How Does Flash Affect Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) doesn't just happen. It's conceived, it's crafted, it's honed. It's the product of much research, development, experience, insight, creativity and application, There's only one top spot for any given keyword or keyword phrase; there's only one first page. If you're not on the first page on your chose search terms, you will struggle. If you're not on the first three pages, then forget it - back to the drawing board. The world of search engine search returns is a competitive space, especially in the more popular industry sectors and with the more popular search expressions.

It's a tough job at the best of times. Why would any organization or SEO company choose to make it any tougher? Sounds like a non-question really but the odd thing is that many companies do choose to take the path of most resistance. They chose to develop sites using Flash, and Flash flies in the face of SEO fundamentals.

A site built entirely in Flash faces enormous obstacles. Whilst both Google and Yahoo! have started to implement forms of indexing the content from combined Flash/SEO sites, the jury is well and truly out as to whether these new developments will yield any real SEO benefits, especially in competition with highly optimised HTML sites.

Adobe recently announced that they were releasing technology to Google and Yahoo! that enables them to crawl and index SWF files, making them searchable. The 'opening up' of millions of Flash files to search sent SEO consultants and marketers across Internet land scrambling to study, learn and adopt the latest tricks of SWF optimisation. SEO Consult was no exception and we are exploring in depth all the potential advantages and best practice techniques to offer the SEO benefits that might emerge from these new developments.

Traditionally sites using embedded Flash or Flash elements that are usually externalized don't suffer too badly, as the site will probably be comprised of standard HTML elements that can benefit from optimisation. SEO is normally the first thing to suffer though for sites built entirely in Flash. Here are some of the issues that developers face.

URLs of Flash sites are generally static, irrespective of where people navigate to on the site, in effect meaning that from an SEO perspective you only have one potential entry page - the main URL. Tens, hundreds, or thousands of potentially indexable pages are missed out. When the only potential landing page in the search engine listings is the home page, it is can be very limiting and it is very difficult to target a healthy assortment of keywords and keyword phrases, potentially eliminating SEO results or rankings. It is possible to develop unique frames or even movies within movies that appear to be completely unique portions of the Flash site. However there's no way to link to these individual elements.

One of the most important criteria of SEO is contextually relevant site content, ideally in the form of nice clean text upon which pages can be evaluated against queries. Search engines primarily read HTML text (although some also read text in the PDF format). Google can index the output files in the SWF to see words and phrases. But in Flash, a lot of text isn't in nice clean

or

tags, it's jumbled up into half phrases for graphical effects and will often be output in the incorrect order. Often words are broken apart into individual letters to animate text effects. Text displayed in graphic form including Flash can only have a detrimental effect on SEO results. It's true that Yahoo! and Google have both recently introduced enhanced capabilities in reading content within Flash, but these developments might be regarded as to only serve as a distraction to genuine SEO.

In an age when many users are taking their data on the move, it's also worth noting that very few mobile devices have the capability of displaying Flash content, despite Adobe's 'Flash Lite' seeking to change this. Whether lean HTML content will be usurped by Flash in the longer run remains to be seen. It's likely though that function will triumph over form for the foreseeable future.

Flash sites struggle to earn link juice. A lot of Flash content is only linked to by other Flash content wrapped inside shell Flash pages. This weak succession of links, with no other internal or external URLs referencing the interior content, equates to some very low PageRank/link juice pages. Even if they manage to stay in the main index, they probably won't rank for anything. Whilst an all-Flash site may receive plenty of links to the homepage, interior pages almost invariably suffer. For embedded Flash content, it's the HTML host page earning those links when they do come. Flash text can be hard to copy and paste unless built properly and even then linking still isn't common practice.

Flash can be, and often is, used for great effect on the Internet, although it's probably fair to say that many Flash developers can get a little carried away, paying closer attention to Flash than basic usability issues. Whilst acknowledging that there are mixed opinions on the application of Flash and mixing Flash and SEO on the Internet, perhaps the lack of Flash/SEO compatibility is best revealed by examining the top 50 search returns on a competitive term in a specific industry sector and realizing that in fact there are very few (if any) totally Flash built sites.

When it comes to developing Flash solutions with SEO in mind, it's not a simple case of it just being more difficult to do. SEO and Flash are just culturally divorced. Oil and water. Bedrock SEO concepts such as anchor text, headlines, bold/strong text, img alt tags, and even title tags are not simple elements to properly include in Flash, and more often than not won't be properly included.