Optimizing Flash Sites

If there's a extremely situation that divides SEO consultants and internet designers, this is often Flash. doubtless an excellent technology to incorporate sounds and movie on an online website, Flash movies area unit a true nightmare for SEO consultants. the rationale is pretty prosaic – search engines cannot index (or a minimum of not easily) the contents within a Flash file and unless you feed them with the text within a Flash motion-picture show, you'll be able to merely count this text lost for reinforcing your rankings. Of course, there area unit workarounds however till search engines begin classification Flash movies as if they were plain text, these workarounds area unit simply a careless thanks to optimize Flash sites, though definitely they're higher than nothing. Why Search Engines Dislike Flash Sites? Search engines dislike Flash internet sites not attributable to their inventive qualities (or the shortage of these) however as a result of Flash movies area unit too advanced for a spider to know. Spiders cannot index a Flash motion-picture show directly, as they are doing with a comprehensible page of text. Spiders index filenames (and you'll be able to realize plenty of these on the Web), however not the contents within. Flash movies are available in a proprietary binary format (.swf) and spiders cannot browse the insides of a Flash file, a minimum of not while not help. And even with help, don't count that spiders can crawl and index all of your Flash content. And this is often true for all search engines. There may well be variations in however search engines weigh page connection however in their approach to Flash, a minimum of for the time beings, search engines area unit very united – they hate it however they index parts of it. What (Not) to Use Flash For? Despite the very fact that Flash movies don't seem to be spider favorites, there area unit cases once a Flash motion-picture show is definitely worth the SEO efforts. however as a general rule, keep Flash movies at a minimum. during this case less is unquestionably higher and search engines don't seem to be the sole reason. First, Flash movies, particularly banners and other forms of promotional material, distract users and that they have a tendency to skip them. Second, Flash movies area unit fat. They consume plenty of information measure, and though dialup days area unit over for the bulk of users, a one Mbit affiliation or higher remains not the quality one. Basically, designers ought to keep to the statement that Flash is nice for enhancing a story, however not for telling it – i.e. you've got some text with the most points of the story (and the keywords that you just optimize for) so you've got the Flash motion-picture show to feature any detail or simply a visible illustration of the story. therein affiliation, the best SEO sin is to own the full website created in Flash! this is often is just unpardonable and don't even dream of high rankings! Another “No” is to use Flash for navigation. this is applicable not solely to the beginning page, wherever once it had been trendy to splash a stunning Flash motion-picture show however external links yet. though it's a a lot of common mistake to use pictures and/or javascript for navigation, Flash banners and films should not be accustomed lead users from one page to a different. Text links area unit the sole SEO approved thanks to build website navigation. Workarounds for Optimizing Flash Sites Although a workaround isn't an answer, Flash sites still is optimized. There area unit many approaches to this: Input data This is a awfully necessary approach, though it's usually underestimated and misunderstood. though data isn't as necessary to go looking engines because it accustomed be, Flash development tools enable simply to feature data to your movies, therefore there's no excuse to depart the data fields empty. Provide various pages For an honest website it's a requirement to supply HTML solely pages that don't force the user to observe the Flash motion-picture show. making ready these pages needs a lot of work however the reward is value as a result of not solely users, however search engines yet can see the HTML solely pages. Flash programme SDK This is the life-belt. the foremost advanced tool to extract text from a Flash motion-picture show. one in every of the most convenient applications within the Flash programme SDK is that the tool named swf2html. because it name implies, this tool extracts text and links from a Macromedia Flash file and writes the output unto a customary HTML document, so saving you the tedious job to try and do it manually. However, you continue to got to have a glance at the extracted contents and proper it, if necessary. as an example, the order during which the text and links is organized may would like somewhat restructuring so as to place the keyword-rich content within the title and headings or within the starting of the page. Also, you wish to see if there's no duplicate content among the extracted sentences and paragraphs. The font color of the extracted text is additionally another issue. If the font color of the extracted text is that the same because the background color, you'll run into hidden text territory. SE-Flash.com Here may be a tool that visually shows what from your Flash files is visible to go looking engines and what's not. This tool is extremely helpful, notwithstanding you have already got the Flash programme SDK put in as a result of it provides an additional check of the accuracy of the extracted text. Besides, it's not sure that Google and therefore the different search engines use Flash programme SDK to induce contents from a Flash file, therefore this tool may provide fully totally different results from people who the SDK can manufacture. These approaches area unit just a few of the foremost necessary samples of the way to optimize Flash sites. There area unit several different approaches yet. However, not all of them area unit good and clear, or they'll be classified on the boundary of moral SEO – e.g. making invisible layers of text that's delivered to spiders instead the Flash motion-picture show itself. though this system isn't wrong – i.e. there's no duplicate or pretend content, it's terribly just like cloaking and threshold pages and it's higher to avoid it.