Designing with Adobe Flash and Search Engines

13 Feb, 2008 | Website Design

Many of you may not know that Flash content is essentially a visual medium, and as such Google's search engine robot (Googlebot) cannot intepret the information contained within the Flash. Generally, Google can only read certain parts of a Flash file and only extracts the text and links contained within them, but the structure, hierarchy and context of the website are missing. Additionally, more often than not textual content is stored within the Flash in a graphical format and as such is unreadable to Googlebot meaning these important keywords can be overlooked entirely. All of this means that even if your Flash content is in Google's index, it might be missing some text, content, images, or links. But wait, it gets worse... while Googlebot can understand some content in some Flash files, not all of the internet spiders/crawlers out there can!

Overcoming the SEO shortfalls of Flash content

As any white hat search engine consultant will tell you (and Google themselves for that matter), one of the most important rules to successful search engine optimisation is showing Googlebot the exact same content as your users. If you ignore this key rule, your site risks being flagged as suspicious to Google's search algorithms and you will be serverly penalised. This includes:

• Cloaking techniques
• JavaScript redirects
• Hidden text
• Doorway pages

How to overcome these shortfalls

We recommend the following practical suggestions as they are allowed to be used without penalty:

Try to use Flash only where it is needed

Some media rich websites (such as Cotton On or even YouTube) use Flash for the rich media but use standard HTML for the content and navigation of the site. By reducing the amount of Flash to only on-page accents and rich media your website will become more Googlebot-friendly, making your site more accessible to a larger audience (eg. blind people using screen readers, users of old or non-standard browsers, and those on limited low-bandwidth connections such as on a mobile phone or PDA). Additionally, users can bookmark and email links of your pages to their friends effectively.

JavaScript Replacement Techniques

Continuing on from what i have said above, a good web designer with search engine optimisation and accessability in mind will always create an entire website in valid HTML and then use JavaScript techniques to:

1. Check to see if the user has Javascript enabled
2. Check if the user has flash installed
3. Check if the user has the required version of Adobe Flash Player installed
4. Replace the HTML elements on a webpage with Flash elements after both steps 1 - 3 have been completed

Using this technique GoogleBot (being unable to read much JavaScript) and users without JavaScript of Flash will still be able to the website in its entirety. For further information on this technique see Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) and SWFObject.

Non-Flash Versions

We often see Flash used on the front page (called a "splash screen") where the root URL of a website has a Flash intro. In this instance, insert a link to skip the introduction and go straight to the HTML version of the website as GoogleBot cannot be redirected by the flash to the rest of your website.

Additionally, flash websites are often launched via a landing page with a button that pops up a the site. For this situation, create a standard HTML website along side your flash website.

Bookmark it!

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