I like to use my own site as a good example of good SEO with Flash.  Just click to Google and type in Backwater Productions (no quotes) and woo, there's my site, clockin right at numero uno.  How do I do it?  Well a plain text fall back version certainly helps...but the other REALLY important thing to keep in mind...is the domain name itself.  Best to pick a domain name that has at LEAST one key search word that pertains to your site.  The other thing which VASTLY affects search engine ranking is who is linking to who and who is raking up the most hits and redirects.  One thing I always like doing is comparing Alexia ranking stats to Google search listings...cause they're ALWAYS in line with each other.

Another really good way of bumping your search listings is to start posting on forums...EVERYWHERE and make sure you include your website addy in the signature of all your posts...just don't spam, make sure you post on topic and contribute to whatever forums you're in, then it's all good.

On the whole though, as I said, search engine stats actually have little to do with the content of your site in and of itself so much as they do with the POPULARITY of your content.  The more popular it is, the more Google's search engine is gonna pay attention to your sites meta tags and file names (for images, subpages, folders, etc)...at least that's been my experience in experimenting with their engine, other engines may operate differently.

Hmm, thanks for that link Mitch...I'll have a look myself.

Mine's even smaller:
<embed type='application/x-shockwave-flash' src='main.swf' width=760 height=424>

It's been tested on IE5+, all versions of FF, Netscape 6+, the version of IE for teh Mac, Konqueror, Safari (not sure what versions the screenshots that were sent to me are, presumably the latest), and Opera (same as Safari, I've got screen shots but I don't know what specifc versions so I presume the latest ones).

All in all, not including the browsers it either hasn't been tested on by me personally or the browsers that no one has sent me screen shots of, there's only a 3% POTENTIAL loss of visitors...and that's primarily with the assumption that it doesn't work in IE4...which it actually might, I just haven't found anyone with that browser yet who can test it for me.

It should also be noted though that you want to have a Flash detection script when the page loads, otherwise you're going to need to add the:
pluginspage='http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer'
(thinkin you could make that even smaller using a tinyurl)

Also if you have transparencies that need to bleed over into the page you'll need to add:
wmode='transparent'

But that's it.  Much smaller that those standards molesting luddites over at the B List and I think it might actually be even MORE cross browser and cross operating system compatible than their version...not that they're interested in cross compatability.  You should always remember that places like the B List will ONLY slurp W3C RECOMMENDATIONS and they ALWAYS assume that if it passes W3C compliance that it MUST be cross compatible...which really couldn't be further from the truth.

I've actually been considering starting my own little group, based not on what I WISH was standard, but rathter based on what ACTUALLY IS standard by ACTUALLY TESTING METHODS on every single last browser and OS out there.

I do have a question, however ...

I assume that the link to the alistapart.com site, also touched on the SEO problem, since someone from that first link I gave had that link in their post.

How would your tag ...


... address the SEO portion?

Wouldn't it need some keyword somewhere in that tag for the search engine to index it?

*edited - okay, nevermind, as I read more carefully this time the posts in that first link, I think they sorta went off-topic with the SEO factor and just started talking about the best way to embed, lol (or are they?    )