SEO and Flash, can they ever be friends

I guess one relevant example from my own site... the flash navigation buttons are also being sourced from the drupal menu system and rendered in flash - they are not hard coded. In this way if I change the primary navigation menu in Drupal then it updates both the flash and non-flash navigation buttons.

The other thing is that content loading from flash would probably be more typically done with amf using drupal's services/amf combination rather than via a json format. Another way I've seen for differentiating what is returned from Drupal could also be via the drupal theming system, based on the request being identified as originating from flash, switching to a 'flash' theme which outputs data instead of html.

@kglad: no not specifically. basically swfaddress is the 'state' of your content. It can be set up for simple timeline navigation in your swf or loading of external swfs (I guess) like you describe - which I guess is a 'typical' use.
Or it could be related to content loaded in xml format that is similar to an html website. If you are working on a navigable content site in flash, then I think it makes sense to use a CMS.

example from my site:
http://greg-dove.com/about-lineart-animations

Will be converted to a swfaddress style url and flash will load the content from the above page from the CMS (in a json format instead of raw html) and display it in the browser. The end result in this case is not any different so I realize its not a great example based on flash rendering. But it could be - because flash is working with an alternate representation of the same content for that page. For example flash could layout and display the content itself and perform animations (e.g. defined in xml in the CMS content to be output for the flash version only) that had no parallel in the plain vanilla html version of the same content - just an example.

more reading here if you want (drupal centric only sorry):
http://www.riapedia.com/2007/01/25/a_solution_for_deep_linking_in_flash_with_drupal
http://www.cascadingstyle.net/files/presentations/DrupalConPresentation.pdf

gwd:

you mean to say swfaddress works with 2 buttons on-stage where button1 attaches movieclip1 and button2 attaches movieclip2?

@kglad: swfaddress need not be timeline based, flash just has to respond by displaying the relevant content - which could be loaded content.

My view is that the best way to achieve SEO is to use swfaddress in combination with a CMS. The CMS provides the same content in html for search spiders and to flash in a more 'flash friendly' format when flash is 'rendering' it. SWFaddress supports the deep-linking from search queries etc.

The way you could think about this is that when flash requests the same content it gets (for example) xml defining what it needs to do, whereas if the browser requests it , it gets the basic html version. But the content is only ever defined once for both versions of the output from the CMS.

Drupal (a CMS I am familiar with, but I'm sure other CMSes have similar modules) has a swfaddress module as well as services/amfphp modules that let flash request content.

My own (somewhat neglected) site has flash requesting all the content via Drupal. I am not currently 'displaying' it using flash: flash is loading the content (using as2 LoadVars in json format) and 'rendering' it via the browser via ExternalInterface and javascript. This was a kind of experiment just to see if I could do it - it does store pages in flash memory so some things happen a little different when navigating to a previously viewed page. But it could also easily do its own alternate rendering of the same content, as more structured data and rendering them in its own way inside flash.
My own example is not so great (it is due for an overhaul) but I know there are examples out there using this approach with flash.
The beauty of this approach is that you get SEO via the traditional spidering approaches, deeplinking to the correct content from search query results, forward/back button support, non-flash based browser support, along with easy content maintenance. It does require learning a CMS and the approaches for integration with flash though.

the problem with swfaddress is that it's timeline based. ie, when you "move" from one page to another in flash that must correspond to the main timeline changing frames. swfaddress stores those main timeline frame changes and uses javascript to allow the back and forward browser buttons navigate along the main timeline. that's no use for those of us that don't use the main timeline for navigation.

I don't fiddle much with SEO, so I can't add much to the discussion, but some years ago a client of mine hired someone to do his SEO and the company he hired utilizes some 'color hidden' text on the pages, even though his site is primarily all html based.

The one thing he mentioned about this text is that if the text is the same color as the background, that's looked for and treated with disdain.

So to counter that, his bgcolor is a different color than the text, and he uses a background picture that matches the text color in order to hide it. The text does display (white on light grey) briefly as the page loads, but is quickly hidden by the tiled background image when it gets loaded.

you can't see the html text on my website. that was the point. the font size is 1 and the font color is the same as the background color (black). but search engines can read the html text.

Sorry to interrupt, you two. Hi, by the way.

kglad, you would need more HTML text in your home page to get better results. Right now, from what I saw on your site, only your title page makes any difference.
But I'm talking about alternate content.
I suggest SWFObject for that. It's a well known sniffer, + lets you forget about the "noscript" tag for alternate content.
And being the first on Google when you search for your company name is only normal (unless your business name would be very competitive keywords).

Also, I suggest to everyone to start looking into SWFAddress (asual.com). That's deep linking for Flash website. Meaning you could, from the start (or from an external link) get right away to a specific section of the website, and, most importantly, Google Analytics will know when and where your users navigate in your site. SWFAddress is one of the options for that.

And yes, SWFs can now be indexed by Google... But, hey, right now, that's not very useful, nor efficient.
The best techniques to use about Flash website SEO is alternate HTML content ("only" for the robots to see) and deep linking.
(And, by the way, HTML text the same color as the background is very bad regarding PageRank...)

Well, that being said, my own website (2007) isn't a model for SEO right now. ;)
I'll let you guys know when the 2009 website is ready, with SWFAddress and all (if ever it is of interest).

that's a good link. i added a descriptive title and description tags to index.html.

unfortunately, for all-flash sites that's often the only html file that exists.

kglad.com appears at the bottom of the first page when searching under "flash consulting services" - that's about number 10.

i just added "flash consulting services" to the html code of my index page and i'll see if that makes any difference over the next week or two.

without question, it's easier for spiders to "read" html text than it is to read swf text. so, for anything important that you want spidered, add html text.