Hi there, Is it possible to rank a full flash website on the 1st page of Google for keywords? DO meta tags, web directories and all that stuff still apply with flash sites. How do you rank a flash site well? Thanks
Depends on the keywords. If they are highly competitive you have a very tough battle ahead but it is possible to have a highly ranked 100% Flash page. It just takes a long time to attain such a ranking because many of the weapons needed to get such a ranking are taken away. Good rankings can be achieved by careful optimization of various page components and external factors including: Page title Alt attributes Keyword density Internal linking Inbound links Headers etc.. A pure Flash page takes away most of these variables and leave the optimizer with just Page titles and Inbound Links. This limited arsenal makes the climb to the top much longer and more painful than if the SEO specialist had the full list of tools at his/her disposal. Google doesn't pay much attention to meta tags these days, too many spammers out there trying to manipulate the search results by stuffing keywords into the description and keyword tags. Let's just say if your meta info matches the page content and page title well you are heading in the right direction for SE's that do pay attention to metas. Bottom line - try to cut back on the Flash as much as possible and have at least a little real text content if possible.
I think it's hard for website with FULL FLASH to good in SERP..but it's also possible if your keyword has low competitor
i don't know how much people know about this but google do have technology to read flash sites. I'm not sure how well they read the flash sites but they do read them! I would never take on a flash site as a customer though as its extermely difficult to get ranked for anything that might turn some noticable results. You could go blackhat an use the flash code as well as no frames code, but its not at all recommended!
Wrong <noframe> </noframe> is the way to show the content of the flash to the bots. Apart, Google is becoming better day by day in reading flash files. I can see a lot of pure flash sites gaining rankings lately.
to use a technique that hides text from the user is something Google does see as blackhat!! and should someone report a site using this to google, then it will be pulled from the index! and what you said is basically the same as what I said so to say im wrong is a strange thing to say!
They may have high PR, but the question is "where do they rank?". Currently, there is no way to rank a pure Flash site in a competitive keyword scenario. The drawbacks are the missing text links and text content. Google will also see the site as a "single page" web site without navigation (Flash nav is internal). And finally, and the most important one, nobody in their right mind will link to a Flash site. What PR juice will be transfered? Or where is my text based link going to be placed? No matter what Google will do some day, a full Flash site is death in competitive SEO. And as for all the "work-arounds", it is defined as "hidden text" and a competitor will report the site to Google for hidden text.
With respect I disagree. With google sitemaps you don't need a readable menu, google will spider all pages of the site. With accurate page titles and incoming link anchor text google gets a fair idea what the page is about. Google actually does read the metas on flash sites to get an idea what a site is actually about (although with all the meta tag spammers out there it tends to NOT put a lot of stock in metas as before unless all other elements of the page match up well) and if you happen to have a significant amount of incoming links with proper anchor text google has a good idea what keywords you are shooting for and you CAN get a decent ranking. I have had a number of 100% Flash sites ranked top 10 against non-Flash sites for for competitive terms. Yes it takes longer I will grant you that, and you need a LOT more incoming links. But it is possible, just not easy. Flash site owners have to be willing to wait longer for results. I always encourage them to mix Flash with real solid text/images so help push the site along - otherwise they are in for a loooong wait.
Yes, it's possible. However, it's going to depend entirely upon how you build the Flash file and how accessible the individual components are to the Googlebot. Furthermore, META tags will have no impact on the rankings, but the META description tag can improve your search engine traffic by converting those eyeballs to new users.
it is definitely possible but more difficult than a non-flash website. google bots cannot see the contents of a flash site, so determining what is there is more difficult. however, with proper tags, a plethora of backlinks and perhaps even a text based navigation system will greatly help you out.
Actually they can. You just have to make sure the Flash files' components are linked together so the Googlebot can access them. There was a huge announcement about this earlier in the year. Google hasn't quite perfected the technology, but it is "good enough to work" and as such it is being used "in the wild".