Studio Website Questions
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- d_rek0
@ahli
Yeah, he's a good kid actually and very talented at developing. I think the last few years of his professional experience have given him a very limited scope on what can and cannot be accomplished on the web these days.
- (professional meaning websites for clients who have no want or understanding of design as business strategy)d_rek
- Shaney0
tell him to google flash seo. he can put a full text website, <h1> tags and the rest of his precious stuff in the swfObject div and you can do your stuff in flash/flex whatever. Use swfaddress for deep linking the flash for your users and he has his text area for his links.
- the translation thing don't work as said earlier, but easy enough to create diff lang versShaney
- with the latest swfObject you have no flash code on the page at allShaney
- ..and the text stuff can double as a mobile/accessible version. I will shut up now.Shaney
- Will look into this - thank you!d_rek
- it works. I have competitve keyword sites hitting the spot in all flash.Shaney
- oops was gonna shut up.Shaney
- Shaney0
forgot to add to above, before he tells you that it'll cause duplicate content issues or probs with Google.
1/ Text site should contain same text as flash site
2/ you put all your .swf's in one folder and then block that folder in a robots.txt file so googles hairy spider doesn't try index your flash files as well.
- felizfeliz0
try googling "design studio".
if i was a client i wouldn't be hiring any in the top 10.
the top ten google results look so bad, if i was a design studio i wouldn't want to appear in the search results.poop to seo.
Just build a nice site, do great work. people will blog you, etc people will find you. in the real world people will talk about you. THAT's more important than appearing in the first page of a google search result page.
- felizfeliz0
the only important search is if people google your studio name(cos they're too lazy to type in the full web address), then you want it to appear at the top. and for that just add some meta description and keyword tags. that's all i've done. try googling "graham cross". i'm right there at the top, despite there being a famous footballer with the same name.
- d_rek0
@felizfeliz
Yeah the website is just a medium to show potential clients our work. I would say 90%+ of our clientbase is made through direct contact/referrals. We have a very aggressive salesperson who is very good at getting clients this way.
The website again is really just a way to for potential clients to get an idea of what we do.
I personally am not concerned about the SEO aspect of our studio website nor do I particularly believe our salesperson is either.
One of the big ideas driving the redesign of the site is that it be a tool for him to use when trying to corral potential clients.- while that tool should certainly be functional, it should also stylistically represent our companyd_rek
- gramme0
^ Then do it in Flash. Have your dev. colleague do a bit more research (heck, maybe even email version3) about deep-linking and keeping the appearance of text w/o making it an image. That way you'll cover all the bases of aesthetics and search-friendliness to at least some degree. The only downside is that you won't be able to use any H&FJ fonts, unless they've recently changed their policy about embedding. That doesn't really matter though, it's not like they're the only foundry around (as much as I love their work).
- LOKi0
Simple fact, if you're using SIfr or a server-side PNG replacement, it will NOT AFFECT SEO. That being said, still not recommended for large blocks of text, can get unwieldy.
However, if you want a good reference to make an argument, point to http://www.ge.com or http://www.idsgn.org/
- craighooper0
Use a modern method for embedding your SWF, and provide alternate content in the <div> that houses the SWF. It's that simple. Google will read and index the <xhtml> alternate content.
Read the source here: http://www.analogue.ca
And here: http://www.triplebogey.ca
- Shaney0
FFS I gave a step by step above