Flash is bad for SEO?

Ii've read the same and on Google guidelines however I do see plenty of websites at Google No.1 for highly competitive keywords meaning that it clearly isn't stopping there site being successful with regards to SEO.

Boxby said:

I have seen lots of thread on here about the evils of flash as far as SEO is concerned, But also suggestions about how it can be made to work, with a bit of effort.

Becauase v-bulletins search is crap, if anyone can direct me towards these posts it would be very much appreciated. Or any advice in general.

Many thanks
Sandra

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Depends what you want to use it for. I like to use a bit in banners or suchlike to make the page seem a bit more dynamic. And its not hurting the rankings of these sites any.

Don't use it for navigation.

Used carefully its fine.

Saying that, overindulgent flash sites that take years to load up and are totally over the top just wind me up. So it may be a matter of personal preference.

flash is like images. google cant see an image so it needs tags to tell it what it is.
same applies to flash.

fisicx said:

It depends on how the flash file was built and how it is used on the site.

A flash banner is fine since it's only replacing an image. Flash navigation can be OK as long as you have text alternatives. Putting you content into a flash file... that's not so good unless you have a flash detector and can deliver a text alternative. But if you are going to do that then why not just have the text only version, with CSS you can make it look just as good as the flash version.

So the answer your question is... it depends.

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Some very good points, so I won't repeat them. Additionally, flash doesn't always work on some browsers (particularly if flash is not installed), so you'd ideally have a graceful handling of this with an alternative way of navigation/interaction.

Dan

You have to use flash as a tool. Or as bait.
Flashing lights attract attention. Hence you have blues and two's.

Moving images make you focus on that image.
Add a nice strap line and bobs your uncle.

Remember SEO also is about increasing conversions too.

Boxby said:

I guess the flashing image needs to say "Click here to Buy NOW!!"

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I think the correct phrase is "calls to action"

Rubbish design if all it did was distract you. ;-)

I'm by no means a SEO or website expert but I oversaw the design of a site last year that used flash and html.

Was very aware of not doing the whole site in flash but the designer I was working with was much better with Flash and we could get the graphics and impact we wanted so still needed relay on it

Check out http://www.fittedbedroomsdevon.co.uk and see what you think

Soul_Survivor said:

I'm by no means a SEO or website expert but I oversaw the design of a site last year that used flash and html.

Was very aware of not doing the whole site in flash but the designer I was working with was much better with Flash and we could get the graphics and impact we wanted so still needed relay on it

Check out http://www.fittedbedroomsdevon.co.uk and see what you think

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you have a few problems that need ironing out but the main concern is repeated tags.

Flash is just right.
You need to focus on other terms besides fitted bedrooms devon.

fisicx said:

But this means I'm looking at the distraction not the main content. Saw a site that had some pretty clouds drifting across the banner with butterflies and birds and things. It was very peaceful but not condusive to getting me to answer the call to action.

Remove the distraction and get the visitor to focus on the aim of the site.

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The point is to focus the attention to where you want them to go.
The standard "F" scenarios is why people use flash and gif's

fisicx said:

It depends on how the flash file was built and how it is used on the site.

A flash banner is fine since it's only replacing an image. Flash navigation can be OK as long as you have text alternatives. Putting you content into a flash file... that's not so good unless you have a flash detector and can deliver a text alternative. But if you are going to do that then why not just have the text only version, with CSS you can make it look just as good as the flash version.

So the answer your question is... it depends.

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I agree. Succinctly put.

Ali-v-8 said:

flash is like images. google cant see an image so it needs tags to tell it what it is.
same applies to flash.

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Not strictly true.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html

Google can read and index textual content in Flash files (swf files), but can have problems with the structure. Also if your website loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google might not be able to find your Flash file.

Agree with EastCoastInteractive: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html

There's a great thread here on Google Webmaster Groups on the pros and cons of SEO and Flash:
http://groups.google.com/group/Goog...9345a4df4faf?lnk=gst&q=flash#21b19345a4df4faf

An SEO friendly way of using flash in your site would be provide alternate content for non-flash enabled browsers, i.e. detect if a visitor's browser is flash capable and if not, replace the flash with HTML or an image. Useful tool here: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

Thanks to sdchown.

EastCoastInteractive said:

Not strictly true.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html

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erm like i said it needs to be tagged

Boxby said:

I have seen lots of thread on here about the evils of flash as far as SEO is concerned, But also suggestions about how it can be made to work, with a bit of effort.

... if anyone can direct me towards these posts it would be very much appreciated.

Click to expand...

A year ago I commented on what gets picked up by google and what doesn't on another UKBF member's Moonfruit Flash website. The website in question was a moonfruit flash sitebuilder website, and the main point here was that Moonfruit had split the site up into multiple pages (good for SEO) not just one big swf, and on those pages google was able to pick up some flash content (text that was maybe statically embedded in the Flash) but not all secondary content (secondary text that the Flash file dynamically loaded at runtime).

I also commented a few years ago on another Flash website, which at that time was just one big swf file, and as such had major seo issues. Since then the owner of the site has changed over to a more standard HTML site with just small bits of Flash.

There might be some useful tips on SEO and Flash over at the Moonfruit blog. Moonfruit were one of the first sitebuilder services, originally using a Flash only website builder and very much a Flash innovator and pioneer, but they have evolved into creating more standard HTML websites with some Flash embedded, and the blog describes how they SEO'd one of their sites (albeit not for a very popular search term!).

One big no no regarding Flash and SEO, mentioned on this Flash homepage thread and mentioned on this thread too, whilst the general consensus is to not have Flash only sites but if you must use Flash use HTML with a little bit of Flash embedded, that's fine as long as you don't have a flash menu navigation component on your HTML homepage that is set up in a way to prevent search engines finding the other pages of your site! (but the same can be said for some fancy javascript menus too).

One other important issue, but not SEO related issue, to consider with Flash, is that it isn't supported on the iPhone. This issue, and the fact that quite a lot of what once could only be achieved with Flash can now be achieved with CSS and Javascript, does beg the question do you really need to be using Flash at all? Video is probably the most popular business area where Flash should definitely be considered.

p.s. I'm typing this using my Firefox browser, which I use as my main browser, mainly because it has Flash disabled, so I don't get the bandwidth and resource intensive flash adverts on websites, including the UKBF website.