SEO Step By Step Guide–24. Flash and SEO

There is an ongoing debate between the web designers and SEO professionals on the use of Flash in websites. For web designers, Flash helps them in extending their creativity but for an SEO professional, this limits the online performance of the website and the search engine performance.

Google suggests that Flash be used sparingly only when it is needed because googlebot can index only the links and text. The context and the structure cannot be read by the googlebot, this makes the page useless when it comes to search engine performance. Google also suggests to use Flash content only for certain aspects of the website such as for rich media and to rely on the HTML content for the site’s navigation and content. Google shows YouTube as a classical example of this model. This allows the web designers to show their creativity while it keeps the SEO professionals from complaining.

While googlebot is at least able to index the content partially and extract the links, other search engine bots will not even be able to understand Flash content. Therefore, it is best to rely on HTML for best ranking. Some webmasters start using black hat tricks to balance the effects of Flash content and use cloaking, hidden text and doorway pages. It goes without saying that you should avoid all these black hat tricks. It is best to limit Flash to headers and use the search engine friendly HTML for rest of the pages.

Flash websites also take a long time to load which irritates the users with low speed internet connection. Some webmasters try using both versions for their website one on Flash and another on HTML. Before prescribing to such an approach, you must question yourself asking whether you really need a flash website and what value ad it has for your website. Highly professional looking websites can be created using HTML; therefore at onetime what was appreciated to be highly interactive and captivating is no more treated the same. More and more webmasters are becoming highly SEO conscious. The first question that people ask is, “Will the website you design perform well in the search engines?”

When you use Flash, you will miss out on all the keywords that are found in the content. Moreover, when you make your website search engine friendly by avoiding unnecessary Flash content, you will be able to make your website all the more easily accessible for visitors. Some people will be using some non-standard browsers that does not support you latest Flash formats, it can affect viewers experience when they have low speed internet connection. Not all internet users may be viewing your website through their PCs, some of them will be using their PDAs and other such smaller devices. Using Flash content extensively can reduce the accessibility factor dramatically. You should avoid everything that affects your website traffic.

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