299 Steps to Website Heaven

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Getting a Flash site listed in Google

June 25th, 2008 · No Comments · Bonus Tips, Google

It’s one of the age old questions an SEO Expert gets asked - Can you get my site listed in Google if it’s in Flash?

Well, my answer has always been to run screaming in the opposite direction :)

Many website owners complain that Google ignores Flash, but it’s worth having a look at this post on the Google Webmaster Central blog, which talks a little more about the Flash issue, and offers up the following tips:

  1. Try to use Flash only where it is needed. Many rich media sites such as Google’s YouTube use Flash for rich media but rely on HTML for content and navigation. You can too, by limiting Flash to on-page accents and rich media, not content and navigation. In addition to making your site Googlebot-friendly, this makes you site accessible to a larger audience, including, for example, blind people using screen readers, users of old or non-standard browsers, and those on limited low-bandwidth connections such as on a cell phone or PDA. As a bonus, your visitors can use bookmarks effectively, and can email links to your pages to their friends.
  2. sIFR: Some websites use Flash to force the browser to display headers, pull quotes, or other textual elements in a font that the user may not have installed on their computer. A technique like sIFR still lets non-Flash readers read a page, since the content/navigation is actually in the HTML — it’s just displayed by an embedded Flash object.
  3. Non-Flash Versions: A common way that we see Flash used is as a front page “splash screen” where the root URL of a website has a Flash intro that links to HTML content deeper into the site. In this case, make sure there is a regular HTML link on that front page to a non-Flash page where a user can navigate throughout your site without the need for Flash.

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