When the worlds of SEO and flash collide, web designers cringe at the thought of developing the two together. The reason? Search engines cannot understand what is essentially an image. If a site welcomed you saying ”click here to view the gallery”, Google & other search engines wouldn’t flinch. They’re dumb robots, after all.
To draw up a solution, let’s start by breaking down the principles of the situation.
Firstly, we’ll address SEO. Search engine optimisation is all about maximising a site’s visibility and therefore it’s clickability. Search engines scour the site for content & links, and then index and store all the pages of your website in a group. If you want to check out how many of your pages have been indexed, google this:
site:websitename.co.uk
See if all your pages list, and if they don’t they might not because of various reasons. An example may be poor linking. Also think about your content. The fresher the better!
Now then, over to flash.
Unfortunately, flash just cant be seen. It’s invisible. However, Adobe is working with search giant Google and Yahoo to make a unique crawler which is able to search the flash files. They will be able to find some content and links which were previously invisible to them and therefore get more pages noticed. The race for first dibs is on, with Google about to pip Yahoo to the post.
What does this mean for the future?
Personally, I believe flash is far from being friendly and I rarely find flash sites that are user friendly. Regardless, Abode’s move is a step in the right direction for all the millions of flash websites out there.
However, do remember this is only Google and Yahoo. Although they are obviously the big boys, there are other search engines out there, and you shouldn’t consider turning away any traffic whatsoever.
Are there alternatives when using flash for better SEO?
Well when you use flash, I can highly suggest having a static page equivilent. However the problems of this can be duplicate content, but certainly give it ago. It’s definatley better than flash only.
Alan
