How to SEO Flash

Flash web Design has a bad reputation, undeserved in our opinion, for harming search visibility. Why are SEO consultants concerned about Flash? A few popular WYSIWYG development tools generate invalid, inaccessible HTML code for embedding Flash, and many designers don't know enough about accessibility programming, search engine optimization (SEO) and the benefits of code validation. As a result, most web pages using Flash aren't programmed correctly.



Requirements for Successful Use of Flash Web Design



Flash animation is a great way to present complex content because it allows the designer to put more content in a finite space, without wrecking page design. If you sell technology, Flash is an ideal way to present a slide show or movie that explains your products' benefits. With a bit of hand coded HTML, we can satisfy these objectives:

Clean design using Flash

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Accessibility for people with different abilities

Code validation

Correct functionality with IE

If you have a site built entirely with Flash Web Design, you don't really have a website, because there's no page structure. In that case we recommend building an HTML site, and chopping up your Flash into separate pieces to be installed on each page.



SEO Flash web Design Programming



Our recommended SEO method for optimizing Flash uses a DIV with search engine accessible content, and JavaScript to detect when browsers are capable of viewing Flash. When the browser has Flash capability, the Javascript manipulates the page's document object model (DOM) to replace the alternative content with the Flash movie. Search engine spiders don't run the Javascript, so they see and index the alternative content. The alternative content may contain links, heading, styled text, images - anything you can add to an ordinary HTML page. Simply apply your normal SEO copy editing and coding skills to the alternative content, and Flash web Design becomes a non-issue.

Programming Flash accessibility isn't spamming, as long as the alternative content accurately reflects the visible movie. In fact, alternative content is mandatory if you want to build an accessible site.





Example: Making Flash Menus Spiderable



The sample code below shows a Flash heading and menu from the site that has been made accessible with alternative content. The menu will function properly with the latest ActiveX update for IE. Previously, the interior pages of the site were not indexed because search engines could not follow the links inside the movie. We solved this problem using the HTML 4.01 code below: