Most people that deal with website complexities will tell you that having a flash website is not a good idea. Spiders cannot see flash, to them it is simply an image. You will read advice from all over that it is better to redesign your website instead as flash sites are problematic. Others will simply tell you that flash sites are outdated and to get with the program. Yes, spiders are rather flash blind, but there are good reasons why certain websites go for flash. When you do not wish to alter your web page design, but have composite content that you want to contain in a fixed space, flash animation does the trick.

Benefits of flash

Technology websites for instance can use flash to great effect as it is excellent for product demonstrations. Flash animation can be used to create great slide shows as well. Amongst the top users of flash design are entertainment and art websites. These websites draw heavily on flash as well as multimedia. Flash works well with screen readers and mobile phones. Flash websites are elegant and simple and a huge variety of browsers handle flash very well.

Find solutions

So, to get around the problems of spiders not reading flash, you use search engine optimisation that you apply to the primary content and also use appropriate coding. Remember, spiders do not ‘read’ as humans do, so text content comprising of optimised images are text to them. Primary content can be links, headings, descriptions and more.

Appropriate keywords to appeal to the spiders can be added to any of these. The main thing here is to ensure that the primary content and the flash movie are the same. This ensures that the flash you use cannot be mistaken for spamming. It is not impossible to optimise flash; you simply use other ways to make use of primary content text to do this for you.

Search Engine Friendly flash

One way to get good ranking is to put the flash files into the HTML files. This also means that you can put the META information with it as well. To make it more crawl able for the spiders is not difficult. You simply see that you insert HTML before and after the flash element. You can use as much text as you possible can in flash files.

All it takes is relevant text that is keyword rich for the spiders to read. To help the search engine spiders and those internet users with slow connections or that does not have plug-ins for flash, get innovative. You can create a version of your website that is non-flash. In this way you have your flash site for the majority of your visitors and are accessible to those who would otherwise not be able to use your website. The trick is to work around problems and find solutions, instead of just giving up. Good Search Engine Optimisation will get your flash website ranked high with a bit of innovation and thinking outside the box.

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