Preface
Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is extremely popular in the web design and web marketing world. The following sections discuss what SEO is, and how it relates to Flash content.
Understanding SEO and Reasons to Use SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to making web content visible to search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. You may be thinking, “Can’t the search engines just find everything anyway,” but there’s actually a complex science of making content visible or easily found by search engines. In fact, there are many businesses solely devoted to optimizing websites. The process of optimizing a site for search engines involves a lot of thought and specific coding and coding practices. There are actually many deciding factors, which we’ll talk about in great detail throughout the rest of this book.
Understanding SEO and Flash
HTML, video, and images are indexed by search engines and stored so you can easily find them in a web search. Recently, Adobe announced that some search engines (namely Google and Yahoo!) have been given a special version of the Flash Player that allows them to search through and index textual information found in Flash content.
Even though search engines can index some Flash content, it still takes special strategies to make the content more visible on the Web. One of the most popular websites, YouTube.com, uses a Flash-based video player, and is extremely visible on the Web. Part of the site’s success in terms of visibility is attributed to its HTML and other content on each page that work together to effectively to make the Flash content more visible to search engines. So, although a YouTube video may have very little searchable text, search engines know what’s in a video based on its HTML title and description. At least at this point, Flash SEO is less about making your Flash movie visible, and more about using effective, searchable HTML to make the content within your Flash movie easy for search engines to find.
Understanding SEO and Web Standards
One aspect of SEO is making your site unobtrusive, or painless for the user to navigate in terms of requiring the user to download plug-ins or change settings in their browser. The idea is that the user should still be able to view the content on the site without being forced to do tasks they may not want to do. Web standards, put out by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, mandate how websites should be built and organized to be most effective in portraying the content they contain. The W3C has stated that all sites should be accessible. That means that people going to your site should be able to view the content of your site regardless of whether they have the Flash Player or JavaScript enabled.
You may be thinking, “Wait a minute. I’m designing Flash content, so why do I want to make my site viewable to someone who doesn’t have Flash?” Of course you want people to see your sweet Flash animation or use your awesome application, but having content only usable by certain groups of people alienates others who might otherwise view your site. Think about it this way: The more traffic you drive to your site, the more money you make…or the more popular you become…or the more people read about your opinion on the last episode of your favorite TV show. Now if you can simultaneously get more people on your site and still appease the W3C gods, there’s no reason not to do it.
What You Should Know Before Reading This Book
Before reading this book, you should already be familiar with using a web browser, your operating system, and some applications and programming languages. Throughout the book, we’ll be writing lots of ActionScript, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and even PHP code.
If you’re not an expert coder, don’t sweat it. We’re not going to be writing an endless amount of code, and I’ll explain in detail the code that we do write, so you’ll be able to understand how it’s working. Here’s a look at what I recommend you already know.
Flash CS4
You should be familiar enough with Flash to know how to navigate a Timeline, and work with Movie Clip symbols. You should also be comfortable with the Flash interface, be able to use the drawing tools, and be familiar with the Properties Panel and other common panels used in Flash development.
ActionScript 3.0
ActionScript 3.0 is the native language of Flash CS4, and is used to build interactive Flash applications. If you’re not a programming wizard, that’s OK, but you should at least have a basic knowledge of ActionScript 3.0. If you don’t, an intermediate knowledge of ActionScript 2.0 will do…I guess (joking). Your knowledge should include knowing what variables, functions, and events are and how to use them in a Flash application.
HTML
HTML is the language of the Web, and it is used on nearly every web page to define the content of the page. Though we’re not going to hand code entire websites in this book, you should be familiar with at least the basics of HTML. For example, you should know enough not to freak out if I mention anchor tags (HTML links), tables, div tags, and HTML metadata. Other than that, you should be comfortable with basic HTML terminology such as the difference between tags and attributes.
JavaScript
JavaScript is used to control interactivity in a web page, and to manipulate HTML content. I’m not a JavaScript guru, and I don’t expect you to be either. You should be familiar with creating variables and functions. Other than that, I’ll explain everything as we go. If you already know that much ActionScript and aren’t familiar with JavaScript at all, you won’t need to learn any JavaScript since it’s nearly the same at that level.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
CSS is used to control the style and layout of web pages and is a key tool in web design. Don’t worry about being a CSS all-star either, although it could help you out a lot in the long run. We’re only going to be writing simple CSS, but we’ll talk a lot about the importance of it throughout the book.
Setting Up Your Software
You’ll need a computer that can run Adobe Flash CS4 or a later version of Flash (specs available at http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/systemreqs) and the current version of the Flash Player installed in your web browser (download the Flash Player at http://www.adobe.com/go/getflash).
Adobe Flash CS4
To create Flash content, you’ll need a copy of Adobe Flash. In order to write and run ActionScript 3.0 code, you’ll need Adobe Flash CS4 or a later version. If you don’t have that, you can download a fully functional trial of the latest Flash version free on the Adobe site (http://www.adobe.com/go/getflash).
Dreamweaver CS4 or a Plain-Text Editor
Other than Flash CS4, I’m going to be using Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 for writing HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and PHP code. If you don’t already have a copy of Dreamweaver, you can download a free trial version from the Adobe site (http://www.adobe.com/dreamweaver). You can also use a plain-text editor like TextEdit (Mac) or Notepad (Windows) and save your code files with the appropriate extensions. TextEdit and Notepad are both installed with all versions of Mac OS X and the Windows platform, respectively. It’s important that you don’t use a word processing program, like Microsoft Word, to write your code because word processing programs typically add extra data to text files that make them unusable in a web browser.
Understanding the Facts About Flash and SEO
There are plenty of rumors, myths, and semi-myths about Flash and SEO floating around on the Web. The following are some facts about Flash content on the Web.
Is Flash Content Searchable?
Many, if not most, people in the world of web design think Flash content is not searchable. Are they right? It really depends on what you mean by “searchable.” At the time of this writing, search engines Google and Yahoo! are able to index text compiled into a Flash movie, as well as any HTML code that is automatically generated by Flash. And although Flash movie itself is not extremely searchable, any content inside a Flash movie can still be made very visible by using the right tactics.
Note
Google indexes SWF files on the Web. In Google, you can
search specifically for SWF files by searching for
filetype:swf + "search example", and the results
will search page URLs and static text in Flash movies. The problem
with using this method for Flash SEO is that users are unlikely to
perform a search for a particular file type to find your site.
Further, the pages found in a Google search are links to actual SWF
files, not HTML pages, so you have significantly less control over
what the user will see even if they do end up finding your Flash
movie.
What About SWF Metadata?
In Flash, for a few versions now, you have been able to add metadata information like a title and description to your Flash movies. This metadata gets embedded in your Flash movies to make them potentially visible to search engines. Sadly, SEO in Flash isn’t that easy, because search engines don’t currently index this information.
What Should I Expect to Learn in This Book?
It’s important to understand that this book isn’t a portal to a magical future where Flash content is perfectly indexed by search engines, but rather the book is a tool for you to make your Flash content visible regardless of whether Flash movies are indexed.
The book is your key to understanding how to use Flash effectively on the Web so your pages that contain Flash movies will be clearly visible to search engines. After you set up your web pages to effectively store Flash movies, it doesn’t matter how or even if search engines index Flash content. And if, at some later day, search engines do index Flash movies, your Flash content will be even more searchable!
Who This Book Is For
If you are interested in making your Flash content more visible on the Web, this book is for you. If you run an honest site that needs all of its content (Flash and non-Flash) known to the world, this book is for you too. This book is really for anyone interested in SEO, anyone who currently uses Flash on a site, anyone who plans on using Flash, or anyone who won’t use Flash for SEO reasons. Further, this book is for people who are already familiar with web design, but who may or may not be web design gurus. Essentially, this book is for you to beef up your web development skills regardless of whether you’re a beginner or a pro.
Websites
After you’ve learned the techniques necessary to most effectively use Flash content on the Web, where do you go for the latest tips?
The Web is constantly changing, and so are the standards for using all different types of content on the Web. Here are some websites that I look to daily for up-to-date search engine optimization trends and techniques:
- SEOmoz (http://www.seomoz.org/)
This site has an amazing blog that is updated daily and provides access to industry trends, as well as information about using Flash on the Web.
- All Things Adobe—The Chad and Todd Podcast (http://www.chadandtoddcast.com/)
This is my video podcast’s website, dedicated to providing video training for all Adobe products, including Flash. Here, you’ll find useful (and free!) training about Flash on the Web.
- Lynda.com (http://www.lynda.com/)
This site is an amazing resource for video training. Not only will you find thousands of hours of software training, but you will also find training on SEO.
Who This Book Is Not For
This book is not for people who want to learn SEO for non-cool purposes, like phishing, or other shady web practices that attract people to your site for unholy reasons. Other than that, this book is not for people who want to learn web design from scratch. In other words, this is not a book on how to use Dreamweaver, Flash, or any other web design tools or languages. In fact, I’m going to assume you have at least some familiarity with web design before you start reading this book. See Table 1.
Conventions Used in This Book
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
- Italic
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.
Constant widthUsed for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.
Constant width boldShows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.
Constant width italicShows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.
Tip
This icon signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note.
Caution
This icon indicates a warning or caution.
Using Code Examples
This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.
We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Search Engine Optimization for Flash, by Todd Perkins. Copyright 2009 Todd Perkins, 978-0-596-52252-0.”
If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at permissions@oreilly.com.
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