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SEO for Adobe Edge Animate [Updated]

November 24, 2012
by Gradiva Couzin

Adobe Edge Animate is a new platform (in “preview” mode) that allows developers to create Flash-like user experiences including animation built with HTML 5 rather than Flash.

This bodes well for cross-platform compatibility (*cough*iPad*cough*), but what are the SEO implications? Can Google adequately crawl content that is placed on a page with Adobe Edge Animate? We set out to answer these questions by looking at two test pages created with Adobe Edge Animate:

When we first looked at the Adobe Edge preview in May 2012, we did not see any promising SEO advantages to using Edge over Flash, as the content generated was not search-engine-crawlable. As of November, 2012, Adobe has updated Edge to include multiple tools & services whilst renaming the main component from “Edge Preview” to “Edge Animate” to go along with other tools in the Suite: Reflow, Code, Inspect, and Web Fonts.

The other tools aid in the development process; for this blog post, we are focused on the SEO implications of Edge Animate.

Since last previewing Adobe Edge in early 2012, we are now seeing a promising new feature in the latest builds: “Publish Content as Static HTML”

When this option is selected, Adobe emits “HTML markup for SEO friendliness.”

In early 2012, we noticed that Google would not crawl the content from Adobe Edge which is housed in JavaScript. The HTML code you get from the default publish option in Adobe Edge is the following:

As a workaround we entered in some alternate text (with and without noscript tags) and Google was able to crawl both. View the source and snippet in Test Example One to see how this came out.

Now, as of November 2012, our previously workaround is no longer necessary. Instead, you can use the “Publish Content as Static HTML” feature in Edge Animate. When this is enabled, Adobe renders the readable text as HTML elements for SEO friendliness, like this truncated example below:

You can view the source in Test Two to see how it fully renders the HTML content. Test One and Test Two use the same source file from Edge Animate, the only difference is selecting the Publish Static HTML option.

With this new option, Google can crawl the Adobe Edge content; and with that, this new platform is shaping up to be a promising SEO-friendly replacement to Flash.

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Ask the Experts: Are These Consumer Rating Tools Helpful…

October 29, 2012
by Gradiva Couzin

Q. I own a small business with a local shop plus an online store, and I’ve been told I need more customer reviews for my shop. I’ve heard there are tools that will get the shop reviewed online. What are these tools and do they actually work?

A. Customer reviews of your business, such as seller ratings on Google or brick-and-mortar reviews on Yelp, are a growing priority for small businesses, as well they should be. Despite the importance of online reviews, soliciting customers for reviews on a regular basis can be a challenge. A “mom and pop” owner who is already overburdened with running his or her shop may find it difficult to get out there and chat up happy customers to encourage positive reviews.

Below, we’ve listed four tools designed to help businesses gather reviews. These tools are geared toward online purchases. They allow the business owner to set up post-transaction customer outreach seeking reviews. The customer reviews are posted on the tools’ own website, not on the business’s site. These tools won’t help with Yelp listings or other popular review sites with which you may be familiar.

Customer Lobby will contact customers for reviews on your behalf by phone and email. The reviews are posted on a third-party independent website that can be found in Google search results. Customers with Google+ or Yahoo profiles are also directed to post reviews there.

Shopper Approved asks customers for reviews on an online thank-you page after a purchase is complete. Each review is posted on an optimized web page that can be found in search results. The more ratings and reviews your business receives, the more pages are created. A 30-day free trial is available.

Demand Force solicits customer reviews from an automated ‘thank you’ message sent immediately after a visit to the business. The company offers a syndication service in which the data is sent to Google, so a client’s Google Plus page is kept up-to-date with new content. A free demo is available.

ResellerRatings offers a customer follow-up platform to gain reviews for your business. In addition to your business’s reviews being listed on their site, ResellerRatings has the distinction among the services listed that the reviews feed into Google’s seller ratings list for your business. These seller ratings display alongside your business in Google Shopping listings and can result in gaining stars on your Google AdWords listings.

Do these tools work? We’d have to say “Yes,” but they come at a cost. ResellerRatings in particular drew a great deal of ire when it cranked up its prices dramatically over the past year or so, given that it was one of the few third-party rating sites that feeds into Google. All of the capabilities of these tools could probably be reproduced by a do-it-yourselfer at a lower cost, with a bit of time and technical know-how. However, if you have more money than time available, these tools could be a good choice for you.

SEO for Adobe Edge Animate [Updated]

Ask the Experts: Are These Consumer Rating Tools Helpful…

Q. I own a small business with a local shop plus an online store, and I’ve been told I need more customer reviews for my shop. I’ve heard there are tools that will get the shop reviewed online. What are these tools and do they actually work?

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