FlashSEO SOftware <-- im criticising this

[Tea_J]

FlashSEO is a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tool using FLASH TECHNOLOGY...

First of all, go here and read about their product.

http://www.flashseosoftware.com/


alrite..

lemme quote

After months of development and frantic testing, we’ve developed a simple, yet incredibly effective tool that can continuously increase your website’s rank on all major search engines and help you drive massive amounts of highly-targeted visitors to any page you want.

This powerful new tool is called Flash SEO Software, and it’s about to forever change the way you look at search engine optimization.

Flash SEO Software is a revolutionary web-based tool that will help you load your web pages with highly-optimized content that search engines simply can’t resist. But instead doing it by forcing you to change the text of your pages, it uses flash technology to secretly hide high keyword density texts in every image and photo of your website.

The concept is a bit hard to explain with just words, so check out this live example…

I was very intrigued at first to here such wonderful claims.. its a software that can take your a graphic file, optimize it, and inject keywords and key phrases in them to boost your Search engine rankings.. i said, wow..

But then..

I realized that the tool they are offering is nothing more than a software that will convert your images into the swf format, and use Flash dynamic text fields in that swf file, and write the keywords there, prolly hiding it using alpha=0

This would be a wonderful software still, but except for one fact...

We all know that ONE OF THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS with Flash is SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION! We all know that search engines can not see the text content inside an SWF file, static, or dynamic...

So what's with this software? It's either the developer of this software is fooling people, or fooling himself..

I could be wrong.. would like to hear your opinions.

Tea

[luvenny]

Originally posted by Tea_J

We all know that search engines can not see the text content inside an SWF file, static, or dynamic...

Nope, I didn't know that.
I know otherwise...

[MechaPiano]

Originally posted by luvenny
Nope, I didn't know that.
I know otherwise...

really?
it's possible to read from SWF?

[Tea_J]

ugh.. God.. NO. it's NOT POSSIBLE..

This is one of the many reasons making a full flash website is discouraged.. it's not compatible with Search Engines. Anything inside an SWF file can not be read by Search Engines.. There was one company that's developing a search engine that can peek inside the text contents of an swf, but i dont know the progress there.. it's still extremely primitive.


read read:
http://sharpnet.typepad.com/search_e...h_and_seo.html

http://www.sagerock.com/website-prom...for-flash.html
(the tips on this link above speaks of methods OUTSIDE flash because anything WITHIN the swf file is virtually invisible to search engines.)

Search engines and Flash don't mix. In fact, they will never index Flash content. The opportunity for spam is too great therefore if you want your beautiful Flash site to be visible on the Web, you have to learn the necessary tricks and techniques if you want that high ranking in Google.

Search engine optimization experts have long advised against using Flash movies or Flash splash pages because search engines can't read flash and therefore your .swf movie site is invisible.

There are hundreds of articles about this.. i cant seem to locate this issue in the macromedia website, but it's there

[Napalm]

Google can index flash sites. (for at least 4 months)

[gerbick]

It's a well-known fact that present technology/searchbots have probs with flash and other binary content embeded in webpages; however it's definitely a step in the right direction.

if you can index via embedded verbiage from within a flash file, then that's one thing. But if they work it out to where it's useable within an Intranet - that was one of the reasons I was looking at this a while back - and they worked out a way to where you pulled up the html page with the swf embedded in it with the keywords, that could possibly help.

But as far as what this does... flash and search engines do sorta go together, but it's definitely a work in progress.

[Tea_J]

Flash CAN index flash sites.. but what i'm trying to say here, as well as the many articles out there about this, FLASH CONTENT can't be indexed.

Search Engines today look at the body of your website, the actual text content.. ANd search engines CAN NOT see into these swf's.. whether it's dynamic or static text field, as opposed to the questioned software..

[aversion]

Google has been experimenting with various ways of indexing content inside SWF files since early last year. There's content from some of my flash files on google that can only have been obtained from the SWF itself, not from the HTML page or any other external files.

To search you need to specify "filetype:swf" in your query. The almost useless thing about this is that you can't link to the content, and google only links to the filetype, in this case SWF. So even if you can get google to index your flash users will be linking directly to the SWF file and have no idea where the content they were looking for is within your site.

[gerbick]

I just wonder though... if they were to embed a whole bunch of keywords into a *.swf placed into the root, and via *.htaccess, any direct access made to that keyword *.swf would be redirected to your front page.

Frustrating for people looking for deep-linking within flash, but would tidy up your code a bit for the XHTML by including only keywords into that *.swf.

A friend of mine and myself have been talking about "what's next" in the internet. This is definitely something that Macromedia will have to not only research but restructure *.swf's to allow deep-linking. That's a key part of this that's missing.

[Tea_J]

ahh.. that's great news aversion.. however, keyword here is "experimental"..

it's still not OPTIMUM.. not even close to SEO methodologies and principles.

Also, i still think the software (FlashSEO) is crap. dont ya'll agree?

How can such BS be made to look so good?!

sheesh.. poor unknowing victims of this software.. believing that the little flash keyowrd trick is gona generate high rankings!

sheesh..

tea

[aversion]

I have no experience of the software but yeah the google indexing is definitely experimental and pretty much useless at this point.

Originally posted by gerbick
A friend of mine and myself have been talking about "what's next" in the internet. This is definitely something that Macromedia will have to not only research but restructure *.swf's to allow deep-linking. That's a key part of this that's missing.

They won't do it. People have been asking MM to implement deep linking, bookmarking and the browser back button with SWFs for years but it's not going to happen. They added named anchors but I don't know anyone that uses them for navigation, they're next to useless.

There are hacks for the back button and deep linking/adding to favourites but they work inconsistently and aren't cross browser, they're just hacks. Teknision are still, after several years, the best example of this kind of implementation, as long as you have IE.

John Dowdell and other MM people state that since flash is an application development tool, rather than a page-based website development tool that the back button doesn't have a place in an interactive application based on 'states'. This is true, if you have a fancy interface with widgets and sections moving around where does the back button apply, and what is the user's expectation of what the back button will do given their experience with HTML websites... Dowdell says, "whenever I've examined that "can't bookmark Flash" criticism I've never been clear on whether the critiquer sees such a goal as an actual sustainable goal."

Mike Chambers did write an interesting article on using the back button in the Pet Market Application (developed to show off flash), but even this implementation was based on the hidden frame hack.

I think MM wants to think of flash as being more and more about applications and less and less about page based websites, which is still what it's used for by the majority of people. To this end adding a native linking functionality at this point in flash's devlopment isn't something I think we'll ever see. The future of flash as MM see it doesn't seem to be making web sites, rather creating interactive web applications that sit within a HTML website.

Some of the big name flash design companies seem to be going more and more with hybrid sites (like 2advanced) whereas others are still pushing the all-flash envelope with relatively great success (FI).

[XcVbSdRw]

Originally posted by Tea_J
FlashSEO is a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tool using FLASH TECHNOLOGY...

First of all, go here and read about their product.

http://www.flashseosoftware.com/


alrite..

lemme quote



I was very intrigued at first to here such wonderful claims.. its a software that can take your a graphic file, optimize it, and inject keywords and key phrases in them to boost your Search engine rankings.. i said, wow..

But then..

I realized that the tool they are offering is nothing more than a software that will convert your images into the swf format, and use Flash dynamic text fields in that swf file, and write the keywords there, prolly hiding it using alpha=0

This would be a wonderful software still, but except for one fact...

We all know that ONE OF THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS with Flash is SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION! We all know that search engines can not see the text content inside an SWF file, static, or dynamic...

So what's with this software? It's either the developer of this software is fooling people, or fooling himself..

I could be wrong.. would like to hear your opinions.

Tea

first of all, their one-page web site, along with comments like "new secret weapon" and "exponentially multiplying your website traffic" screams carpet-bagger and snakeoil to me!

seems to me that even if they are able to do what they claim AND Google can read it, it is still no good since Google will apply the same rules about spamming/keyword stuffing, etc. to the content inside the SWF as they do to the content in the HTML. and if you are not spamming/keyword stuffing why wouldn't you just put this info into the HTML in the first place? maybe I'm missing something?

[Loyal Rogue]

Actually I've given quite a bit of thought to using flash for SEO work.
Google has been able to extract text from flash for a while now and some of the old techniques that don't work in html anymore can be recycled to work hidden inside of a flash file without being detected or penalized.
Keyword stuffing and tons of relevant text can be effectively hidden from visitors within a swf in ways that aren't possible anymore with html.
Although backlinks still seem to carry the lion's share of ranking weight, Google still pays a lot of attention to content and use of keywords.

For an example I will use, http://www.cyberbee.com/cb_copyright.swf
This is a basic flash learning site with a variety of questions and answers on copyright and fair use.
The questions are contained in mouse-overs on the characters in the main flash movie.
To see the answers you must click on that character/link to reach another "level" of the flash movie.

I have picked one of the questions at random.
It is the first girl in the second row from the top.
Her question is, "What is fair use?"
I have clicked on her to see the answer to her question.
Now I'm going to take one sentence from her answer on the "deeper level" of the flash movie at random.
I chose the sentence, "Will your use deprive the author from making money".

I type that sentence into Google's search,
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...m+making+money

and, viola, it returns a search result with that swf listed as the second choice on the first page.
(from my datacenter anyway)

Not too shabby for a swf file with no html, no title, no metatags, no description, just pure flash.

Try it with different sentences from the movie.
The whole swf and all of it's text are indexed and searchable on Google.
This certainly opens up new possibilities and exploitations of the serps.

I'm just surprised that it's taken this long for a company to start selling it.

[Adixx]

Originally posted by Tea_J
it's not compatible with Search Engines. Anything inside an SWF file can not be read by Search Engines..

several robots out there can already parse swf files.

Yet that software is a hunk of trash IMO.

SEO has become a deviant market where ample companies sell stories and lies. There is no magic about it. Good research and hard work does the job.

Here is what google can index besides the standard web content:
*Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf)
* Adobe PostScript (ps)
* Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku)
* Lotus WordPro (lwp)
* MacWrite (mw)
* Microsoft Excel (xls)
* Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt)
* Microsoft Word (doc)
* Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)
* Microsoft Write (wri)
* Rich Text Format (rtf)
* Shockwave Flash (swf)
* Text (ans, txt)

[Tea_J]

yeah.. so true man.. its the people that fall into these quick solution schemes that invigorates this "False" industry.

@Loyal Rogue

that's some example man! great job!


Bottom line is though, one does not index the page but the swf file.. and i personally tend to add swf file to my robots.txt file as exclude.. im sure a lot of others do to.

hmm.. so still not an "acceptable" method i believe.

[Ask The Geezer]

It's not the problem with reading the swf, it's that all major search engine algorythms look for a 'theme' in the text of a page, and use that as a large part of the ranking algo. If you just used flash to make html look alike pages, full of text and static images, then the engines could do something with it. But who uses flash to do that? The problem is, that all good algorythms were developed to be almost intelligent, and following any theme in text inside a flash movie leads them nowhere useful. It just doesn't connect. Flash developers are going to have to change their design strategy, cause I doubt the search engines will change their algo for such a small minority of websites. Well, they may, but they haven't so far.

[Adixx]

Originally posted by iaskwhy
Flash developers are going to have to change their design strategy, cause I doubt the search engines will change their algo

I agree with iashwky. Flash developers are gonna have to exploit flash for what it is now (interactive content) not a tool to push your search engine visibility... that's for sure.

[Adixx]

Originally posted by Tea_J
yeah.. so true man.. its the people that fall into these quick solution schemes that invigorates this "False" industry.

I know a couple of clients that spent bank to get zero. In fact they both used trafficpower.com

This company is a full on con. They use redirect methods and link farms. I believe they got black balled by Google.

they are expensive and have bs results. but a lot of stories to tell...

too many out there. watch out.

[Ask The Geezer]

As for this company, and their claim. Notice one thing. Their website is in html, heh?

[XcVbSdRw]

Originally posted by iaskwhy
As for this company, and their claim. Notice one thing. Their website is in html, heh?

bingo!