SEO solutions for a complete flash website

Introduction

Adobe Flash - great software for web and graphic designers for creating a more creative and more dynamic website graphics and animations. The difficulties arise when a web designer tries to make a complete flash based website. Indexing flash websites in search engines and gets rank. We can discuss the solutions below.

Topics we deal with in this article

· Basic SEO tips for flash

· Websites where flash suits

· Where to use flash in a HTML website

· Disadvantages of a complete flash based website

· Conclusion

Basic SEO tips for flash

Tip 1: When flash movie is published, it publishes 2 files a SWF (shock wave file) and a HTML file. Designers can edit the HTML file

and insert suitable meta tags like title, keywords, and description tags. This is done by mostly every designer but if you see a complete flash based website navigation , the URL ( website link does not change ) so it is treated as a single page website ( without content) by search engines.

To prevent this each page of the website should be a separate flash movie (SWF), so that the website contains many pages. This brings opportunity for the designer to place Meta tags in every page and search engine treats it as a multiple page website.

Tip 2: Design XML based dynamic menus so you can place some meta data in XML files. use XML where ever you can including content ( XML driven text, XML audio play lists , XML galleries, videos )

Tip 3: Make database driven websites ( php , asp mysql ) integrated websites so that you can boost your search engine rankings .

Websites where flash suits

There are many niches (topics) where flash design will boost your search engine traffic. Gaming sites, kids sites, presentation related sites, 3D video chat rooms can be designed completely using flash and get a nice search engine ranking and huge amount of targeted traffic by following the SEO tips.

Examples:

cartoonnetwork.com uses flash in a larger portion of their site , (menus, videos, games) but uses HTML to link to pages. This is a nice technique to attract search engines.

Disney.com has a complete flash website. it also provides a HTML version ( text only link ) you can follow this.

Flash in a HTML website

There are many places where flash can be used in HTML websites, we can discuss about them now. Menus, galleries, audio and video play lists , slide shows, banners, contact forms, chat rooms etc can be designed in flash to use in HTML website. It attracts people but makes no difference in ranking and SEO. Many great websites use flash ads to attract customers, from this we can understand flash attracts people so you can get a lot of targeted traffic.

Flash works very well with social networking websites.

Examples: fanbox, tagged, hi5 etc

Chat rooms built in flash attracts everyone. meebo uses this technology .

Disadvantages of a complete flash based website

There are some cons while making a complete flash website. Let’s discuss about them now.

1. In basic SEO tips - tip 1 we discussed about a major disadvantage of a complete flash website and tried to overcome that problem.

2. We cannot place ads like Google adsense inside a flash file.

3. The file size is comparatively more.

4. Website cannot be translated automatically by Google and other translation services.

5. website Takes longer time to load.

Why we like flash

Even if flash faces a number of problems in SEO, It is preferred by designers for many reasons. let's talk about them here.

Designers' point of view.

Scripting is less here. And the website can be presented in a more attractive way. Flash helps the designer to make a complex and dynamic website with less effort. A designer can charge higher (compared with HTML) for his flash design. There are various protection methods to defend the website content from content thieves. (Images, audio etc can be protected in a better way) it gives a better password protection. (When compared to javascript password protection) Buyer usually comes

back to him for updating the website. (While buyer cannot edit it by himself)

Buyers' point of view.

A flash website is more attractive and more featured. It can attract the users and entertain them. It makes the users stay in the website. Presentation of products and services is better. The website is more interactive with his users. Customizing website template as per user's taste is possible in flash. Flash offers a better user experience (voice instructions to guide the user according to his quest, attractive text guides to help him explore the website etc)

Conclusion

Since flash provides a lot of features, ever designer finds new tactics to overcome the difficulties and continue using flash. Both the buyer and designer in convinced with flash and hence Adobe flash must also contribute in finding a rigid solution for solving the Disadvantages of flash when it comes to web design

and SEO. Present search engines use flash search engine SDK of Adobe to index the text and links of flash files. In the near future , search engines will definitely find a way to index the flash files in a better

Hope this article was useful to you . thank you for reading the article.