Hi All Flash websites for long have been a problem while optimising for search engines. I have seen a couple of websites, built completely in Flash, yet they are doing well in search rankings. One good example I can think of is Disney. home.disney.co.uk We have created a site completely in Flash by hiding the HTML text behind the flash content using SWFobject and I was wondering if we will have any problems with optimisation. Could you please advise the pros and cons of this approach?
<html lang="en" xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> That text doesn't appear to english for starters.
<html lang="en" xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <title>Title Here</title> <meta name="description" content="Meta Here"> <script type="text/javascript" src="flashobject.js"></script> </head> <body bgcolor="#E5E5E5" leftmargin="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0"> <div id="interface"> <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/" target="_blank"><img src="index_flash.gif" height="120" width="500" border="0"></a><br> <br> <font size="-1" face="Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular"></font> <p><font size="-1" face="Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular"> HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE HTML TEXT HERE </font></p> <p></p> <p></p> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> var fo = new FlashObject("interface.swf", "interface", "100%", "100%", "8", "#E5E5E5"); fo.addParam("quality", "best"); fo.addParam("scale", "noscale"); fo.write("interface"); </script> </body> </html>
SSandecki, I have queried this with our designer...coz I dont understand this much. Any thoughts on optimising for Search Engines?
I really don't have much knowledge on SEO optimizing a flash website, you can probably google seo flash website and see what comes up. Disney is a branded site and will always rank well.
flash sites are not yet crawled, (maybe as of now). home.disney.co.uk has too many good links, not to mention from Disney itself which I think has good trust rank because of its reputation and of course its age. If you really want to build a flash site, consider putting a html version. With this your visitors that with slow connection can benefit from your site. You know what happens when the page doesn't load in less than 30 seconds. Hope I helped Booh
I've heard a lot of problem like this from the site owners created in flash! Some of the developer uses SDK (Software Development Kit) from Macromedia, this software provides an html version of your flash website!
If you have a new flash site, and want a chance in hell at ranking, then you definitely need an html version. Comparing to Disney is not even close - because they are, in fact, Disney.