Backorder Domain Names at BackOrderZone.com | Backorder Domain Names: SEO for Flash: 5 Tips and Best Practices

Backorder Domain Names at BackOrderZone.com | Backorder Domain Names: SEO for Flash: 5 Tips and Best Practices: SEO for Flash: 5 Tips and Best Practices TopRank Online Marketing Online Marketing , SEO , SEO Tips 0 in Share SEO for Flash – is it a...

SEO for Flash: 5 Tips and Best Practices

SEO for Flash: 5 Tips and Best Practices

TopRank Online Marketing    Online Marketing, SEO, SEO Tips

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SEO for Flash – is it a reality yet?
One of the most common issues for web sites with poor search visibility involves Google not being able to crawl and index a site’s content. Web sites made entirely with Flash are problematic because there are often no links for search engine crawlers to follow or HTML text to copy.
According to the Opera (browser) developer center, somewhere between 30% and 40% of all pages tested contained Flash files representing a lot of content that may not be included in search results or only partially indexed. Despite a large number of sites publishing content using this type of file format, Flash and search engines have been like oil and water. They just didn’t mix.
In the summer of 2008, Google announced it had improved the indexing of Adobe Flash files. Many Flash developers and SEOs across the globe could breathe an optimistic sigh of relief: Text in Flash files was now crawlable.
But what’s the whole story? Can a site be built entirely with Flash and expect to gain the same search benefits as an HTML site?
Consider these 5 points that Google makes in regards to SEO for Flash:
1. Google can crawl and index all of the text content users see as they interact with the Flash file. That’s a big step in the right direction, since ensuring a site is crawlable is the No. 1 SEO basic. A few points to keep in mind concerning SEO for Flash:

• Google maintains that the text in Flash files is treated like text in HTML or PDF files.
• If identical content is used in both Flash and HTML, Google will likely see it as duplicate content.
• If a Flash file is embedded in HTML, you’ll be able to add meta information, but the content will be indexed as a single item.

The below image illustrates how a Flash site was previously seen in search results (without meta description text) and how it is currently seen (with descriptive text):

2. Google can discover links within Flash files. In other words, if a Flash file includes links to your website pages, you can increase your odds of Google finding and crawling more of the site – just as is the case with links that appear in HTML and other files.
3. Google can index external content that a Flash file loads and associate it with that Flash file. This capability is an update from the summer 2008 revision. Previously, if a Flash file were to load an HTML or XML file, Google would not associate that external content with the Flash file. This new capability, introduced just this summer, allows external content to appear in search results.
The image below shows the results to the query “2002 VW Tansporter 888.” Before the introduction of the new Flash search capability, this result did not appear because the content is contained in an XML file loaded by a Flash file:

4. Google supports common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash. Another update from the 2008 revision, this capability also applies to SWFObject and SWFObject 2. Previously, if a page loaded a Flash file using JavaScript, Google wouldn’t recognize or index it.
5. Google can index sites scripted with ActionScript. That includes AS1, AS2 and AS3 versions. Google also maintains that is does not decompile Flash files or expose ActionScript code if it’s not visible to users.
All that said, Google’s ability to crawl Flash files is still evolving, so building a site entirely in Flash isn’t best practice. To create the right balance when it comes to using Flash and implementing SEO for Flash, consider these tips:

• Don’t use Flash as the navigation.
• Embed Flash files into HTML pages.
• Use descriptive page titles and meta descriptions.
• Don’t include an entire site in one Flash file. Instead, break the content into multiple Flash files with different HTML pages.
• Use Flash for design elements and less-important content, and use HTML for the most important page elements.
• Enhance web fonts in Flash files by using slfr, per a suggestion by SEO Zombie Blogger Justin Briggs. Because the Flash styles enhance the HTML content rather than replace it, the engines can still read titles.

For Flash optimization from the source, be sure to check out the Adobe SEO Technology Center web site, which was set up specifically to provide webmasters with what the challenges are and provides practical steps, examples, and best practices that you can follow to overcome them.
While Flash, Ajax and JavaScript offer enticing user experience, they continue to offer a less than ideal experience for search engine crawlers. What tactics or best practices have you found in balancing rich media and SEO?  Do you think it’s reasonable to for a web site to have an amazing Flash component and still be able to compete in aggressive search categories?

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Backorder Domain Names at BackOrderZone.com | Backorder Domain Names: Country code top-level domain - Wikipedia

Backorder Domain Names at BackOrderZone.com | Backorder Domain Names: Country code top-level domain - Wikipedia: Country code top-level domain From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For the full list of country code top-level domains, see List of Interne...

Country code top-level domain - Wikipedia

Country code top-level domain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the full list of country code top-level domains, see List of Internet top-level domains.

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, a sovereign state, or a dependent territory.
All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs. In 2010, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) began implementing internationalized country code TLDs, consisting of language-native characters when displayed in an end-user application. Creation and delegation of ccTLDs is described in RFC 1591, corresponding to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes.

Delegation and management

IANA is responsible for determining an appropriate trustee for each ccTLD. Administration and control is then delegated to that trustee, which is responsible for the policies and operation of the domain. The current delegation can be determined from IANA's list of ccTLDs. Individual ccTLDs may have varying requirements and fees for registering subdomains. There may be a local presence requirement (for instance, citizenship or other connection to the ccTLD), as for example the Canadian (ca) and German (de) domains, or registration may be open.

Relation to ISO 3166-1

“	The IANA is not in the business of deciding what is and what is not a country. The selection of the ISO 3166 list as a basis for country code top-level domain names was made with the knowledge that ISO has a procedure for determining which entities should be and should not be on that list.	”
	— Jon Postel, RFC 1591[1]

Unused ISO 3166-1 codes

Almost all current ISO 3166-1 codes have been assigned and do exist in DNS. However, some of these are effectively unused. In particular, the ccTLDs for the Norwegian dependency Bouvet Island (bv) and the designation Svalbard and Jan Mayen (sj) do exist in DNS, but no subdomains have been assigned, and it is Norid policy not to assign any at present. Two French territories, bl (Saint Barthélemy) and mf (Saint Martin), still await local assignment by France's government.
The code eh, although eligible as ccTLD for Western Sahara, has never been assigned and does not exist in DNS. Only one subdomain is still registered in gb^[2] (ISO 3166-1 for the United Kingdom) and no new registrations are being accepted for it. Sites in the United Kingdom generally use uk (see below).
The former .um ccTLD for the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands was removed in April 2008. Under RFC 1591 rules .um is eligible as a ccTLD on request by the relevant governmental agency and local Internet user community.

ASCII ccTLDs not in ISO 3166-1

Several ASCII ccTLDs are in use that are not ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes. Some of these codes were specified in older versions of the ISO list.

• uk (United Kingdom): The ISO 3166-1 code for the United Kingdom is GB. However, the JANET network had already selected uk as a top-level identifier for its pre-existing Name Registration Scheme, and this was incorporated into the DNS root. gb was assigned with the intention of a transition, but this never occurred and the use of uk is now entrenched.
• su This obsolete ISO 3166 code for the Soviet Union was assigned when the Soviet Union was still extant; moreover, new su registrations are accepted.
• ac (Ascension Island): This code is a vestige of IANA's decision in 1996 to allow the use of codes reserved in the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 reserve list for use by the Universal Postal Union. The decision was later reversed, with Ascension Island now the sole outlier. (Three other ccTLDs, gg (Guernsey), im (Isle of Man) and je (Jersey) also fell under this category from 1996 until they received corresponding ISO 3166 codes in March 2006.)
• eu (European Union): On September 25, 2000, ICANN decided to allow the use of any two-letter code in the ISO 3166-1 reserve list that is reserved for all purposes. Only EU currently meets this criterion. Following a decision by the EU's Council of Telecommunications Ministers in March 2002, progress was slow, but a registry (named EURid) was chosen by the European Commission, and criteria for allocation set: ICANN approved eu as a ccTLD, and it opened for registration on 7 December 2005 for the holders of prior rights. Since 7 April 2006, registration is open to all.
• tp (the previous ISO 3166-1 code for East Timor): Being phased out in favor of tl since 2005.

Historical ccTLDs

There are two ccTLDs that have been deleted after the corresponding 2-letter code was withdrawn from ISO 3166-1: cs (for Czechoslovakia) and zr (for Zaire). There may be a significant delay between withdrawal from ISO 3166-1 and deletion from the DNS; for example, ZR ceased to be an ISO 3166-1 code in 1997, but the zr ccTLD was not deleted until 2001. Other ccTLDs corresponding to obsolete ISO 3166-1 have not yet been deleted. In some cases they may never be deleted due to the amount of disruption this would cause for a heavily used ccTLD. In particular, the Soviet Union's ccTLD su remains in use more than a decade after SU was removed from ISO 3166-1.
The historical country codes dd for the German Democratic Republic and yd for South Yemen were eligible for a ccTLD, but not allocated; see also de and ye.
The temporary reassignment of country code cs (Serbia and Montenegro) until its split into rs and me (Serbia and Montenegro, respectively) led to some controversies^[3][4] about the stability of ISO 3166-1 country codes, resulting in a second edition of ISO 3166-1 in 2007 with a guarantee that retired codes will not be reassigned for at least 50 years, and the replacement of RFC 3066 by RFC 4646 for country codes used in language tags in 2006.
The previous ISO 3166-1 code for Yugoslavia, YU, was removed by ISO on 2003-07-23, but the yu ccTLD remained in operation. Finally, after a two-year transition to Serbian rs and Montenegrin me, the .yu domain was phased out in March 2010.
Australia was originally assigned the oz country code, which was later changed to au with the .oz domains moved to .oz.au.

Internationalized ccTLDs

An internationalized country code top-level domain (IDN ccTLD) is a top-level domain with a specially encoded domain name that is displayed in an end user application, such as a web browser, in its language-native script or alphabet, such as the Arabic alphabet, or a non-alphabetic writing system, such as Chinese characters. IDN ccTLDs are an application of the internationalized domain name (IDN) system to top-level Internet domains assigned to countries, or independent geographic regions.
ICANN started to accept applications for IDN ccTLDs in November 2009,^[5] and installed the first set into the Domain Names System in May 2010. The first set was a group of Arabic names for the countries of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. By May 2010, 21 countries had submitted applications to ICANN, representing 11 languages.<sup>[6]

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Backorder Domain Names at BackOrderZone.com | Backorder Domain Names: Flash SEO How to optimise Flash for search engines...

Backorder Domain Names at BackOrderZone.com | Backorder Domain Names: Flash SEO How to optimise Flash for search engines...: The End of Flash? Wow, it’s been a while since I updated this, really should use it to it’s full potential, especially as FLASH ...

Flash SEO How to optimise Flash for search engines.

The End of Flash?

Wow, it’s been a while since I updated this, really should use it to it’s full potential, especially as FLASH MAY NOT BE AROUND FOR MUCH LONGER!
Okay, that’s a huge lie.
Sure, Apple may be killing off Flash on their products and HTML 5 can explode videos (among other cool stuff) but while that’s the future the present most certainly sees Flash as being around for a long while.
The <video> tag may (very) slowly kill off Flash videos but you won’t be seeing the end of games and sites built with with Flash for a while.
Some facts (and by facts I mean things that I’m currently thinking)

• Flash has about a 98% adoption rate on non-iPhone/iPad products. That won’t change any time soon and despite it’s flaws it’s still a very good way to embed video. Remember Adobe have been doing this for 10 years and HTML is only just starting to do this.
• Begun the codec wars has and until there’s a victor or agreement between H.264 and Ogg is resolved, HTML 5 adoption is going to be hurt a lot. This could potentially even have a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray type outcome with people being reluctant to jump on the new tech and something better (digital distribution in that example) is almost ready.
• It will be long time until everyone’s browser can display HTML 5. Surprisingly it doesn’t work in IE6! By the time companies update their browsers and even all browsers are able to display videos in HTML 5 it could be close to 2020!
• If HTML 5 video doesn’t work in some unforseen aspect how will it be updated? Do we wait 10 years for HTML 6? While browser developers will be able to make edits to how things display themselves (bonus!) when I think about how the different browsers render just now I don’t look forward to seeing another element that will require hacks.
• How can videos be monetised in HTML 5? Forcing viewers to watch an ad before showing the clip is possible in Flash, and I guess you can add ads directly to the video before uploading but I don’t see how it’s possible to append an ad to the beginning of a video (which doesn’t mean it isn’t) in HTML 5. Somebody smarter than me care to wade in? Overlay ads should still be possible but if H.264 charges $2,000 (per region) for videos over 12 minutes that you receive revenue on it’s going to be pretty expensive running ads on these videos (again, unless Ogg wins).
• The play/pause controls on HTML 5 are ugly as sin.
• Actionscript , Flex and Flash still allow more creativity than Javascript, HTML and CSS. That’s not to say things can’t be accomplished with HTML.
• What HTML 5 may mean is more people disabling Flash in their browser (like an adblocker) this could cause problems for publishers. As an inconvenience, disabling and enabling Flash to watch a video is a pain in the ass. If I could still do 99% of what I want on the web but see 50% less ads I’d be inclined to just disable Flash entirely.
• Will HTML 5 actually kill Silverlight more than Flash?
• Will SVG get a boost from HTML 5?

Okay, I’m done. HTML 5 raises a lot of issues (and a lot of SEO opportunities!) but I don’t see it killing Flash off just yet.

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