Using Flash to create SEO Friendly Website

There is no doubt about the fact that Flash is the most innovative, creative and interactive platform to create appealing web content, which can win hearts of your clients. But SEO experts don't prefer this platform in spite of all these advantages because of numerous reasons. The solutions lies somewhere in between both these viewpoints and here, we shall try to discover it.

• The SEO vs Flash Debate That SEO Experts don't prefer flash based site is a universal fact, but why this disinterest in such invigorating multimedia platform is known by a few. Some of the common reasons why SEO Experts don't prefer flash based sites are listed below:
• Flash Player Flash medium works only on a system, which has Macromedia Flash Player installed onto it, therefore creates the problem of installation of flash player to actually run the flash based web pages. Therefore, a site based on flash technology is rated low on user friendliness and in turn gets low ratings on a search engine.
• Different Content on the same URLs A flash based webpage embeds all its content onto a SWF file and therefore there are no separate pages for Google to index, which hampers search engine ratings.
• SEO Tags lost While Google can decipher text from an SWF file, it often misses any SEO Tags that are embedded within it, hampering the search related options of a webpage.
• Developing SEO friendly Flash Website By following these simple yet effective tips you can develop flash based website which is also very SEO friendly in nature.
• Use SWFObject Using SWF object allows users who cannot support flash on their system to access your website on basis of (X)HTML coding. This also helps the search engine crawlers to index the (X)HTML alternate content that you serve on your flash enabled webpage.
• Creating dedicated HTML pages for all your flash pages Developing dedicated HTML pages for all theflash pages of your applications will create a mirror for its content, be it images, text, links or any other form of information. This will help crawlers to categorize them and in turn enhance your search engine hits.
• Use SWFObject and multiple Flash files to hide the content If you don't want anyone else except the crawlers to see all the pages, tags you create, use a SWFObject to embed multiple flash files into a common flash file. Doing this, will hide your non-flash content i.e. HTML pages to flash users.
• Use SWF Address and deep linking to direct Flash users to the proper content Use SWFAddress, which will allow you to detect information for URL and thereafter use the same within your flash. This will help you to do deep linking in flash pages.
• Use JavaScript call along with SWF Address to direct flash to right flash pages This helps the users who hit your page on a search engine directly land on the right content within the multiple flash files that you have embedded together.

Incorporating these tips in your flash based web page would definitely help in enhancing the search ratings of your site and make it more SEO friendly.