How to get your Flash site seen by search engines
Search engine spiders are stupid creatures. They are
also deaf and blind. This is not much comfort for those people who
have a website built in Flash, a multimedia design tool produced
by Macromedia.
A spider is a program that
search engines use to collect data from web sites. The problem is
that spiders cannot read content contained in Flash files as . spiders
are designed to read text. This is a big problem for many high end
sites because if the site cannot be crawled by spiders then the
site will not get listed in search engines. And if it doesn't get
listed in search engines, then the site is missing a huge potential
audience.
So does this mean web sites shouldn't use Flash?
Not at all. Designers simply need to provide a means
by which search engine spiders can crawl the sites content. In order
to make a Flash site "search engine friendly", designers
should offer a flat HTML option as an alternative.
Providing a flat option is standard industry practice
and has advantages beside pleasing search engines. Flash content
is often slow to load over dial-up connections and users prefer
pages to load quickly. The visually impaired may be using text to
voice software which set to read HTML content. Providing an option
to use Flash or HTML keeps everyone happy. If a near-identical HTML
version is not an option due to budget constraints, consider offering
"printer friendly" versions of Flash pages that contain
text-only.
Flash can help give a site interactive functionality.
Flash can look great. Flash can help branding efforts. However,
Flash needs to be handled carefully or else it will impact a web
sites marketability.
Employ those designers who understand how to build
sites for all visitors - those who want flashy interactive content,
those on dial-up, those with disabilities and, yes, search engine
spiders.
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Article by Peter Da Vanzo, a search engine marketing
and optimisation consultant. Source: www.searchengineblog.com
(c) 2002
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