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How Well Can Flash Sites Be Optimized for Search Engines?
Ross Dunn CEO, StepForth Web MarketingAug 5, 2008 - 1:21:28 PM
On June 30, 2008 Google and Adobe announced that upgrades to the Google and (soon) Yahoo search engines will allow them to crawl Flash webpages to an extent never before seen. Since this news broke, there has been speculation on how this might change the practice of search engine optimization (SEO). Can Flash websites now compete with HTML sites for top rankings? Not yet. It is clear to me that a search engine optimized Flash website isn't yet ready for a head-to-head battle with a fully optimized HTML website. Allow me to explain.
First Some Background Information
Before June 30th, Flash was only marginally crawlable by Google, because most of the content was stored in proprietary code owned and protected by Adobe. Adobe has now provided Google and Yahoo with the proprietary technology to access content in Flash SWF files. The result is that mountains of previously inaccessible Flash content is now crawlable. At last count, an advanced search for SWF files (Flash format files) found over 66,200,000 files. That's a lot of potentially useful content.What has Changed in Search Results?
Google's Official Webmaster Central Blog used the following example of how a Flash website listing looked in search results before the new Flash crawling technology was installed:
And this is how the same Flash website listing would now appear:
The difference, as you can see, lies within the important descriptive content that Google can now index. This peek into Google's accessibility, however, begs the questions: How well does Google index Flash? and How effectively can it be optimized for rankings?
After reading Adobe and Google's press release on the subject and the comments from readers, I was able to put together the following optimization techniques for Flash pages:
- The textual content within Flash can be optimized for specific keyphrase(s) to assist targeted rankings.
- Text navigation within the website as well as text links within content can include keyphrase(s) to boost relevancy of the destination page. However, this is only applicable when Flash is separated into segments housed in separate files. For example, instead of creating a website entirely in a single flash file (i.e. www.xyzname.com/site.swf), the Flash file should be broken into segments housed in separate URLs (i.e., page1.swf, page2.swf, etc.).
- Emphasizing (bolding) may help to raise the value of keyphrase(s). This seems to be a logical capability, but we don't know at present if the new technology recognizes text emphasis.
Is Flash as Good as HTML for Search Engine Optimization?
On the other hand, critical components can still be optimized only in HTML, not in Flash. These include heading tags, images and image tags, nofollow tags, etc. Moreover, when a Flash website is composed of only a single SWF file, page to page link popularity isn't possible nor is deep linking available. As a result, searchers always end up at the home page.
Flash has made amazing progress and is far more search engine friendly than ever before. Unfortunately, it can't yet compete with a professionally optimized HTML website. The only exception would be when the Flash site has a vast number of links pointing to it or has little worthy competition.
Ross Dunn is CEO of StepForth SEO Services, a search engine optimization firm in Victoria, BC, Canada, founded in 1997.
