6. Use UFOs. Though not the flying kind, UFOs (Unobtrusive Flash Objects) are cool in their own way. They are DOM scripts that add intelligence to your website by allowing it to detect if the visitor’s computer has the Flash plug-in or not. They will only embed Flash objects on your site if they are supported. A similar but improved technique would be to employ SWFObject 2.0.
7. Use SIFR. If you only need Flash for a few text enhancements such as headings, quotes, callout texts, and other similar uses, a technique called Scalable Inman Flash Replacement is perfect. SIFR gets text from an HTML document and render the text in Flash with a certain font. It’s great for highlighting important parts of the site, and since content and navigation is still in HTML, bots will have no difficulty indexing the page. It should be noted that SIFR is limited to simple text and cannot be used for more complicated Flash animations, which would work better with SWFObject and UFOs.
8. Play fair. As time goes on, Google will track and clamp down on suspicious codes like JavaScript redirects, cloaking, and doorway pages. Don’t get yourself banned just to get a leg up. Create good content and design a page well. What your users see should reflect what the spiders read when they crawl your site.
9. Track and improve. Search engine algorithms change all the time, and so you cannot rest on your laurels. Monitor the progress of your site’s ranking and modify your techniques depending on your observations. Conduct your own experiments and who knows? You make be able to develop neat Flash tricks of your own.
No Responses to “SEO: How to optimize Flash pages (Part II)”