SEO and flash never go together
Written by Search Engine Genie
@ 1:26 PM
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Saturday, September 06, 2008
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We frequently deal with clients that are planning to "revamp" their sites with Flash, with SEO having already generated incredible gains in their sales. The thing that we most dread to hear is that they've hired a skilled "Flash designer" that will be taking their websites to the "next level." unluckily, that "next level" is often the basement - at least in terms of SEO results.
The bottom line here is that a site built entirely in Flash still faces huge hindrances. While there have been current moves from Google and Yahoo! to try to index the content from pooled Flash/SEO sites, those moves have not yet, from my experience, translated into SEO results or success (at least when compared to html sites).
We should make a difference here between embedded Flash and sites built entirely from Flash. For instance, a site that has Flash elements but still contains basic html elements will not overly suffer, as the Flash element (usually a movie in a box on the homepage or elsewhere) is externalized. A search engine spider will generally not try to parse through any files that have been externalized in the code - they will only index the code that is readily evident on the source page.
On the other hand, from an SEO results perspective, there are still major issues with sites that are built entirely in Flash, and SEO is in general the first thing that suffers. First of all, the URL normally never changes no matter where people navigate on the site. As any well-mannered SEO practitioner will tell you, every page of your site is a potential entry page for a search engine. With a site built in Flash, SEO suffers even more as you only have one potential entry page, which is the main URL. This cuts off dozens, hundreds, or thousands of potential pages that could be indexed in Google and Yahoo! (and all other engines). When your only prospective entry page in the search engine listings is your home page, it is quite hard to target a wide assortment of key phrases, potentially eliminating SEO results or rankings.
Content is another very big issue. Search engines rank pages based upon a number of criteria, but one of the most significant to SEO results is the text that they can "understand" on individual pages. At present, search engines read first and foremost html text (although some also read text in the PDF format) - which means that if you decide that you want to use a uncommon and fancy font that must be displayed in graphic form the engine will not read the text and therefore will not know what the page is about, which could harm SEO results. Naturally, this also includes any of the text included in Flash. While Yahoo! and Google have just announced improved capabilities in reading content within Flash, I have not personally seen that translate into great SEO results for competitive key phrases.
One other emerging feature is that as search evolves, more and more people are looking for information while they are away from their computers. Many mobile devices are currently inept of displaying Flash content, although recent moves by Adobe to make "Flash Lite" available may change this. However, it remains to be seen whether people that are seeking information on a mobile device will even want to find the way through Flash, especially if they can get the information that they seek from a fast-loading html page. In my view, lean html content will be at a premium when a company is trying to target a mobile audience.
In spite of the difficulties, it is not the intent of this article to declare that Flash and SEO will always be incompatible - merely that it is the state of the current situation. You can find many differing opinions on mixing Flash and SEO on the internet, but the true test is to try to find a Flash site (that is to say, a site built entirely in Flash) that you esteem and see if it ranks well in SEO results for 50+ competitive terms that are associated to the specific business (in Google or Yahoo!). In my experience, such sites that combine Flash and SEO are nearly not possible to find.
Flash can be, and repeatedly is, used for great effect on the internet, in interactive kiosks, and in further applications. I'm not from the "any Flash is bad" school, although I do think that many Flash practitioners tend to get a little carried away and often disregard basic usability issues. However, sites built entirely in Flash with SEO elements are still, again in my opinion, like oil and water - Flash and SEO are evidently alone useful, but they don't mix well. Until they do, I will continue to advise my clients not to build sites completely out of Flash - or, at the very least, to have an alternate html option for search engine and user preference purposes. At the end of the day, many clients are astonished to find out how many visitors actually prefer "old school" html.
The bottom line here is that a site built entirely in Flash still faces huge hindrances. While there have been current moves from Google and Yahoo! to try to index the content from pooled Flash/SEO sites, those moves have not yet, from my experience, translated into SEO results or success (at least when compared to html sites).
We should make a difference here between embedded Flash and sites built entirely from Flash. For instance, a site that has Flash elements but still contains basic html elements will not overly suffer, as the Flash element (usually a movie in a box on the homepage or elsewhere) is externalized. A search engine spider will generally not try to parse through any files that have been externalized in the code - they will only index the code that is readily evident on the source page.
On the other hand, from an SEO results perspective, there are still major issues with sites that are built entirely in Flash, and SEO is in general the first thing that suffers. First of all, the URL normally never changes no matter where people navigate on the site. As any well-mannered SEO practitioner will tell you, every page of your site is a potential entry page for a search engine. With a site built in Flash, SEO suffers even more as you only have one potential entry page, which is the main URL. This cuts off dozens, hundreds, or thousands of potential pages that could be indexed in Google and Yahoo! (and all other engines). When your only prospective entry page in the search engine listings is your home page, it is quite hard to target a wide assortment of key phrases, potentially eliminating SEO results or rankings.
Content is another very big issue. Search engines rank pages based upon a number of criteria, but one of the most significant to SEO results is the text that they can "understand" on individual pages. At present, search engines read first and foremost html text (although some also read text in the PDF format) - which means that if you decide that you want to use a uncommon and fancy font that must be displayed in graphic form the engine will not read the text and therefore will not know what the page is about, which could harm SEO results. Naturally, this also includes any of the text included in Flash. While Yahoo! and Google have just announced improved capabilities in reading content within Flash, I have not personally seen that translate into great SEO results for competitive key phrases.
One other emerging feature is that as search evolves, more and more people are looking for information while they are away from their computers. Many mobile devices are currently inept of displaying Flash content, although recent moves by Adobe to make "Flash Lite" available may change this. However, it remains to be seen whether people that are seeking information on a mobile device will even want to find the way through Flash, especially if they can get the information that they seek from a fast-loading html page. In my view, lean html content will be at a premium when a company is trying to target a mobile audience.
In spite of the difficulties, it is not the intent of this article to declare that Flash and SEO will always be incompatible - merely that it is the state of the current situation. You can find many differing opinions on mixing Flash and SEO on the internet, but the true test is to try to find a Flash site (that is to say, a site built entirely in Flash) that you esteem and see if it ranks well in SEO results for 50+ competitive terms that are associated to the specific business (in Google or Yahoo!). In my experience, such sites that combine Flash and SEO are nearly not possible to find.
Flash can be, and repeatedly is, used for great effect on the internet, in interactive kiosks, and in further applications. I'm not from the "any Flash is bad" school, although I do think that many Flash practitioners tend to get a little carried away and often disregard basic usability issues. However, sites built entirely in Flash with SEO elements are still, again in my opinion, like oil and water - Flash and SEO are evidently alone useful, but they don't mix well. Until they do, I will continue to advise my clients not to build sites completely out of Flash - or, at the very least, to have an alternate html option for search engine and user preference purposes. At the end of the day, many clients are astonished to find out how many visitors actually prefer "old school" html.
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