Search Engine Optimizing Your Flash Site & More
Posted by Fizix Richard in Articles: Flash / Flex on the 15th October, 2008
We're quite vocal about our feelings on the suitability of Flash for websites; that being, we should not write off an entire platform because it isn't perfect but as developers should seek solutions to the problems.
In our article Getting Browser Features To Work With Flash Sites we discussed using SWF Address to enable browser features and deep linking in full Flash websites; effectively resolving various usability issues that the ‘neigh sayers’ claim Flash cannot do.
What SWF Address works to resolve is browser feature support, what it does not solve is search engine optimization. The common consensus, which is held even by the most reputable SEO firms is that you cannot effectively optimize Flash websites for search engines and effectively get them to index.
The problem with this statement is that there is a working solution to Flash SEO out there already and it's in active use by some of the biggest interactive advertising agencies in the industry, who have succeeded in doing what the die hard anti-flash brigade claim as impossible - to get a Flash site to outperform a HTML website in search engine rankings.
The Answer is SWF Object, which happens to be a prerequisite module for SWF Address, so they work hand in hand to solve two of the biggest hurdles where Flash accessibility and SEO are concerned.
The way SWF Object works is surprisingly simple; you prepare your website as a HTML website and include the SWF Object Javascript after your HTML code, which will swap the HTML content for Flash content if the Flash plugin is present.
As the site is primarily HTML, it will be correctly indexed by search engines, which will be able to read the content properly and thus optimizes the site correctly and it also provides a HTML website for users without the Flash plugin.
What’s more SWF Object provides an Express Install option to users without the Flash plugin, which allows them to install the plugin without ever leaving your website.
As a final note, you should ensure that your HTML content and Flash content match exactly, as not to fall foul of googles misuse guidelines. Provided your content matches it falls within the guidelines, Google even recommend solutions such as this - yet the majority of Flash developers are ignoring it and the die hard developers who are opposed to Flash appear to be ignoring SWF Object too.
Seriously, it's easy to implement and should be a standard practice.
Tags
flash, seo, search engine optimization, swf object, flash frameworks, alternate content, javascript, html
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