Flare HTML5 and SEO -- need *real* guidance

[Phlawm53]

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For Flare 10 today, probably Flare 11 soon.

What are the issues surrounding Flare's HTML5 Target, that Target's use of Frames or iFrames, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

I work as a contractor who today has a customer that is being told by their marketing department that FrameMaker based content generated as an online help system via RoboHELP is Web searchable whereas Flare's online help uses iFrames and so is not.

I'm familiar with the HTML5 Target's Generate Sitemap option. But it's not clear to me how well or poorly it actually works.

I'm also familiar with the now-popular "trick" of liberating Flare HTML5 output from the skin and its iFrame. I worry, however, that this approach may be more technically demanding than the customer's less technically savvy writers are willing and able to sustain if I'm not there to support it.

Please note that I need some solid in-depth insight on the issues surrounding Flare online help and SEO. A canned "click the Generate Sitemap option and everything will be fine" category of answer won't be enough to counter the argument put forth by the customer's marketing department that FrameMaker+RoboHELP produces Web-findable / searchable content but Flare's online Targets do not.

Cheers & thanks for your help,
Riley
SFO

[StraygoatWriting]

The client is wrong. Google can and does index iframe content and has done for a while now (do a search on Google and you will find plenty of info on it, including info from Google themselves). The only limitation I am aware of is that the content in the iframe has to be from the same domain as the page that contains the iframe (that's to stop people boosting their site's ranking by embedding other sites' pages in an iframe). There may be some effect on the SEO of links in the iframes too.

I did some experiments with a MadCap employee a year or so ago and as long as there was a robot.txt generated, Google indexed the content no problem.