Naming SWF files.

[MoetheJoe]

Okay, I named some of my SWF files on my website with just initials. Some are aaa.swf, ect.

Is this self defeating? Someone told me spiders will not pick up swf files. If this is true, I have nothing to worry about. It it's not true, than I have to go back and change all the swf file names, which will be a big headache.

Also, I am going to have to create an HMTL mirror site so that the spiders will pick up the website. Should I be careful what I name each file? What should I use as the file names? Should I put my first and last name next to each graphic gif or jpeg so that the spiders have a better chance of picking up my webiste?

Thanks for your help.

[Ask The Geezer]

>>I named some of my SWF files on my website with just initials.

Are these swf's loading into a main as externals and only on the server, or are they actually embedded in an html page like the main movie? If they are only externals, no problem, they aren't spidered anyway. If they are individually embedded, it will give a little boost if you change the names to keywords you want to target. It's true, spiders can not parse the actual swf movie to see what's in it, but they CAN and DO read all the html trash on the source of the page. That means the names of the swf inside your <object> tags.

>>I am going to have to create an HMTL mirror site so that the spiders will pick up the website. Should I be careful what I name each file?

As I said above, spiders CAN and DO read all the html trash on the source of the page. Name every gif and jpg a keyword name, like myproduct.jpg. Use alt tags on every image. Spiders read alt tags, so use keywords in them. Name the background image a keyword. And especially name the individual pages after keywords, ie, http://www.mysite.com/buy_my_stuff.htm You get a lot of ranking status from the url name.

Never use flash navigation in an html page. Sudden death, and no overtime. The spiders can not read the links, so they can't find the other pages. Use links everywhere. Embed links to other parts of your own site inside keywords in the text on the page. This helps a LOT. Make a sitemap.htm page and list every page with keyword links on it. Add one link to it on the home page of the site, I mean the index.html page. That's the only place it needs to be and if you can manage to put it on the very top left corner of the page, that's primo, cause all spiders read html from the top left corner of the page, accross and then back and down. Just like reading English text in a book. You can make it invisible by creating a 20x10 pixel image, named after a keyword of course, and put that image at the top left corner of the home page. Make it the same color as your background color, so it's invisible. Then just put a hotspot link on it. That's one of my favorite little tricks, and it works perfectly, because no spider can see whats in an image.

Remember, only one link to the sitemap.htm page, and only on the index.html page. And name the sitemap, sitemap.htm. Spiders look for those pages on every site and give them special attention.

Use the meta-tags on each page to best effect. "ALWAYS" use keywords in the title tag. Don't wast valuable space with trash like Welcome to my, etc. Those are not keywords. Don't use the name of your company. As much as you'd like it to be, "My Company Name" is not now and never will be a keyword that people search for. The first three words in the title tag are very important. And try and repeat the most important word at least once in the title, then again 3 times in the description tag.

There is so much more, but that's the basics. I was a top editor for one of the big directories for 3 1/2 years, and got an inside view of the process, and I've made a fair to middlin living at SEO for the past 3 years, so I have a little edge on how the search engines work. These tips will definately help your site.

[MoetheJoe]

Thanks for the feedback. Now I have a problem. I have loads of flash files within my html page that I created using dreamweaver.

You make an interesting point about site maps. Is a site map all I need in order to have the spiders find my page? And it is, does that mean that the search engines will only find my site map and not my intro page?

Since you said spiders search the web page from left to right, (that is what it was right?) I am going to make the first banner on the left that has my name in it a link to the site map.
See http://www.chrislupetti.com.
I can put in fonts a little "site map" under my name. Do you think that will do the trick, or is that NOT enought?
Thanks for your help.

[Ask The Geezer]

The top left corner of that page is a flash movie. Nothing inside that will be read by any spider. I was talking about html pages. Your link, here, IS your index.html page and that's where the intro should go, with links to the flash site and the html mirror, if you decide to make one. Whenever someone clicks on http://www.chrislupetti.com/ the servers always send them to index.html first, by default. You want to set the site up like I just said, cause a lot of search engines and especially directories only list the home page. So make your home page the first page you want anyone to see. If the intro comes first, thats what should be on index.html, if you want a html page with buttons to the flash site or the mirror and maybe the intro from there, then make that all on the index.html page and put the sitemap link on it.

And unless you make a mirror, don't bother with the sitemap. It's not going to help at all if your domain only has 1 or 2 pages total. It's only helpful when you have half a dozen or more pages.