Mar
05
Filed Under (SEO Tips) by Mani Karthik on 05-03-2007

Flash files have been a big problem for SEO’s ever since the evolution of the term itself. I myself considered that flash files are a perfect - No no - when it comes to optimising websites. They somehow were notorious among SEO’s a big block that could not be sorted if not avoided. But since we have the Adobe SDK, any flash file can be seen the way google bots sees it.And the contents can be optimised to a satisfactory level, if not completely.Yet, flash sites are seen as a “problem kid” by many SEO’s - Let’s see why?

Reasons why flash files are not recommended for a website by SEO’s.
- Bots don’t see the content the way we want them to.
- We have no control over the keywords density,content.
- No linking possible by others as the links cannot be extracted.
- Bots are not keen on indexing the links.
- Content that the bots collect from the flash files may not be what you require them to/may be inappropriate. Even designers are allergic to Flash files - Reasons below
- Single file for the entire website/ editing is a himalayan task.
- Not supported by all browsers/ can shoo away visitors.(Scobleizer hates it)
- Takes time to load - suicide attempt.

Well, there are die-hard fans of Flash files and some very cool and popular flash enabled websites too. But they are exceptions, this web2.0 era, flash files are definitely losing their old charm.

Many a times, clients are very much keen on having music/animation on their website and they care no SEO stuff - these are times of testing for an SEO.When you have to rank well for a keyword and you have very less options to tweak on the site. Let’s see what can be done in such situations.

- Splitting the flash file into scenes that are embedded on separate HTML files
This is a very simple step that will give you some breathing space(although you may be annoying the designer). When splitting the flash file to different scenes and linking them together ensures that atleast some text is indexed by bots based on importance. That is if you have a scene on “About us” and another on “Staff” on separate HTML pages, the content in each of these flash files can be made seprately indexed by google - that’s the least you can do.

- Optimising the separate SWF embedded HTML files for separate keywords.
Since we have separate HTML files for each scenes/sections, we can optimise them by title/filename etc for a separate keyword.

- Using the Non-Embedded data
One great advantage of using separate HTML files is that there is a lot more “non-embedded” data available to us which can be optimised. They would be the IMG ALT tags,META tags,text if any,Footer Links if any.

- SKIP this page
It is most important to offer visitors a “Skip this” option to experience an equally rich HTML page, with all the content as same as the flash file.This will ensure that visitors who does not have FLASH plugin will not get pissed off and if they will, can move to the HTML version simply.

- Use less motion tween for texts
Since the text in the flash file will be indexed by google bots, it’s essential that the importance and weightage given to them is under our control. Using a motion tween will duplicate instances of the same text and create un necessary importance for a text/keyword. So keep away from tweening those un necessary texts, you may want to tween your primary keywords though ;)

- Use text fields inside the flash file
Using text areas inside the flash file which contain important keywords is an excellent workaround to ensure that the bots index them.You may want to keep away from animating/using them - instead add a stylish font type to them to make sure that they don’t stick out or look alien compared to other text on the same page.

Though using the above techniques, can help much in optimising flash enabled websites, my recommendation is that use flash only when you really need it - and DONOT design your site completely on flash, use lots of HTML content and rip down the animation and fancy stuff to where it is necessary only.

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