10 Silverlight SEO Tips
In previous posts we’ve discussed some techniques for SEO using Web 2.0 technologies. Below are some tips for maximizing SEO for Silverlight sites.
1. The title tag should include the most important information about your site. It should state the purpose and give some indication as to the content of the site.
2. The most significant content should live at the beginning of the page just after the body tag so that it can be quickly and easily accessed by search engine crawlers.
3. All images and other like content should have a clear and robust description inside the alt attribute so that a web crawler can read what the image is about so that it can be included in the indexing of the site’s content.
4. Don’t build your entire website with Silverlight. Instead only use it for animations or to present data in a different way, such as charts and graphs. Leave as much of the text of the website as HTML text so that it can be easily indexed.
5. Provide descriptions of Silverlight content, which the crawler cannot read, in hidden div containers that the crawler can read but that are not visible to the user.
6. Silverlight is rendered using XAML, which is just a fancy XML file really. You can outline your document source in a separate XML file and then render it into a meaningful format using XSLT transformations. XSLT is just a decoder ring for your source that transforms your XML file into something that can be rendered by the browser. By using this method you provide readable text that a web crawler can use to index your site.
7. Design your Silverlight content to fit beside or around a body of HTML text. That way your Silverlight content serves to support the text of your website as opposed to hiding it inside the Silverlight content.
8. Use alternate text stored in the object tag of the Silverlight content to dynamically render the text inside the content. This gives the user the rich UI that grabs their attention, but it also provides the content of the website in a form that can be read by search engine crawlers.
9. View your content in down-level browsers, such as text based browser like Lynx, that are not capable of rendering Silverlight content. Presenting contextual metadata and alternate text that would make your site friendly to these types of browsers will give you a good idea of how indexable your site is to a web crawler.
10. Use a meaningful application name. This will help a search engine crawler find keywords by just looking at the name of your application. For example, if your application is about the hot fishing spots in Tuscaloosa, Alabama then name your application something like TuscaloosaFishFinder.xap. This will give the crawler a better understanding of the content of your site.
Managing SEO for websites or applications built with Silverlight can be challenging. Just remember to mix your Silverlight with readable HTML content. Always keep in mind how to clearly incorporate the content of your site so that it can be easily read and understood by visiting search engine crawlers.
