Want to hurt your page rank? Follow me :)

Mar 192009
 

Since I started my new job I have been so much involved in discovering new technologies that I quite forgot to post any significant and regular update to this website. Google’s ranking algorithm did not pardon this move: my page rank fall from 7 to 4 !!!

With a page rank of 7 I had the feeling to be over ranked but with a page rank of 4 I really have the feeling to be under ranked :)

To avoid continuing this move down, I have decided to:
1. Create a Twitter account and publish my tweets here to make the page change more often.
2. Take more time to write on this blog or decide to let it down :o
3. Refine the focus of this blog, obviously it was oriented web technologies now it is heading to software development and testing.

If you want to help me and share some of your insight, I am looking forward to read your advice below!

Ahmet

Adobe offers to Google and Yahoo! Flash Player Technology – Is It Really A Good News?

Jul 012008
 

I’ve just read via the AXNA that Adobe, Google and Yahoo! worked together to allow SWF searchability. My first thought was ‘finally they made it’ :)

But while reading the FAQ I’ve been a little disappointed by how this indexation seems to happen:

[...]The Flash Player technology, optimized for search spiders, runs a SWF file similarly to how the file would run in Adobe Flash Player in the browser, yet it returns all of the text and links that occur at any state of the application back to the search spider, which then appears in search results to the end user[...]

FlashFlex

[...]All of the extracted information is indexed for relevance according to Google and Yahoo!’s algorithms. The end result is SWF content adding to the searchable information of the web page that hosts the SWF content, thus giving users more information from the web to search through[...]

So I’m afraid that it means that there will be absolutely ‘semantic’ information on the indexed tag. Is this text a title, a paragraph or an image caption? Does this mean that the SEO effort we have to do on SWF are only based on text and keywords?

If you have text with an Alpha of 0 but that have a tween, will it be indexed?

I’m very happy that A_G_Y are working to offer a better indexation and searchability of SWF but as far as I understand it, they are completely missing the SEO point here.

What do you think?

Ahmet

Nearly achieved my ‘new eve 2007 objective’: Ranking Ahmet keyword on top of Search engines

Jun 252008
 

In that time I was a big fan of SEO and thought that it would be cool to place my first name (Ahmet) in top positions of search engines. When I started I couldn’t even find a reference to my website while searching on Google.com (European server) and there are about 44,700,000 results when searching for Ahmet on Google. I’m now positioned in average at the 15 position, which isn’t bad at all :)

Why do I talk about this? Just because I think it will be harder to go above my actual positioning and I don’t have has much fun in old and traditionnal SEO.
So I am officially ending my (useless) experience about positing the Ahmet Keyword :)

Ahmet [Yes I'll keep on singing my post :) ]

Is using Flash Wrong for SEO and Usability?

May 072008
 

Shari Thurow, the Founder and SEO Director of Omni Marketing Interactive wrote a very interesting answer in led-digest.com about the solution I blogged a while ago: ‘Holy Grail: SEO Model for Flash and Flex Content‘.

Here are a few quotes of her, with my answer below:

[...]as long as you are giving search engines one version of a Web page and users another version, then there is a problem[...]

I totally agree but are we talking about the presentation layer or the data layer?
Most websites content are saved on databases, then called whenever needed. Now if the server side technology used produce an XHTML or an XML, we agree that there is no differences?
The XSLT just load a SWF (a Flash or Flex application) on top of an XML. The SWF then use the data from the XML. Whether it is possible to add content on the XML that will never be used on the SWF is an ethical problem, not a problem of Flash. You can also use ‘badly’ the HTML attributes in normal way.

[...]There is the assumption that users want content delivered to them in Flash. I’ve seen Flash used well. I’ve seen Flash used poorly. Only once in my entire Web design career was it necessary for us to do an entire section of a site in Flash [...]

So in your opinion, if the Flash player penetration is above 90% it is because of this assumption? As you said, SWF can be used greatly or poorly and everything in the middle. I’m not a partisan of using SWF just for using it. The best technological solution must be used for the need of the users (not for the developers nor the marketers need). I don’t want to go through to much point but just think about data visualization, broadcasting (TV / sound) or experimental marketing.
I must accord you that SWF changed a lot recently (the last two years) and I understand that you didn’t had to use it before, but keep yourself ready :)

[...]Do they really usability test to determine task completion, efficiency, etc. in order to verify whether users really prefer Flash-delivered content or not? I’m sure there is a
rare few out there who do.[...]

Most of the usability testing that I made or that I read showed that people tend to be more comfortable in front of a UI (user interface) they already know. So obviously ‘traditional HTML’ is often plebiscite, but in terms of task completion, efficiency, UI learning curve, the SWF have an immense advantage: they can follow every move of a user, learn from his mistakes, make elements bigger, dynamically improve the UI to his needs. Doing this with ‘traditional’ web technologies is much harder (IMHO).

[...]I have the kahones to tell a Web site owner that their users do not want Flash and they should change the design. And I can prove it with usability testing.[...]

Again, you talk about usability testing as if it comes from the sky. As far as I know, before doing usability test, there is a reflexion about the UI (I cannot teach you what you know better than me). Usability is everywhere: in the bus, in your kitchen and in front of a screen. But I do really not see the point of aiming at the SWF.

Ahmet

Holy Grail: SEO Model for Flash and Flex Content

Apr 022008
 

The discussion about SEO (search engines optimization) and SWF content(from Flash or Flex) has been long and turbulent.
Fortunately this discussion is coming to an end as now a proven solution exists. I made yesterday a presentation about it at the Adobe User Group of Geneva.

Here is the solution I prefer: using XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) and transformation (XSLT) to rewrite an XML files containing data used in the SWF. As a result we got an HTML file for the search engines and a SWF for the human. Not clear?

SEO for SWF via XSLT

This diagram shows how XSLT is central to all the work.

How does it work?
You will need 3 files:
1) a .XML
2) a . XSL
3) a . SWF
Continue reading »

Help search engines indexing your Flash content

Mar 062006
 

Update: I have presented a clearer model to help search engines index your Flash content with a minimal work.

Bad referencing in search engine is the only point that really bothers me with Flash.
Why is it so hard for search engines to understand Flash content?
Because it’s not text like they use to read it, it’s vectorial text or imported text, search engine mostly see the swf (swf = flash files) like an “image” or like something they don’t understand.
Official solution: using the tags :

‹!--url's used in the movie-->

‹!--text used in the movie-->

But it seems to be a very little help in that issue.

Another reasons is that search engine follow link and as they don’t understand the link in swf they just don’t see all the structure of your swf.

So what can we do for them?

I would say that it’s important to separate the content in different swf that would be loaded in a main swf. If this main swf is loaded once in “a.html” you don’t need to load it again in “b.html” (because it’s in your browser cache), which allow us to make our swf having a structure like: “mygreatdog.html”, “mygreatcat.html”, “blabla.html”. Doing so will make your site more understandable by search engines (who care about the page name), and as a bonus it will make the back and forward button works naturally.

To make your page understandable for search engines and with Flash on the same page is quite easy finally: my way is to make a transparent swf

‹param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
that would go over the content (placed with CSS) that must be understand by the search engines (like the title, some keywords or any important text). So in this case Flash is more here only to beautify your web content (which is not the main purpose of Flash or is it ?).

The bonus of using Css under a swf is that all accessibility standard from the browser will be saved (like making the text resizable, or making your text be read by voice application). By the way if a user don’t have the correct plugin or don’t have JavaScript enabled he will see the important part of your content and if he likes it, he‘ll be more willing to install the plugin.

Last bonus, your flash animation will be understand by the search engines, at least what you want them to understand.

Ahmet