improving madcap flare seo
TRANSCRIPT
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Using a New Approach to HTML5 Webhelp Targets
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Improving Madcap Flare SEO
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#1 Remote Support Solution for the Enterprise
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Trusted by 7,500+ customers around the world:
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What to expect in this webinar …
Flare Results Why SEO? Obstacles
New Approach
Getting TechnicalResults
Try It Questions?
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Flare’s impact on productivity
Single Sourcing is the bee’s knees
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Increased Productivity with Flare
• Source Control– Multiple people working on the same document
• Single Sourcing– PDF and Web outputs
• Reusing Content– Less writing for guides covering the same topics– Fewer screenshots
• Conditioning– For multiple outputs– For various stages of writing
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Thinking about SEO challenges us to write better
Useful Page Titles• Meaningful in context and
standalone• Based on frequently
searched-for phrases
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Why should I care about SEO for Flare?
Has Google become the new F1? What about mobile?
Image credit: http://goo.gl/oUL4Qf
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Why should I care about SEO?
Developer Job Interview Question #137:
Let’s say you run into something you don’t know how to do. What is your first step to solving it?
a) Ask another developer for helpb) Refer to your college text booksc) Leave it for someone else to figure outd) Search Google
Incidentally, if you’re interested: http://www.bomgar.com/jobs
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How many help-related searches are happening for your product?• Site search on your site• http://google.com/trends• http://adwords.google.com
/keywordplanner
Your brand + “how”“using”“guide”“tutorial”
Why should I care about SEO?
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Interview members of your support team to find commonly asked questions.
You may have documented the answers, but are users able to find the answers?Image credit: http://goo.gl/B3s6cc
Why should I care about SEO?
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Obstacles to SEO in Madcap Flare
Google indexes and ranks primarily by following links.
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What about XML Sitemaps in Flare?
Flare Sitemap<url> <loc>http://www.bomgar.com/docs/content/index.htm</loc></url>
Does help with indexing.Does not help with ranking.
Full-featured Sitemap<url><loc>http://www.bomgar.com/docs/content/index.htm</loc><lastmod>2013-07-10T18:24:27+00:00</lastmod><priority>0.7</priority></url>
Does help with indexing.Does not help very much with ranking.(We used an external sitemap generator from xml-sitemaps.com.)
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Obstacles to SEO in Madcap Flare
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iFrame – No it’s not a new Apple product
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Obstacles to SEO in Madcap Flare
What you see What Google Sees
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Obstacles to SEO in Madcap Flare
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Obstacles to SEO in Madcap Flare
Use an external sitemap generator, like xml-sitemaps.com, to see what I mean
Or read this post on Madcap Forums:http://goo.gl/SnXIkz
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New Approach to Madcap Flare SEO
Let’s escape the iframe and make sure there’s a link to every topic we want crawled.
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New Approach to Madcap Flare SEO
If it’s html content on the internet,
it’s a WEBSITE.
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New Approach to Madcap Flare SEO
Mobile outputInline CSSTables
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New Approach to Madcap Flare SEO
HTML5 OutputBootstrapResponsive
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Getting Technical
We adopted some findability principles and performed a few coding tricks.
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Getting Technical
Findability Principles:• No iframe• Offer multiple navigation options• Link to every topic• Avoid duplicate content• Use Google site search
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To escape the iframe, don’t use the whole output
iFrame - /Default.htm No iFrame - /content/index.htm
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You need more stuff in your Masterpage
We’re going to need a more
Robust Masterpage?
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Replace the navigation in the skin
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Replace navigation in the Skin
with navigation in the Masterpage.
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Escaping the iframe requires a robust Masterpage
Navigation Snippet
Breadcrumbs Proxy
Body Proxy
Footer Snippet©2013 Bomgar Corporation.
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><html>
<head><!-- Custom styles for this template --><link href="../stylesheets/theme.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head><body>
<MadCap:snippetBlock src="../snippets/navigation.flsnp" /><MadCap:breadcrumbsProxy /><MadCap:bodyProxy /><MadCap:snippetBlock src="../snippets/footer.flsnp" />
</body></html>
Our Masterpage (simplified)
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Can do multiple Masterpages for additional layout options
But what if you need
MultipleMasterpages?
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Select a new Masterpage with CSS
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Place this code in the <head> section of the Topic if you want to select a
different Masterpage for that Topic.
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For files in /content/<style>
html {mc-master-page: url(resources/masterpages/new.flmsp);}
</style>
For files in /content/folder/<style>
html {mc-master-page: url(../folder/resources/masterpages/new.flmsp);}
</style>
Select a new Masterpage with CSS
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New Approach to Madcap Flare SEO
But what if you need
More Navigation?
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Select a Masterpage with addition Navigation Snippets
<head> Masterpage Selector </head>
Navigation Snippet
Breadcrumbs Proxy
Sub-Navigation Snippet
Body Proxy
Footer Snippet
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Example of two navigation snippets
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Snippet used in all topics
Snippet used in this guide
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Navigation gives clear structure to Google
Unlike the iframed output, this approach includes a followable link to every topic.
• The first topic, from which all other topics can be found by following simple links– /content/index.htm– /content/directory/topic1.htm– /content/directory/topic2.htm
• /content/directory/topic1/subtopic1.htm
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Google Site Search
Search statistics
Promote content
Integrate with Google Analytics
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Getting Technical
Avoid duplicate content
Flare’s forward/backward navigation creates session IDs
Robots.txt is your friend
Image credit: http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
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BURN THE SHIPSBUT HEY, BELERIAND’S PRETTY, TOO
“Feanor watching the burning at Losgar” from The SilmarillionImage credit: http://goo.gl/nnVySx
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Results
That seems like a lot of work. Was it worth it?
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Madcap Flare SEO ResultsMarch 2011 (launched /docs Webhelp)February 2013 (redesigned website)
#3 entrance for organic search visitors
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1. Products2. Home page3. Webhelp
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Compared to all organic search entrances
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Preliminary results of new design
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Preliminary results of new design
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Try it …
Here’s a sample project for the Madcap community. Repeat after me, “This is not supported. It is for internal testing only. I won’t use this on a live site.”
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Flarestrap – the sample project
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Visit http://flarestrap.com
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