Flash, SEO and Optimization - How to properly use flash on your

Flash movies can be a great thing. They can help catch eyes that

are otherwise bored with static looking pages, and they can help

tell a story better than plain text.

However the use of flash

must be tempered with the ability to rank in search engines.

This article describes some of the considerations and

recommendations when using flash on a website.

Disney does it. And so does Oprah. Even my favorite pizza place

does it. That is embed their primary navigation and important

content inside a flash movie. In fact in all these cases, a good

part of the sites home page is flash, rendering that section of

the page invisible to search engine crawlers.

Granted these are extreme cases of sites which use flash

extensively, but there are other cases where even a little flash

can be improperly used. There are also cases where flash is not

only appropriate, it is recommended. The question then becomes

how to best use flash without affecting search engine rankings.

Much like the early settlers of the Wild Wild West we are the

frontiersman (and women) of a new community - the World Wide Web

community (notice the WWW analogy) - which has seen its birth in

the past couple decades and has really experienced its growth

happen in the last 10 years or so.

And throughout that time there have been many ways to display a

website and its content. Some were more successful than others.

But there is one aspect of web development which has been hotly

contested between designers of websites and those who position

them. That is the use of Flash.

Flash has been around for some time now and while it is pretty

(for lack of a better word) it can seriously hinder a websites

ability to position well in the search engines. This is because

most search crawlers can not see nor effectively index flash or

its contents. Therefore anything contained within the flash,

including page content or more importantly site navigation, is

invisible to them.

Yet flash does have it’s good points as well. As I mentioned

above, it can turn an otherwise bland looking site into

something unique and refreshing. So the question becomes - where

does one balance the need for search engine indexability with

the need for impressing customers?

Well here’s a rule of thumb for you - less is better.

Less flash occupying the page is better, as well as having as

little content embedded within it as possible. Further, where

the flash appears on the page can have an impact on its ability

to deliver the intended message.

Let’s have a quick survey - how many of you, upon coming to a

site, tune out the top 1/5 of the page, and even a couple inches

on the right of the page - especially if you see flashing or

movement?

Just as I suspected, most of you. I do it too. And we do this

because these are the places we typically see banner ads,

therefore we associate that space on many sites with advertising

and tune it out.

But there are cases when sites place important messages, via

flash, in these locations. But if many people tune out these

locations, they are also tuning out that important message.

Hence the reason the flash doesn’t do so well on the page.

So there’s tip number one: Don’t place your flash where it will

be ignored - namely those spots on the page normally associated

with advertising.

My second flash tip - don’ t take up most of the screen with it.

Keep the screen real estate it occupies to less than ½ the

screen, preferably on the left side. There are many reasons for

this:

Too often, as people are orienting themselves to the page, their

eyes scan the page and are all over it for a few seconds, and

then fixate on the top left of the page. If you have a flash

movie running (and especially if its one without controls) they

have missed a few seconds of that message. And we all know what

good a message is that’s incomplete?

Another reason for minimizing flash usage: While more and more

people are adopting broadband every day, still close to half of

the US uses dial up. Which means everything takes longer to

load. And if these users are waiting for a flash movie to load,

they could navigate away from your site in frustration because

the page is taking so long to load.

Some other recommendations:

Don’t use the flash to tell the story, use it to enhance the

story. If you are trying to sell a product, leave the important

information in the HTML of the page, but use the flash to

emphasize the product by either displaying it, or pointing out

the benefits. your flash should be complementary and not too

overwhelming.

Finally, did you know you can also externalize the code required

to display the flash? This is something that can help improve

page load times which could improve spiderability.

Using a technique similar to one I described in the

externalizing JavaScript article, you can externalize the code

used to render the flash. You can use the same code used to

create a drop down box via JavaScript to externalize the flash

code (using the document.write code and embedding the HTML

needed to display the flash there).

As you can see, based on this article, is that flash isn’t all

that bad, provided its used properly. That means it shouldn’t be

too overpowering or occupy too much of the page. It should be

complementary to the message the page is intending to give, and

should be located in places that people will look at, and not in

places normally associated with advertising.

If you follow these simple rules, your flash can become an

essential selling point to your site. One which could provide

your customers the little push they need to move from browsers

to buyers

.About the Author:
About the author: Rob Sullivan - SEO Specialist and Internet

Marketing Consultant. Any reproduction of this article needs to

have an html link pointing to http://www.textlinkbrokers.com