How to make flash websites search engine friendly.
Using flash in your website can make it more interactive and appealing however, you will struggle to obtain a good search engine position.
The problem is that search engines read pure text and they cannot recognize text within an image or flash file.
Here we try to help you get a good search engine listing with your flash based website.
Do you really need to use Flash?
First of all, consider whether you really need (or want) to use flash on your site and how you can possibly minimize its use or do without it altogether.
Bear in mind that many Internet users still connect using dial-up modems which means your feature rich pages will be slow to load and may never be seen at all.
Also, some visitors will not have flash players loaded on their computer and will be unlikely to want to download a player just to view your site.
If you do use flash, make sure it adds value to the site and is meaningful and worthwhile. Don't just use flash for the sake of it.
If you have a flash brochure or catalogue, don't make it your homepage. Instead provide it as a link which visitors can choose whether or not to visit.
If you have an information page entirely in flash, provide an alternative text-only version as well. This again gives the visitor the option whether to view your flash files.
Optimize Flash sites
If you decide you must use flash on your site, these pointers will help your site can be indexed and listed by the search engines ...
- make full use of meta, header and comment tags
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have links to text only pages as well
- include text above and below the flash file
- use keywords in your flash filename and file location
- use <object standby="your message here"> to display whilst the image loads
- use <object title="your movie title"> to add an extra keyword or phrase
As the use of broadband becomes more prevalent, Flash and interactive websites are becoming more commonplace.
Whilst search engines presently struggle to read flash and image content, companies like Macromedia are developing techniques to over-come this problem ...
