All flash site SEO

October 22nd, 2009, 1:16 am

Hi guys,


I've had such great experience with this forum, so I'm gonna ask my question here.

I'm trying to SEO one of my sites, and while this is usually no problem, it is in this case. See, the website is in all flash, and while Google and Adobe have both announced that the new version of their web spiders CAN extract and index text and links from flash files, I can't rely here-on alone.

I found an article online about how to do this, and most of it's no problem - just dandy, but there's a little bit of it that I don't know how to do:

"
Slicing up the Flash can result in page transitions that don't provide the seamless effect that you want to create. To get the best of both worlds, pass a parameter into the Flash movie using FlashVars. The same movie can appear on each HTML page, but depending on the parameter value, the movie can start at an appropriate point to show the Flash content that corresponds to that page. To get rid of all the extra pages, but still be able to reference different parts of the Flash piece, add a # and a tag to the end of each URL, and pass that tag into the Flash. This approach can make the back and forward buttons work properly, and allow people to bookmark specific parts of the Flash site.
"
Souce: Hochmanconsultants.

Can someone please tell me how to do this?


As always, thanks in advance,
//deaf_digit

[graphixboy]

October 23rd, 2009, 3:15 pm

Basically what thats saying is you need to create static html pages that contain your entire site content and then use a deep linking system to call the correct flash section based on the page that gets loaded into the browser.

I'd look into the SWFAddress library to help with the deep linking. Also if you take a look at http://solospizzacafe.com/about.php vs http://solospizzacafe.com you'll see this stuff in action. Turn off your javascript if you want to see the SEO friendly layer.

There is a catch to this method though in that you end up with essentially two duplicate sites. This method makes updates a nightmare since you have to keep track of two copies. I think a better solution would be to read the content from the HTML page into Flash so that you only have to change the underlying layer (I do understand that's a lot of work but probably a better solution in the long run).

October 25th, 2009, 1:51 am

Thanks a lot for your help Graphixboy.

I've downloaded SWFadress and I'll look into it as soon as my timesheet allows it. Sounds like I have a lot to learn on this subject. And I who thought it was easy (d'oh!).


//deaf_digit