Flash Optimization - SEO For Flash WebSites

My initial suggestion for optimizing a flash based website: don't. If you create static website, you'll know your files will be search-engine friendly-because HTML is what search engines like. All SEs can index basic HTML documents. In order for a search engine to index a Flash document, its developers have to download and install the Macromedia SDK kit. And why make search engines go out of their way to get to your files?

Creating a website in Flash is just not a good idea. Though they look "flashy"-pardon the pun-they are not SEs friendly. On top of that in my modest opinion 80% of Flash websites are not user-friendly either. And on top of that, you more often than not need special software to make small changes. So, every time you want to put up a news article or change a misspelling, you have to hire a specialist to do it.

Flash Optimization Suggestions:

If you are really feeling that you can't live without building a website in Flash, there are a few things you can do to build your website more SEs friendly:

The excellent thing to do is to put your Flash files inside of regular HTML files. That way you can at least comprise the META information. Even put some HTML on top of or underneath the Flash element to provide some index able content for search engines.

Comprise abundance of text in your Flash files. Search engines that can read Flash files (with the Macromedia SDK) will still merely see the text. So, make sure that it is pertinent and keyword rich.

Make sure the text in your Flash files is something that you want the search engines (Google.com, Yahoo.com and Msn.com) to see. "Enter Here" is not extremely good spider-food.

Google’s spider follows links in Flash files. So use keyword rich anchor text, just like you would with regular HTML.

Present a non-Flash version of the site for Bots. This is also fine for those without the Flash player plug-in and those with sluggish connections.

Give name files correctly. Include keywords in the file names separated by dashes. For example SEO-flash-optimization.html

The following techniques are legit, but have great possible for abuse:

You may think putting your Flash website into frames and putting an static version of the website in the NOFRAMES tag. Of course, search engines don't chiefly like frames either and does not index them, but this is certainly preferable to having a uncontaminated flash page.

The Macromedia Flash convenience Kit allows you to export the text from your Flash file to a NOSCRIPT tag. You can do this. This tag is read by screen reader users and those without Flash players. The contents of this tag can also be read by search engines.

If you use either of the above techniques Please do not abuse these tags. These tags are having a reason to make the Internet easier to get to all. They are not created for you to use them as keyword dumps. Put valid content in these tags. If you use the NOFRAMES tag, create an actual HTML page that you would want users to see if they did not support frames. If you use the NOSCRIPT tag make sure that it holds information that you would like those with convenience issues to see or hear. For the sake of everyone involved in optimization and to protect the honesty of search results for users please do not stuff keywords in these tags.

If SEO guru’s begin to abuse these tags as SEO's abused the keyword tags they will make the tags useless for all. Search engines will be forced to pay no attention to the content within the tags and the legit use for the tags will be ruined for all.

There are several scripts out there that will notice the presence of a human vs. a search engine visitor, and will deliver suitable content to each. That is, it will deliver the Flash pages to a visitor, and search-engine-friendly HTML pages to search engines.

However this practice is precisely what search engines don’t want you to do. Search Engines want to see exactly what a real visitor is seeing. Such cloaking of pages holds a huge possible for abuse and it is our opinion that directing searche engines to a set of non-Flash web pages is spam.

What Search Engines See Using SDK??

Macromedia has provided software “SDK” that search engine developers must download and integrate into their search engine if they wish to see Flash files.

Author:
asghar paracha SEO
IT Outsourcing - SEO New York