Skip navigation
AntiApple
AntiApple Calculating status...
Currently Being Moderated

Is SEO possible with Flash content?

Jun 28, 2012 10:59 PM

Hi,


My problem is this... i was told that flash sites lacked the Search Engine Optimization quality, But to me this is B.S. Because search engines use the meta tags and source code to look for keywords. So why would a flash site lack it? Or am i right, S.E.O. is based on Meta Tags and Source and whether flash is used or not it does not have anything to do with S.E.O.

Thanks, Mike

2188 Views   11 Replies   Latest reply: salonorangeflower, Jul 4, 2012 12:08 AM
 
Replies
  • dave ewelme
    Currently Being Moderated
    1. dave ewelme,
    Mar 14, 2007 11:41 PM   in reply to AntiApple
    Report
    It has been suggested to me that flash can be a problem for SEO becuase it could be used to 'hide' the real content of a site?
     
    |
    Mark as:
  • Walter Elias
    Currently Being Moderated
    2. Walter Elias,
    Mar 15, 2007 3:54 AM   in reply to AntiApple
    Report
    Check it out:

    SEO in Flash

    I followed some of this advice and my Google ranking went way up within weeks. Lately I'm finding more and more Google results with the notation (SWF) after the title, meaning it's referencing a Flash site.

    SEO is based on much more than Meta tags these days.
     
    |
    Mark as:
  • dave ewelme
    Currently Being Moderated
    3. dave ewelme,
    Mar 15, 2007 4:29 AM   in reply to Walter Elias
    Report
    Walter,
    Thanks for the great link.

    I'm having real problems with my Google ranking jumping around all over the place.
    One day my site has a PR 2/10 and cached page 6th march and the following morning the cached page has reverted to an old one 2Jan ? I'm told it could be due to different 'data centres' used by Google not being in synch (and no idication of when they will get in sych)

    regards
    Dave
     
    |
    Mark as:
  • AntiApple
    Currently Being Moderated
    4. AntiApple,
    Mar 17, 2007 8:54 AM   in reply to AntiApple
    Report
    ok thank you
     
    |
    Mark as:
  • mikerss
    Currently Being Moderated
    5. mikerss,
    Apr 23, 2013 6:11 PM   in reply to AntiApple
    Report

    Googling 'Flash SEO' would be a start...

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • sm911
    Currently Being Moderated
    6. sm911,
    Apr 23, 2013 6:12 PM   in reply to AntiApple
    Report

    . With this method you can make your page indexed by Google bot like a html page.

     

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">

      <head>

        <title>SWFObject dynamic embed - step 3</title>

        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

        <script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>

       

        <script type="text/javascript">

        swfobject.embedSWF("myContent.swf", "myContent", "300", "120", "9.0.0");

        </script>

      </head>

      <body>

        <div id="myContent">

          <p>Alternative content</p>

        </div>

      </body>

    </html>

    Place an HTML version of the content in the div id="myContent".

     

    Hope this will work you and others.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • megri
    Currently Being Moderated
    7. megri,
    Jun 4, 2012 11:35 AM   in reply to sm911
    Report

    In actual SEO also depends on contents and in flash contents are hidden to google bot and other crawlers. But if you have flash web site, you should look for Off Page SEO promotions.

     

    I am from SubmitShop - Submitshop.com and deal clients with flash web sites. So its not tough but needs lot of efforts to rank flash based web sites.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • salonorangeflower
    Currently Being Moderated
    8. salonorangeflower,
    Jun 21, 2012 7:30 AM   in reply to megri
    Report

    Hello Megri,

     

    I am interested in how you arranged your Off page Seo promotions. I have a website (Orange flower) that uses flash components

    also, and see that SEO is a bit more difficult, compared to 'standard' HTML websites.

    I hope the google bots will get better in reading and interpreting flash-based websites.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • adninjastrator
    Currently Being Moderated
    9. adninjastrator,
    Jul 9, 2012 11:39 PM   in reply to salonorangeflower
    Report

    Sujatha PJ edited Adninjastrator's post to just consolidate the suggestions provided on this for a one snapshot answer for this question:

     

    Refer:

    http://www.adobe.com/devnet/seo.html for detailed information on Flash and SEO techniques, issues, strategies (suggested by Mohanaraj CS)

    http://blog.deconcept.com/2006/03/13/modern-approach-flash-seo/ (suggested by mikerss)

     

    And read this post from Adninjastrator:

    I'd be careful about relying much on "Off page" SEO for Flash using directory linking. In my opinion, these are scam "linking farms" that provide little or no real value to Search Engines.

    The best way to provide "Off page" linking is to include a link to your site in other high ranking Web pages whose content is relative to the content on your site.. like this Forum for example, or other blogs and news reports related to topics your site covers.

    Compare the value of a Web page like that (which contains in-depth discussion of the topic of your site)... compared to a web site with the sole purpose of be a link farm... little or no real content, just a linking scheme.

    Good SEO with Flash is NOT that difficult and has been a "Best Practice" for many years already.

    For your review:

    If you think that Flash is somehow bad for SEO, it's time to dispell that MYTH!
    If fact, in some circumstances I'll use Flash INSTEAD of just HTML because then I'll have better SEO than with just HTML alone.

    http://www.worldbarefootcenter.com/

    The link to World Barefoot Center in the above post is just one example. View the source code and you see a couple paragraphs of text along with regular HTML links.... but what displays is the Flash version of the image and Flash links.
    The client provided the artwork for the page... and that's what they wanted to use a .jpg image. Well yes, that could be done in HTML but it would be virtually invisible to Google. So Instead I converted the image into a Flash .swf and used swfobject to display the Flash. swfobject allows you to create alternate content inside the <div> which also holds the Flash .swf, then when the page is loaded it detects if the browser has the Flash pluggin. If it does, it displays just the Flash content, if not, it displays the alternate content. Since almost everyone has the Flash pluggin, for most people the Flash version of the <div> will display.
    The alternate content for that <div> can be any regular HTML text, images, media player, links, etc., anything that you would use if you were not using the Flash. Now the best part is that the alternate content can be "over the top" as far as optimizing for SEO, since it will not be seen by most viewers.
    Here's another example of SEO with Flash.. again, the page is just a single image provided by the client:
    http://www.ksowetsuits.com/
    View the source code. The alt content is paragraph after paragraph of information about the site, including lists and links. If it was just the HTML, it might be kind of a boring Home page. But for SEO I can go "over the top" in promoting the site, since most viewers will never see that part... but it's all indexed by search engines. The end result is BETTER SEO using Flash than just HTML.
    On another Web site, a Flash video is displayed, the alt content is the complete text narration of the video. Now how many people would take the time to read that if they could just watch the video instead?? again, better SEO with Flash than without. In fact in one case we had first page search result from that video narration within 4 hours of posting the page.
    On still another site with a Flash video, the alt content is another video, but a .mov version, which will, in effect play Flash video on the iPhone (not possible you say??). Well since the iPhone does not have Flash pluggin, it simply displays the .mov version of the video, while everyione else sees the Flash version.
    So anyway, if Flash is a part of your Web development, you should look into using swfobject and alternate content.
    http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/
    Best wishes,
    Eye for Video

    www.cidigitalmedia.com

    Best wishes,

    Adninjastrator

     

    Message was edited by: Sujatha PJ

     

    Message was edited by: Sujatha PJ

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • Mohanaraj CS
    Currently Being Moderated
    10. Mohanaraj CS,
    Jun 27, 2012 5:57 AM   in reply to adninjastrator
    Report

    Hi,

    In addition to Adninjastrotor's information, you may also want to have a look at the detailed information on Flash and SEO techniques, issues, strategies at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/seo.html

     

    Thanks!

    Mohan

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • salonorangeflower
    Currently Being Moderated
    11. salonorangeflower,
    Jul 4, 2012 12:08 AM   in reply to Mohanaraj CS
    Report

    Hello Mohan,

     

    Thanks very much for posting this link!

     

    Karin

     
    |
    Mark as:
Actions

More Like This

  • Retrieving data ...

Bookmarked By (0)

Answers + Points = Status

  • 10 points awarded for Correct Answers
  • 5 points awarded for Helpful Answers
  • 10,000+ points
  • 1,001-10,000 points
  • 501-1,000 points
  • 5-500 points