in frames
so you'll have a top/bottom frame and a left/right frame and in the center frame you have your flash movie.

It doesn't really matter how you set up the frames. What matters is that now you are at a possition to insert a <no frames> tage which gets indexed by search engines, and I'm pretty sure will not harm your visitors (most people who have flash support will have HTML frame support).

In this no frames tag you can add all the text you wish (this text will only be indexed by the search engines and viewed by people who don't support frames), so here you will want to add some text enclosed in <xh></xh> the header tag... and all the links, body text (using good keyword density and dispersity) and all the rest of the interesting things that improve your possition on the search engines. Meta tags will not do it on their own...

Shoooks

shoooks, your method is extremely close to bad netiquette, and some search engine companies will kick you off of their index for using such techniques...

That technique is very similar to having hundreds of keywords listed either behind layers or in a text color that matches the background...  

I would not recommend going in that direction...


rp

tcv,  come back and close out this question... it has been way too long...

rp

Rascalpants I disagree with you.
the content inside the no frames tag is indexed just like any other page. If you spam this page with keywords than yeah you'll get penilized. But if you use this page just inorder to have some body text indexed by the SE you will not get penilized.

Shooks

Thanks you for all the comments and suggestion. Its been too long for me to be back here. My apology. This was my first time here at XX, I was a little lost to find my way back here.
I always thought my flash movie was already in a frame 'cause its embedded within the body of an html page. And that's where I can add more crawlable keywords. Plus the fact that ,within my flash page, I actually have scrollable texts. Lots of them that are describing the biz and not just scalabe vector graphics like some of you might think that all flash can have.

The only that I am really off (from hearing your comments) is that I dont have any other sites linked back to mine yet.

Last, how many of you use/aware of bcentral (msn/microsoft biz) and what do you think of their services as far as web site marketing, submission, methods used are concerned.

Thanks again for all of your input.

Google (and many other useful search engines) indexes textual content... Which is what people primarily look for online. Some sort of description explaining what's available in the site.

While Flash is fancy at graphics and animations, and a useful audio-visual presentation tool, it has absolute zilch to do with proper text content.

Meta-tags are useful to a certain extent, but Google it seems to be purposely ignoring them, which in itself is not that bad since many sites store fake data in meta-tags anyway.

So, if search engine listing is vitally important to your site, you should perhaps consider providing a "launchpad page" with sufficient text content describing your site, and then provide an "Enter Here" link to the Flash page.

A 100% pure Flash based site is an overkill... even Macromedia themselves don't do that. And don't let me get started of HTML standards compatibility, because there's no way to make any Flash tags compatible with W3C HTML (or XHTML) standards!

I am a professional Internet Marketing consultant (as opposed to Shooks, who seems a bit of a scam merchant if you ask me (I come across his type a lot, claiming experise and never coming up with the goods 'cause he doesn't know what he is talking about!).

You should be very careful of this kind of advice, the Search Engine industry is worth a LOT of money, the SE's invest millions into making sure Shooks' suggestions don't work and, as Rascalpants has pointed out, are severely detrimental to your listing. If it feels 'naughty', it is, and trust me, anything you think of has been accounted for by the search engines for a LONG time.

I also have read the info on Macromedia Flash SDK's and believe it will work to an extent but nothing can work as well as a proper HTML site. We often build 'mirror' HTML sites to accompany a Flash site for the SE's to index. This works very well but, of course, will cost you some (time or money, whatever).

It is OK to use NOFRAMES but don't be tempted to spam your keywords. Also use <h1> and <h2> in here, google looks for these.

Everyone is correct in telling you to use strong link but DO NOT employ a link farm. Google considers it suspicious when it finds a site with more than a 100 or so links, especially if your site is less than 20 pages. Also, these links increase in significance greatly if they are reciprocal, so get on the phone to all your suppliers, clients and associates.

Hope this helps!

A lot of Flash-haters out there aren't there  :)

Being a flash developer, I know a little about this subject...  I agree that the entire site should not be totally done in flash, because of a few reasons:

- download times are slower than plain text
- it is a b!tch to maintain, even if driven by a database

BUT, I think flash should be used in areas of web sites like complex navigation, web applications, and visual emphasis...  If done well, the sile looks incredible and gives the site a feeling of depth and the user becomes more like an explorer than a see-and-click user...


The one place that any heavy code/animations should not be used is on the home page, unless it loads after the rest of the page.

here is a site I came across yesterday...  I like the main page, but I don't really think a splash page is necessary, and the lower half of the page should be plain html and text...  

http://www.infra-structures.com/index2_withintro.htm

Macromedia's new site(even though I hate the colors) is a hybrid site and works quite well...

anyway...



tcv,  

over 3 months now...

you need to close this question by awarding points...  there are some really good comments up there, so take your pick of the best, and make a decision...


rp