Search Engine Optimization Techniques for Silverlight Applications
The key consideration for making Silverlight content indexable by search engines is to use the approaches that are used for systems and users for which Silverlight is not enabled. Considerations include the following:
How the Web page with Silverlight content behaves in client/browser configurations such as Opera or Windows 98, which are not currently supported by Silverlight.
How the Web page behaves for customers who use accessibility programs such as screen readers and narrators.
How the Web page behaves for customers who use from a text browser such as Lynx, where no scripts can execute.
Presenting contextual metadata and alternate content that would make Silverlight content friendly to down-level users will also make it friendly to search engines.
When creating your Silverlight application, do not assume that all users will have Silverlight installed or have computers with the ability to install Silverlight. Prepare for how you would describe your application to these users.
Know your audience.
Plan on how you would describe your application to them.
Identify the keywords that you would use to connect with searchers.
The words that you use in your titles, page and section headers, body content, and alternate content play an important role in how the search engines find and index your content, and also how a user finds your content.
The following are some of the techniques you can use to optimize your search engine results and improve the experience for all users:
· Use a Descriptive Page Title
· Use a Meaningful Application Name
· Specify Alternate Content for Silverlight
· Use createObject When Using Silverlight.js
Use a Descriptive Page Title
Give your page a good title. Web page authors must update and customize the markup in the pages generated by Silverlight project templates in Visual Studio or Expression Blend. For the purposes of discussion, let’s assume you have a Silverlight application that provides interactive traffic maps for the Seattle area. Figure 4 shows bad (default) and good Web page titles.
Add Description Metadata
Keywords in your page’s meta tag are not very useful for search engines to determine your page’s rank. However, a page title and meta description tag (that is, a meta tag whose name attribute is set to "description") are extremely useful in ensuring that searchers who view your page on a results page associate it with content that they are looking for.
If you have a top-level Silverlight application that occupies the full extent of the browser’s client area, or one that exists on your landing page, then you must have a meta description tag on your HTML page. The following code shows the format of the meta description tag.
<head>
<meta name="description"
content="Microsoft portal site for the Silverlight development community…" >
…
</head>
If you have a page with a lot of text content that contains relevant keywords, then you can omit the meta description. The search engine will show a portion of your page content on the results page, and any stub description may actually prove counterproductive.
The following figure shows a sample search page entry with a description, and how it would appear if the meta description tag were not present.
Specify Alternate Content for Silverlight
The object tag for the Silverlight application must be supplemented with nested alternate content, namely the inner HTML that is displayed on systems where Silverlight is absent. The following code shows how you can do that.
<object type="application/x-silverlight-2"
data="data:application/x-silverlight,"
width="…" height="…">
<param name="source" value="SeattleTrafficMaps.xap" />
<!– Other parameters, if any –>
…
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Hello. Thank you for this great info! Keep up the good job!