July 4, 2008

Search Engine Optimisation for sites using Flash

Macromedia Flash is a technology allowing websites to deliver media rich streaming content, including animation and sound in a way that cannot be done using conventional html alone.

Whilst many Flash enabled sites look visually stunning, they do not as readily achieve good search engine positioning due to a search engine's spider being unable to crawl the individual links and 'pages' within the flash movie. The spider sees simply one page; containing the movie, and is only able to index the content on that one page.

This means the possibilities for building links internally within your own site are reduced - the movie links to other 'scenes' within itself, unlike a conventional site which may present a sperate page for each product family.

There are two possiblities for optimising a Flash site: the first is to simply ensure that the page holding the Flash movie is as tightly optimised as possible. The second option is to have a html version of your website to sit alongside your Flash version.

Whilst Flash does require a special 'plugin' to view it's movies, most users these days do have it installed. One thing to bear in mind is that many Flash movies can be quite large, and if your visitors don't have broadband, a large download means a long wait. So an alternative, standard 'html' version can be a shrewd investment, not just for search engine optimisation purposes, but to ensure visitors aren't frustrated and put off from seeing your site due to technological limitations.

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