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Best way to SEO a Flash site

         

Bass_Man

3:06 am on Nov 25, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hi All,

I have been given the opportunity to help a friend with a flash site. They just had this site completed and want to retain the flash format (They paid good money for it).

This is what i have done so far.
1.) I have begun an IBL campaig, seeking relevant sites.
2.) I subscribed to wordtraker and am using it to build keyword phrases and look for opportunities...although some of their suggestions don't make sense to me from a real traffic perspective.
3.) I will build out nice TITLE tags and DESCRIPTION tags
4.) CONTENT?

What are the thoughts on the best way to represent content on a flash site?
1.) There are no frames so I cannot use the NOFRAMES tag.
2.) I could offload the content in a CSS I think
3.) I could build a frame site and enclose the flash SWF within it and then do a NOFRAMES tag.
4.) Do doorway pages

Does anyone have some solid suggestions for me to look at? Their keywords are pretty competitive.

Thank you in advance,

James Taylor

pageoneresults

3:12 am on Nov 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Hello Bass_Man, Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Does anyone have some solid suggestions for me to look at?

Don't really have anything for you to look at but, I do have a suggestion. Alternative content.

My past experiences with Flash have all had an alternative html presentation. This was back in the day when the Flash plugin was not installed on over 90% of users desktops.

I think the practice of including an html version is both professional and very beneficial to the Flash version of the site. I'd make it very simplistic in design, and allow those users who don't want the Flash an alternative to browse the site, spiders hate Flash. ;)

P.S. I'd also drop the /flash/ into the robots.txt file and disallow it for now. Technology is changing rapidly and there are a few SEs indexing some Flash content.

Bass_Man

7:56 am on Nov 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks Pageoneresults!

I will give that a stab.

percentages

8:18 am on Nov 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Personally I view the flash content just like a single image. Yes, your viewers may see it as the whole website, but SE's are happy to think of it as a semi indexable (is there such a word) graphic.

So, leave the flash stuff as is. Then put all the content you actually want indexed below it, which is probably below the fold, where no one ever looks on flash sites anyways.

In some ways flash sites are advantageous for SEO, the users get caught up in the pretty graphics and the SE's get caught up in the content no one ever bothers to look at - A whole new and "legal" method of "user cloaking" ;)

Bass_Man

8:34 am on Nov 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



"Below the fold"? I am sorry but I missed that one.

storevalley

9:47 am on Nov 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



"Below the fold"?

Content that you have to scroll down to get to.