The Proper Use of Adobe Flash Within Web Sites
The following is an excerpt from The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization, a book authored by Stephen Woessner of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. The book is available on Amazon.com, Borders.com, and other retailers.
Flash Web Site
Inevitably, one of the most popular topics that come up in my discussions with business owners and managers revolves around the proper usage of Adobe Flash® within a Web site. Essentially, is it okay to create a Flash Web site?
If you are unfamiliar with a Flash Web site…Flash is a graphic-based animation software that can give a Web site a rich and interactive look. Flash is outstanding for creating product demonstrations, training modules, and other types of interactive content. The downside is when Flash is used to construct an entire Flash Web site, search engines like Google tend to struggle “indexing” the site content and subsequently ranking a Flash Web site.
What Does Indexing Mean?
The content of a Web page is considered indexable if the text (content) on a page can be highlighted by left-clicking your mouse and dragging it over the text. The text should be highlighted in blue. Being able to highlight the text means that the text and any associated graphics on the page are essentially in different “layers,” which is what Google needs because it can easily “index” the text-based content. Indexing is the process Google uses to scan a Web page for important details and then log them into their database for future keyword searching by Google users. Google indexing Flash is a challenge because Google cannot index text that is layered into a graphic, photo, which essentially happens when creating a Flash Web site.
Google Indexing Flash
In the past, Flash completely prevented Google from indexing content in a Flash Web site. I have read about Google and Adobe collaborating with the goal of making Flash Web site content more indexable. However, I have not read any testing results regarding the success or failure of the experiment. Therefore, you will be best served by using text-based content and avoiding any design temptations to put your text content into Flash.
Flash Web Site Design Benefits
Aesthetically, a Flash Web site looks and functions beautifully. Flash Web sites can be highly attractive and functional for users. However, Google wants and is primarily looking for text-based content; therefore, Flash Web sites create an unnecessary roadblock for Google. You may have also visited Flash Web sites that offer users the opportunity to select “HTML Site” or “Flash Web Site” from a Home/Landing Page. Although this satisfies Google’s need for text-based content, it creates a content management burden by making the business owner essentially manage two different Web sites: a Flash Web site and an HTML Web site, which is an unnecessary hassle.
Proper Use of Flash Content
Just to be clear, I am definitely a fan of Flash content. Flash video files (.flv) can be an outstanding addition to a Web site for product demonstrations, tutorials, and other applications. However, my recommendation is to embed the individual Flash files within an overall HTML site design. This type of integrated strategy gives Google the opportunity to still index your valuable text-based content and skip the Flash-based content, all the while proceeding efficiently through your Web site. Meanwhile, your human site visitors will still be impressed by the Flash-based content from a branding perspective. This is the perfect compromise between design, functionality, and search engine optimization.
Google’s capability to index Flash-based content can be a hotly contested issue. You can visit Google’s official Webmaster Central Blog at: Googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com for detailed information on a wide variety of topics, including Google indexing Flash.
