Flex, SEO and You

Who am I?
Tim Scollick
•Been doing Flash and Web Development for
about 10 years
•Have worked mostly in agencies and eLearning
companies
•Currently doing freelance Flash and Web
Development
•Bart Millar helped with the site and he's
awesome

Problem
•Client wanted a site that
was optimized for Search
Engines but built in Flash
•Needed a site that was
relatively easy to update
•Wanted Google Analytics
•Client knew easy HTML

Let's Hate Flash
•Flash is continually banged on by the web
development community for not being SEO
friendly
•But Flash is AWESOME at SEO when you build it
properly

Calling Bullshit on Flash Google
Indexing
•Flash indexing probably only works for non-
dynamic swfs and I even doubt that
•My opinion: Only bulletproof solution is to have
HTML files somewhere on the server

Two Sites
•Could have two versions of the site - one HTML
version and one Flash version
•Use JavaScript to send the user to the Flash
version if they have Flash
•Extra maintenance. Client didn't have budget for
us to write extra code to render both sites.

Our Approach
•Use Flash to “sit on top of” a regular HTML site
•Flash reads plain HTML files, parses them to
Actionscript objects and renders the site in Flex
•I think that this is the “right way” to do things,
according to W3C hippies

Other HTML Strategies
•In a larger site, we could have used a full-blown
or a simple CMS
•Rendering XML (for Flash only version) in a CMS
would be extra overhead
•Didn't have the budget to set up CMS workflows
and train staff

Technologies

Rendering Process

Simple HTML Parsers

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda
•Simple HTML styles for
better non-Flash
rendering
•Should have built a
JavaScript bridge to
take the user to the
proper view when they
don't enter from
index.html

Next Time: A Ruby Gem
•In a bigger project, a more robust process would
have made more sense
•Build a ruby parser to dynamically build the
Actionscript Objects from the HTML
•Build a ruby library to scrape a local site,
generate HTML pages and automatically build to
the staging server using Capistrano

Analytics
•Using this approach, analytics is easy
•In most Flash projects, you have to have a
separate GA library and “tag” your events with GA
calls
•Using our method, you get the page call analytics
“for free”
•Only need to include the GA code in every page
(easy with Rails/HAML)

SEO Mission Accomplished

iPhone Result

Flex Result

Overall Results
•Client was very pleased
•Got their “sexy” Flash site
•Haven't had one update support request, despite
numerous client changes (victory)
•SEO works reasonably well (note they haven't
done any SEM that I'm aware of)

Contact
•Email: tim.scollick@gmail.com
•Twitter: @timsco