Finally Flash SEO!!!

Question

I've been working on Flash's "flaws" for 5 years and why they
were causing SEO problems. Finally I've found a way to fix them
all. Today I received my proof from Google and Aol that my
techniques worked!
First problem the dreaded back button. I've taken this script
from free scripts on the web and floating around. I molded it to
fit my style and my technique. My sites now use the browser history
to go back through and all flash website. This was a major SEO
problem before because some search engines wouldn't give you any
position if you couldn't use the back button.
Second problem, the detection system. The older flash
detection systems would take you back through the flash detection
system with one click. Google gave you 0 rank if your site did
this. With the new detection system and swfObject.js we don't deal
with that anymore. Also the click to activate is gone, ahh nice!
Third problem, deep linking. This works now as a bonus to the
back button. I can link to my site's portfolio page by sending this
link out,
Ohio Web
Design
Again this is an all flash site embedded into one html page.
Fourth and biggest problem, SEO in general, no content to
crawl. Well using the swfObject technique your html alternate
content gets replaced with the Flash file if the Flash detection is
passed. Why is this important? Google doesn't follow the javascript
files to load your flash content so they use your alternate html
content to rank your site. Of course you can cheat with this and
just place any old content in your alternate content. But be aware
this is a black hat technique and you will get caught and banned
from google. I asked on their webmaster forums and was answer by
google employees themselves. You must make sure that your alternate
content is very similar to your content in your site.
My proof? Last week I finished adjusting my alternate content
and resubmitted my site to Google. Before this I had 0 ranking on
any search engine. You could only find me by typing richardson
graphics in the search engine. Because web design is such a large
field my keywords were carefully selected so that the competition
is a smaller group. Any seo company will tell you to narrow your
market and you'll get better results. I did mine keywords for Ohio
Flash Website Design. This search is done on average of 1000 times
a month, which is way more than my small company can handle. I'm on
page 1 for 14 different keyword combinations of my main 7 keywords.
Aol also picked me up and I have just as much rank with them.
Google's biggest ranker is links, I have 0 links with google.
Check marketleap.com and you'll see, I only have 4 total. Now I
will be building my links so I can move up the rankings in broader
categories like flash web design.
Thanks to all of those who have every contributed any code to
helping Flash become equal or better than html... the day has
arrived where I can stop losing jobs when being compared to
html.

Answer 1

Thanks for the wishes guys and thanks for being patient, I am
quite low on sleep, :) but she is great, you haven't lived until
you've had a child.
As for the code I'm going to see if I can point you in the
right direction here to see if you're able to put it together on
your own.
There are two ways that I have been using this technique and
I'm not sure which is the best.
Technique #1
First you can make you separate "pages" of you site anyway
you wish to load. Whether its different "sections" in the main
timeline, loading separate swf's into a movie clip on the main
stage/timeline, or my method creating a background file that
usually contains the buttons and the background stuff and load the
page swf on top of it. I keep this file on level0 and load
everything else above it when it's needed. This stuff doesn't
really matter that much, all preference I believe.
Next what you can do is go to google and type in SWFAddress
2.0 and go to asual.com? Not sure of the address. There you will
find many examples of how all this works. Here there are two
techniques as well. On for SWFAddress.onChange and one for the
event, geared towards AS 3.0. I use the onChange way that was
introduced in the first version of SWFAddress and for AS 2.0.
Backically you place all the code in the second frame on its own
layer, to keep it organized and because the first frame has your
loader. I call this Back Functions, the layer name. This code will
include on SWFAddress on Change function and some formatting title
stuff, for the html page along with the include file for the class.
Basically on all your button code, I use movieClips, on the
onPress of your button you place something like
SWFAddress.onChange('/About/'); This code will call the function in
the second frame of your back functions layer and actually add that
to your title on the html page and change the address thus creating
history. Everytime you press a button you add history to the
browser by calling that function. If you hit the back button it
looks at what is after your address and the yoursite.com/#/ to find
out what page you're requesting to go back too. Now the tricky
part.
In the onChange function the examples will show you an array
called arr, I believe, that you just fill will the names of your
pages just like you're calling them in your button onPress
functions. arr = ['/', '/About/', '/Contact/' ... ] Then below that
array just follow the examples because there is an if statement
that tests the position of the item in the arr array and sets it to
a variable we'll call getIndex, a number. So if my about us page is
the second item in the array and the second line of my if else
statement looks like this:
else if (getIndex == 1){
unloadMovieNum(5);
loadMovieNum("about.swf", 5);
_root.pageLoaded = "about" // this is a variable i use to
track the page I've loaded for other coding purposes
So when you press a button it will call the onChange function
and figure out what page you wish change to. Then it will load that
page. When the back button is press it visits the onChange function
again and changes back the page previous. Of course with animation,
I use fuse, there is a lot more code involved but that's the gist
of it.
Now for the SEO stuff. In an index page in the examples
you'll see that there is a <div = #flashcontent> or something
like that tag. That means that when the flash movie passes
detection through the swfObject code then it loads the flash movie
here in the html code. Here is where you place your alternate html
text. This is the text that will be browsed by search engines. I
actually just start building a text version with a few images of my
entire site here if I'm using only one html page. Which leads me to
technique nubmer two.
Technique #2
Technique number two is just like 1 except after my fuse
animations I call a function called loadHomePage. That function
then calls a javascript code that is on the html page that tells me
what html page was found. If it's the index page then it returns
"home". Then I pass that through and init(thisPage) function that
is just like the onChange function but obviously requires a little
different coding. So I end up with both function the initPage
called when the site is loaded the first time and onChange is
called from then on. So if you go to my site and hit the index page
the home page of the flash movie will always be loaded. But if you
go to company.html then the Flash code calls the javascript and I
have the word "company" returning to flash. Then it goes through
the init function and says load the company page first. So the
buttons change and the company page is loaded first instead of the
home page.
Why do this? For seo purposes. I began thinking that if I try
and place a text/html representation of my entire site between the
<div> tags in the index.html page only what happens if Google
decides that too many people are spamming this and if your text
here doesn't match your flash movie page text maybe they will
consider it black hat seo. So now I have an html page for each page
on my website that will make the flash movie go directly to that
page.
Portfolio
page
Now I can seo each html page like you would on a normal html
site and you can push your links just like any html site and your
site will act just like is expected of an html site.
However if you look at my code I've been learning seo and
changing my text so many times that I haven't had time to make my
html alternate text like I've described as above but that is the
plan when I have time. So now each one of the 4 pages on my site
can be found, linked to and indexed by google. You can also then
get a page rank for each html page, but you really only have one
full flash website. I believe this in the end will be the best way
to go plus you have more pages html pages out there which gives you
a better chance of getting people to your site as opposed to 1
page.
Pretty slick!!!
It's all still a work in progress but there you have it. I
will one day be putting this all together and allowing people to
download the whole package already built but no time right now,
I've gotta pay the bills and sleep so no time for work that doesn't
pay right now unless you're willing to make a donation to me and I
may find the time. :)
A few notes. Remember to include the SWFAddress.as file on
your main timeline because the SWFAddress.onChange function calls
many functions in this class.
Also use the SWFAddress.js and SWFObject.js files in the root
of your site or in their own folder (that's how I'm doing it)
The big kicker here is you still have to know SEO or at least
learn it. Make sure you don't have invalid html code (there is a
test), start building lots of links, verify your site, the age of
your site is important. Don't spam keywords, use your main keyword
phrase in your title, hint: you change the title in your SWFAddress
code so in the html make it your best keyword phrases along with
your description because when the flash movie loads it will change
to the title you wish to be displayed but the search engines will
pick up the title in the html code. Be sure to use h1, h2, and h3
tags in your code. Use keywords in your image alt tags in the
alternate html code. These are just a few of the items you'll need
to do to get a high score, right now I know of 179 different things
for Google. Keyword density is a big one, you never want to out
perform the top 10 by much at all, just a hair.
I've been working on my position for two months now and for
my 24 keywords (check my source of my index page) on the 17 major
search engines I show up on the first two pages of of 202 of 408
possible combinations, so I'm well on my way. I'm number one on
several including "ohio flash company", I know not a widely
searched term but it was the first phrase I started with and then
I've expanded to wider search terms which is what I recommend.
Don't be silly and think you're going to show up number one on
Google with no links for "flash web design" overnight, it takes
lots of work. Start narrow then increase your search parameters to
wider and wider searches.
Sorry if all of this is confusing but feel free to email me
on contact me through my site if I can quickly clarify anything
I've written here. Also browse my site and look at the source of my
html pages to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.
C