SEO : Best use of Flash in Webby
This is one hot debate about SEO is on sites which are using Flash. As many of you already know, Flash is good visual appealing medium, while the Googlebot
doesn’t have eyes. When googlebot crawls a site containing flash medias, this is what they get,
- Googlebot can typically read Flash files
- Extract the text and links in them,
However, the structure and context are missing which is actually bad for SEO. You see, Googlebot doesn’t currently have the algorithmic eyes needed to read these
graphics, these important keywords can be missed entirely. So the question is "what’s an honest web designer to do?". Here’s the list to start with :-
- Try to use Flash only where it is needed. Many rich media sites such as Google’s YouTube use Flash for rich media but rely on HTML for content and navigation. You can too, by limiting Flash to on-page accents and rich media, not content and navigation.
- sIFR: Some websites use Flash to force the browser to display headers, pull quotes, or other textual elements in a font that the user may not have installed on their computer. A technique like sIFR still lets non-Flash readers read a page, since the content/navigation is actually in the HTML — it’s just displayed by an embedded Flash object.
- Non-Flash Versions: A common way that we see Flash used is as a front page "splash screen" where the root URL of a website has a Flash intro that links to HTML content deeper into the site. In this case, make sure there is a regular HTML link on that front page to a non-Flash page where a user can navigate throughout your site without the need for Flash.
Reader's Comments
I am a flash developer and I am amazed by the number of sites that say how you should not build a what appears to be a 100% flash site, because it would be a death to your search engine optimization. To make a long story short, all you need to do is use a system like sIFR that would display your flash content over html, xml or xhtml layout. That means that if a user or a bot visits your site without javascript or flash they will see your html-style layout (that’s what google’s or any other search engine’s bot would see). There you go problem solved, you can have a 100% looking flash site to all those that have flash and a 100% html or xml-based site to all your visitors that cannot see flash(like search engine bots).
So, you would have to develop a flash application that would parse and display the contents of a for example, xhtml page that would be displayed behind the 100% flash site and not visible to usual browsers like Firefox or IE.
Problem solved! Use as much flash as you want on your site, this will not hurt you SEO as long as you set up your site properly.
Don’t listen to people that say you’d pretty much be stupid to build your site using tons of flash. 90% of those people base their knowledge on similar articles.
Leave a Reply