How to Recognize Flash URLs and SEOs

Flash, or more specifically Flash videos in the form of .swf files, for a long time posed problems with search engine optimization, or SEO, because search engines couldn't read content contained in a Flash video. Google finally offered a way to index text within a Flash video, but older sites may still use other methods, making recognizing Flash SEO and even URLs potentially difficult. Frequently, Flash URLs are not full URLs and SEO is done using alternate content.

Instructions

    1

    Open the Web page that contains the Flash you want to analyze.

    2

    Click "View" in the top toolbar if you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer. Select "Source" in Internet Explorer or "Page Source" in Firefox. Press "Control" and "U" on your keyboard if you are using Chrome. This will allow you to view the source code for the page.

    3

    Copy and paste all the code from the page into your word processing software. Make sure your software has the ability to "Find" or search terms. Open the "Find" or search dialog box. This is usually "Control" and "F" on your keyboard.

    4

    Enter ".swf" into the text field and search for the term. If located, this is where your Flash video code is located. Your page may have more than one video. Flash files are frequently inside

    tags.

    5

    Locate the following code where your Flash video code is located: . The "value=" portion of this code segment is the URL of your Flash video. If it is not a full URL you can usually assume that the main URL of the site is the beginning of its URL. For example, if your video "value" is just "flashvideo.swf" you can assume that it starts with "http://yoursite.com/."

    6

    Enter "swfobject" into your "Find" or search field and search for it. This is frequently used to determine if the proper Flash version is installed; it will display alternate content if not. If you do not locate "swfobject()" in the page code, it may not have alternate text and most likely will not have SEO, except perhaps in the case of Google.

    7

    Look below the "swfobject()" section for replacement code for the Flash video. This is generally a static image with text and will have elements such as

    ,
    and

    . Many developers also will leave notes as a call-out to specific areas of code. The code located here will be the optimized alternative to the Flash.

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