EDIT: Google now crawls flash content more efficiently. However you should still take this post into consideration as the Google bot still does not index dynamically generated xml data.

There’s a hot debate amongst web developers over Flash. Some swear by it others would rather see it disappear. We as usual live in the middle of the debate understanding that there are situations in which it is both necessary and appropriate, and others where it is just a distraction. In most cases, as with our own website, we mix both forms to complement each other in the manner that best suits the particular project. Nevertheless we’d like to put an end to the myth that serves as one of the main talking points for those against Flash.

You can’t SEO a Flash site.

A small point before I keep going. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a branch of web development focused on raising a site’s visibility in search engines, following a set of best practices guidelines. Now back to our article.

The main problem behind Flash SEO is that most search engine bots can’t go into an SWF file to extract textual content. Google has recently made inroads towards reading Flash content, but results are still unpredictable. Which is why we need to get around the current search engine limitations to provide easily indexable content that can be ranked according to its quality. For the following we will be talking about Flash only sites, in the case of HTML sites with Flash elements, traditional SEO methods can be used, as long as Flash is used prudently to complement the content and not replace it.

Alt Content

The W3 has always strongly expressed the need to provide alternative content for multimedia in a web site. In the days when plain text browsers were still quite common (and they still are amongst visually impaired users, more on that in another post) this rule was put in place referring to image content, so text browsers could get a textual representation of the image that would be otherwise shown. The rule has persisted and expanded into Video, Audio and Flash.

If you’re running a full flash site, as we have in projects such as WiFiwyg.com, and Licor43, the best route is usually to provide a full alternative HTML site, for crawlers to go through.

By using, swfobject() a Javascript function used to detect if the Flash player is installed, the developer can present alternate content when there is no Flash capability. In this case we can switch to an HTML site, which can be freely browsed and indexed by search engine bots.

Developing an entire alternative site in HTML, might sound like a costly SEO method but most developers will include it in their optimization price, taking into consideration that most of the design, structure and content for the alt version of the site was already prepared for the Flash version.

Providing alternative HTML content in this manner is generally a good idea as it provides relevant content to users without a Flash capable browser which is a quickly growing segment as more users surf from their phones. Nevertheless. due to past abuse of this method, it is very important that the content be the same as the content presented in the Flash site at the risk of being fully delisted. In some cases this might prove a tricky endeavor, but most savvy developers should be able to accommodate the Flash content on an HTML page sacrificing little functionality and none of the message.

One important point missed by many developers is the importance of including the swfobject() function in every HTML page, tied directly to the scene in the Flash movie that pertains to that particular page. Most search engines will index content from all browsable pages, not just the home page, and since each page for the site is SEO’d individually for its particular content, other pages in the site will probably appear along with the home page for most searches. In the case of some keywords the home page might not appear at all. Since the primary user experience is still the Flash version of the site it is important that each indexable page include the function so the user will be taken to the right content in the right context.

SIFR

There’s another method but it only applies to very particular cases that based on our own development preferences we have not stumbled across. I’m going to quote Jonathan Hochman of Hochman Consultants who has also written on this very same topic, and amongst others, helped inspire this article:

If you are only using Flash to enhance headings, quotes, or callout text, a method called Scalable Inman Flash Replacement is an excellent choice. SIFR automatically pulls text from an HTML document and modifies the Document Object Model to replace the text with a Flash rendering of the appropriate font. SIFR makes it easy to modify the text, and ensures that your Flash text always matches your HTML text, reducing the risk of abuse.

The drawback of SIFR is that it only handles the presentation of simple text. Complex Flash animations, such as menus, slide shows, and interactive presentations can not be programmed easily with SIFR. For these types of Flash, SWFOBJECT and UFO are more effective.

I hope this article has been useful I know it got a bit more technical than usual but more needs to be written on this.