Is the text in a Sprout searchable via search engines?
Posted on April 8, 2008 - 3:46pm
Is the text in a Sprout searchable via search engines?
Hi Sproutbuilders! I hope you can help me with this one... my client has a question. He wants to know if the text in the sprouts that I built for him is searchable. He wants to know if he puts important keywords into the text in the sprout, will Google and Yahoo!, et al, be able to search the text in the sprout to find his website. I am not sure if content made with Flash is searchable. I hope you can answer this question for me rather quickly. Thanks! - Peggi Tehan
No
search engines can not read flash
Hmmm... I didn't think so but I thought I heard a while back that Adobe was working on that. Oh well, ok... thanks for the quick response. My clients and their investors are loving sprouts!
You could use metatags in your homepage when you implement your sprout in an existing html file, like for example Microsoft Frontpage or Adobe Dreamweaver....
Use as many keywords as you need, this will make your site more trackable by google...
Cheers,
Zohra
Hi Zohra, I read years ago that Google didn't pay any attention to meta tags. Did that change? Or maybe what I read wasn't true. I read it in a book on SEO that I bought on Amazon so I figured that the source was credible. I do plan to use meta tags on this web site so that other search engines that index meta tags will find the site, but I was under the impression that Google didn't index meta tags.
Margaret,
We are working closely with Adobe on their Search api for Flash. Nothing in the immediate horizon, but as soon as Adobe releases it, we will make Sprout text and meta content accessible to search engines. We are working on alternative solutions also, but it is still in the lab.
carnet
Margaret,
A good, relevant title (in the head section) is very important. Incorporate your keywords there - especially how you envisioned people searching for your site will type the phrases. That strategy works very well for all my sites. Furthermore, if part of your page is written in HTML and you have section headings, put them between the level 1 or other levels header tags (and incorporate keywords there as well), then control the font size using css.
If it's still not possible for search engines to read keywords in Flash, allow readers to easily bookmark your sites by using those popular bookmark buttons from social networking sites (e.g. stumble upon)/subscribe to your web content so that you get more incoming links and traffic. There are many other creative ways to get people to notice the site, get more incoming links, and perhaps rank higher up in search engines. Think quality.
carnet, can we call it new internet revolution ? :)
Yes please!
Hi Carnet, I didn't realize that you replied to my post til just now. Thanks so much for your reply. Looking forward to searchable Flash and searchable sprouts.
Lynda, thanks for the tips. I normally incorporate all that you suggest into my sites but my clients' home page is rather devoid of text and headers, etc. because all of the text that's usually on the home page has now been added to three sprouts. Go to http://www.86recipes.com to see what I mean.
Flash will soon be searchable!!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9983223-56.html?tag=nefd.top
wix has been claiming their widgets are 'entirely accessible' by search engines since the beta went public.
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