Search engines and Flash sites

I’ve had the problem twice now where a client who’s site I have re designed is told by his previous developer that his new Flash site won’t rate when it comes to search engines.

The problem is that there is a lot of truth in it. Search engines cannot get inside a flash movie. All they can do is read the tags on the HTML page that the Flash site is sitting in.

How does everyone else overcome the fears of the clients in regard to Flash sites being unsearchable? In one case I had to leave the clients old site up and just link the new site to it. It’s a worry.

having a parallel HTML site is one option…the other one is if you use SWFObject to embed Flash which actually replaces the content of a tag with the flash content, you can always put some HTML content that can be read by the search engine…and if the visitor has Flash, then that content will be replaced by flash content…

SWFObject and HTML content. It’s what I did with my wifes site liveonce.ca – it’s within the top 5 google results on all the key search terms we wanted to target despite being years younger than the other sites and containing less content.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=pole+dance&btnG=Search&meta= http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=pole+fit&btnG=Search&meta= http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=pole+dance+studio&btnG=Search&meta=

SWFObject and HTML content. It’s what I did with my wifes site liveonce.ca – it’s within the top 5 google results on all the key search terms we wanted to target despite being years younger than the other sites and containing less content. http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=pole+dance&btnG=Search&meta= http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=pole+fit&btnG=Search&meta= http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=pole+dance+studio&btnG=Search&meta=

geoken…it’s really awesome..

geoken … woah pole dancing … awesome

IMO , a large part of the rankings where the result of external advertising, posting, link exchange. You internal content can only do so much for your page rank. Googlebombs are great examples of how inbound linking can effect your search results.

You can also make hidden content on the HTML of your Flash page. If i remember correctly, i think the method i used was hidden CSS DIVs.

SWFObject and HTML content. It’s what I did with my wifes site liveonce.ca – it’s within the top 5 google results on all the key search terms we wanted to target despite being years younger than the other sites and containing less content.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=pole+dance&btnG=Search&meta= http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=pole+fit&btnG=Search&meta= http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=pole+dance+studio&btnG=Search&meta=

I assume by HTML content you mean the standard tags “keywords” and “descriptions” ?

I’m not sure what you mean by “SWFObject”. Can you elaborate? I agree with your later post in regard to advertising. I think it’s the way to go these days. Thanks very much for this info. Now I will check out “GoogleBombs”!!

Just been reading up on SWF object. Seems to be useful for sites that have the odd Flash movie but are mostly HTML .

I’m talking about 100% Flash Sites. Not sure if SWFObject will be relevant in that situation.